We were promised robots. The future, science fiction told us, would be a world swarming with automatons that did all the jobs we didn’t want. But you know what? Robots are really expensive and hard to build. Two MIT scientists want to change all that with inkjet printers and techniques borrowed from origami.
Drones have been in the limelight recently, where at least one of the stories do not actually bring any kind of comfort to us ordinary folk. After all, who would want a drone to actually crash into you while you are outdoors? Those things aren’t exactly the lightest devices around, and from a great height at a certain velocity, it might even maim or kill rather than give you a nasty shock. For all you know, it could be a staged assassination attempt that has been disguised as an “accident”. Enough daydreaming for now – back to the topic at hand, a drone which can fly around indefinitely without ever returning to base simply because it can recharge itself by landing on a power line.
Yup, researchers have worked on ‘bird’ drones which actually land on power lines so that they can recharge themselves, and a working prototype has already been developed as you read this. Such drones could come in handy by the military in a long-running surveillance campaign, where the drone would rely on the magnetic field in order to land in the perfect spot. Apart from that, the Air Force, too, is working on something similar which might even hunt in swarms. Now that’s a scary thought, don’t you think so? The birds aren’t gonna be too happy to share their power lines with robots though, but what other options have they?
Drones That Recharge Themselves On Power Lines , original content from Ubergizmo, Filed in Robots, drone, 
TinkerBots (formerly known as Kinematics) let you make robots that are easy enough for a child to build. The pieces snap together easily, and you can make things much more complex than a robot dog too. Want to train the dog to walk? Just switch on the Tinketbot’s Power Brain’s recording mode and twist and turn the dog manually. Press play, and it repeats the motion you just programmed. How awesome is that?
The Power Brain has a built-in gyroscope and accelerometer, speaker, Bluetooth 4.0 connectivity, and a rechargeable lithium-polymer battery.
It’s Arduino compatible too, so you can build even more complex creations if you want. You can also program robot movements from your mobile device. Other active modules include motors, pivots, grabbers, and IR and light sensors. You can update any or all of them through the Power Brain when there’s new software available.
TinkerBots are even compatible with LEGO and Technic pieces with the proper adapter blocks in place. The cubes are roughly the size of 4 X 1 LEGO brick, cuboids roughly 4 x 2, and there are two different kinds of angled prism pieces.
This is going to be a great toy for your kids. And you of course. You can get yourself a basic set for $159(USD) on Indiegogo, with bigger sets ranging from $299 to $499.
With what has to be one of the most ambitious Kickstarter projects to come along in a while, the folks behind this Mini Mobile Robotic Printer want to revolutionize the mobile office. Because of instead of carrying a page-wide device that has to pull paper through it, this little marvel will instead print directly on a piece of paper while it rolls around on top of it.
Google’s continued push into the robotics industry continues, with its latest investment being a stake in Silicon Valley’s Savioke—which focuses on service industry machines.
We may not yet have achieved our Jetsons utopia, but advancements in robotics have happened at a clipped rate over the years, and slowly robotic devices have worked their way … Continue reading
Savioke, a robotics startup out of Sunnyvale led by the former CEO of the now-defunct but influential Willow Garage robotics startup, is announcing a seed round of funding today, $2 million from Jerry Yang’s AME Cloud Ventures, Google Ventures, Morado Venture Partners and other individual investors. It is planning to use the money to develop and build its first robot, an as-yet unnamed piece of… Read More
As impressive as Boston Dynamics’ humanoid robot ATLAS
This past August, MIT unboxed the impressive Atlas Robot for the DARPA Robotics Challenge, revealing a rather massive piece of machinery complete with various tethers that provide it with fluid … Continue reading
The tables have been turned – once in a legend, there was a man known as John Henry, who wanted to prove that humans are better than machines by besting a steam powered hammer. This time around, we have a machine that intends to prove it is better than humans at a mobile puzzle game known as Threes, and this unique robot does seem to be playing from a position of strength.
Threes Playing Robot Outdoes Human Opponents original content from Ubergizmo. 
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