Hasta La Gadget!

Back in August of 2012, we talked about a cool little Bluetooth controlled robot known as Bero. Bero stands for Be The Robot and the little guy is pretty cool. The robot is open source and is designed to be controlled using a Bluetooth device such as the iPhone or Android smartphones. Bero originally turned up on Kickstarter where early backers could get a basic Bluetooth controlled ‘bot for as little as $79.

ThinkGeek is now offering the robot, though its price has gone up significantly since the Kickstarter campaign. The Bluetooth robot will cost you $149.99(USD). You don’t get to choose the color, ThinkGeek will either send you a black version or white version depending on what the monkeys grab off the shelf.

The robot is four inches-tall and has micro gear boxes allowing its tank tread tracks to move independently, its head to turn, and its arms to move. It’s also got a built-in speaker and LED eyes and light up headphones.  Bero also has an integrated infrared optical system for autonomous navigation with a pair of IR transmitters and a single IR receiver. It has a detection range of three to five inches. Power comes from a small lithium polymer rechargeable battery good for three to five hours of use.

The ‘bot can be controlled by any Bluetooth 2.0 device, but applications for programming already exist for Android and iOS devices. It’s also pre-programmed to dance and move around if you’re too lazy to program it yourself.

Geeks like robots, everyone knows that. ThinkGeek has announced the launch of an interesting new robot that geeks of all ages will like called Bero. Bero is a Bluetooth-controlled open source robot that can be controlled using your smartphone. The robot also has an infrared optical navigation system allowing it to autonomously navigate around your […]

An interesting flying robot has been created called Gimball that is specifically designed to be able to crash and recover quickly. The creators of the robot designed it to be used in situations that might be hazardous for humans. The flying device has a spherical roll cage mounted on pivots that allows the helicopter to stay upright, as well as to handle cramped spaces where other drones would likely crash.

The flying drone was designed and built by a team in Switzerland from the Ecole Polytechnique Federerale de Lausanne (EPFL). In-flight it resembles a mosquito crashing into things and moving on without missing a beat. Co-creator of the flying robot, Adrien Briod, told the BBC that Gimball was partly inspired by the way insects fly.

The little drone has a gyroscopic system including an accelerometer of the type used in smartphones to allow it to know which way is up and stay in the correct orientation. The drone is 13-inches in diameter and weighs 13 ounces with the capability of lifting 30 g. Currently the robot is remote controlled, but the company hopes to integrate features allowing it to fly autonomously.

The robot is intended to be able to be deployed in disaster situations such as entering buildings that are burning or hazardous materials are leaking.

[via GigaOM and BBC]

Boston Dynamics’ Cheetah robot impressed people all over the world when it proved that it can outrun even the fastest of our species. But some of you may have been thinking, what’s to be afraid of? It’s tied down. Unless we’re on the same treadmill Cheetah isn’t touching anybody. Well, it’s not tied down anymore.

Meet WildCat, the latest generation of the Cheetah. While its tethered predecessor has a recorded top speed of over 29mph, WildCat can “only” get up to 16mph. Not enough to outrun Usain Bolt, but enough to catch up to the average human, running at a full out sprint.

Between drones and Boston Dynamics’ DARPA-funded cats and dogs, we should start looking into this Rapture thing.

[via Boston Dynamics via Gizmodo]

One of those games I always saw in the arcade quite, but never quite understood was foosball. I get that it’s sort of like playing soccer on a table, but I always thought it was boring after just a few minutes of play. I might be able to get behind playing some 21st century foosball using these soccer playing robots from BeeWi.

The robot is called the BBZ150 and it uses Bluetooth connectivity and a smartphone application for control. Each of the little robots comes with numbers for its shirt, a little soccer ball, and a little soccer goal. The control app is available for Android, iOS devices, and Windows Phone.

If you’re not into soccer, you can just cruise the robot around like any remote control toy and you can play sumo wrestling with it using a downloadable sumo ring you can print at home.

The BBZ150 robot will ship in October for £29.99 (~$48 USD) each.