Meet the RoboMantis mobile robot from Motiv Robotics: an open architecture robot running ROS that can be configured with up to 4 limbs and two manipulators that accept a wide variety of end-effectors.
RoboMantis is completely modular. It is ready for SLAM operations and semi-autonomous task execution. You can find out more about it here.
Roboticists are inspired by nature all the time to improve their designs. Researchers at SEAS and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering have developed a new RoboBee powered by soft artificial muscles. It can survive crashing into walls, falling on the floor, and colliding with other RoboBees.
Meet RoboSoccer: a tabletop soccer game with robot players that lets you compete with up to 6 players. It has a foldable pitch and interactive goals. You can control these robot players from your smartphone. The robots are pocket-sized and don’t take a whole lot of space. They last up to 4 hours on battery.
Meet Steve: a robot designed with filmmakers in mind. It is small enough to fit in the back of your car and can carry up to 20kg of weight. It has mecanum wheels to move in all directions. Steve comes with a safety cage for your camera. It is driven by Arduino.
The Raspberry Pi is a wonderful platform for learning coding and electronics. The Pi Cruiser is a neat little kit that lets you build your own rugged mobile robot with this platform. It can be coded in Python & Scratch.
We have seen a bunch of cool Rubik’s Cube solving robots in the past. If you are into 3D printing, you can always build your own. The 3D-printed Raspberry Pi-powered Rubik’s Cube solving robot by otvinta3d stands 35cm tall. It takes about 70 hours of print time to complete it.
Meet Lockheed Martin’s ONYX: a lower-body exoskeleton that can reduce fatigue and increase mobility of its users. By reducing the effort in walking and climbing, this wearable device helps soldiers do more. ONYX conforms to the human body. It has sensors to report “speed, direction, and angle of movement to an on-board computer that drives electro-mechanical actuators at the knees.”
Meet the KRAKEN: a robotic arm designed for the space industry that can manipulate controls and items in small spacecraft. It has 7 degrees of freedom and measures 1m. It requires only 19cm x 27cm x 36cm space. This robotic arm has a hot-swappable end-effector interface.
