Robots-Dreams.com brings us word today that multi-national retailer Target will begin selling the RoboNova-1 bipedal humanoid in the very near future. I was especially excited to hear the news since my town just got its first Target store two weeks ago. So Target came to town, and now Lem says they'll be selling robots. While contemplating whether it was a coincidence or a sign that I needed to pick up another robot kit, I was leaning heavily towards the latter until further investigation revealed […]

It's been nearly two weeks since I purchased the Vex Robotics Design System starter kit, power pack, and programming kit, and although I haven't posted much about it so far, I've spent all my recent free time unboxing, examining, reading, and yes, building. Today I've posted a photoset documenting my first look at the Vex components as well as some of my initial thoughts about the system. I've actually already built my first robot (the Sqaurebot example from the Inventor's Guide) and will be posting […]

Still looking to fill the void left since Sony surreptitiously put down their robot dog Aibo, I am always excited to read about any new robotic animals under development. The Raw Feed is reporting today that Illinois-based robotic research group Iguana Robotics Inc. has created TomCat, a headless robot cat whose lack of visual aesthetics is more than made up for by its performance. TomCat is available for purchase through Alegrobot, Inc., the retail corollary of Iguana, for $2750 USD. […]

Both LiveScience.com and New Scientist are reporting today that a team of Italian and German neuroscientists working in conjunction with mobile chip maker Infineon have created a "neuro-chip," a hybrid microchip that interfaces living neurons with traditional silicon circuitry. In addition to providing new insights into the brain's inner workings, the groundbreaking work could one day lead to organic computers that use living brain cells for memory or to the creation of prosthetic devices for treating neurological disorders. […]

The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review is reporting today that Carnegie Mellon University is planning to build a hi-tech robot research and development facility called Robot City on the site of a former steelworks plant. With the stated mission of moving "robots from laboratory to life," Robot City will be populated by robots built to handle relatively mundane day-to-day tasks like cleaning, landscaping, snow removal, and security. […]

Just after six yesterday morning a Pegasus rocket launched from the belly of a Lockheed L-1011 jet flying 7 miles above the Earth carried a historic payload into space. On board the rocket were three ST5 micro-satellites destined to study the Earth's magnetic fields from their extraterrestrial orbits. Built as part of NASA's New Millennium Program, which was created to speed up space exploration through the development cutting-edge technologies, the 55 pound ST5s utilize a tiny antenna that was designed by dozens of computers running […]

Gizmodo.com is reporting that retailers will begin taking pre-orders for the forthcoming Lego Mindstorms NXT robot development kit starting April 1st. The system, priced at $249, will not ship until late summer and will be available at Amazon, Target, Fry's and Wal-Mart. This follows the news from earlier this month that Lego had chosen 100 volunteers from a field of over 9500 applicants to take part in the NXT beta program. […]

In a press release put out this morning, California-based Evolution Robotics announced that they will be licensing their ViPR (Visual Pattern Recognition) and Northstar position tracking technologies for use in WowWee's next generation of hi-tech consumer robots and entertainment products. WowWee, who manufactures the immensely popular Robosapien and Roboraptor robots, has recently been making a conscientious effort to steer the perception of their products from remote-controlled toys to autonomous, intelligent robots. In addition to eliminating the remote controls that shipped with early models, WowWee […]

As I predicted last Friday, the coverage by Robots-Dreams.com of the Robo-One competition that took place in Tokyo over the weekend has been nothing short of outstanding. Lem dropped us a comment this morning to let us know that he actually got some face time (pun intended) with the Pirkus-R Type-01 robot, the Bluetooth humanoid whose facial recognition upgrade we reported on late last week. In addition to going one on one with the bot in the controlled environment of the exhibitors area, he also […]

Yesterday while preparing the post about the Mythbusters and their attempt to build a PackBot from Vex components, I discovered that Radio Shack is currently selling all of their Vex products for 50% off. The sale started on March 12th and runs through the first week of June. […]