Building robots capable of beating humans in a soccer match will take a few years. But students are already building robots that can compete with humans at table football. Swiss students have come up with a robotic system that plays foosball and offers a faster, more precise performance in comparison to humans. It can see thanks to a camera that takes 300 images per second.
Meet the SteadiDrone MAVRIK: a professional aerial system with a front mounted gimbal that can point directly upwards and all the way down. The MAVRIK has a foldable design. It can fly a variety of payloads, including cameras and sensors. You can add an industrial imaging solution to do more with this flying machine.
Robots solving Rubik’s Cube puzzle are nothing new. We have covered a few record breaking puzzle solving robots here in the past. The LinkSprite Magic Cube is a cube solver robot with Arduino. It supports 3 actions (90 degrees clockwise rotation, 90° anticlockwise rotation and 180 degrees rotation).
The robot is driven by an Arduino Uno. You are going to need a power base shield, nuts, bolts, power adapter, 4 servos, and a few other parts to get started. The installation steps are available here.
You shouldn’t have to spend a fortune to get your hands on a programmable humanoid robot. Take the Sirena Nino Humanoid: it is an affordable platform to teach robotics. These robots can do push ups, keep their balance, and do other moves you would expect a humanoid robot to perform.
In the past few months, we have covered plenty of cool bio-inspired robots. The AquaPenguin from Festo is a robot penguin with a hydrodynamic body contour. These robotic penguins can maneuver in cramped spaces and turn on the spot, since their wing, head, and tail sections can be moved in all directions.
The Double 2 Telepresence Robot may be a wonderful tool to use attend remote meetings. The company has a released a new kit that allows filmmakers to use this robot to capture 360 video. The 360 Camera Dolly lets you use any VR camera up to 5 pounds for your projects. The robot can be controlled using an iPhone 6 or iPod Touch.
Meet the DEEBOT M82: a vacuum cleaning robot that you can put on a schedule to clean your home. It has 5 cleaning modes, stairs safety mechanism, and object detection. The robot has sensors to go around your home easily. The battery lasts up to 150 minutes but the robot can dock to recharge itself automatically.
Here is a lightweight robotic arm with 3 highly-integrated Powerball modules to offer 6 degrees of freedom. It can carry loads of up to 6kg. You can combine it with the SDH 3-finger hand to do even more with it. The robot can be operated on battery for 8 hours.
There is no better way to learn about robots than building your own. In the past few months, we have covered a bunch of cool Arduino robot kits. Makeblock has shared a teaser that shows a DIY robotic arm powered by Arduino picking up and manipulating things.
In the future, robots are going to help us explore Space and the surface of other planets and their moons. Take the Leng AUV for instance. It is a vehicle that may one day be used to complete missions in the ice-covered ocean of Jupiter’s moon Europa.
