#robot

The Fastest Maze-Solving Competition On Earth

interview with Rodney Brooks — a roboticist, former head of CSAIL at MIT, and co-founder of iRobot, Rethink Robotics, and Robust.AI

A podcast where two girls laugh hysterically and talk about “tech”, but more about robots on Kickstarter and Elon Musk’s Instagram than nanometers in new Snapdragons.

two-way servos

by Pixar artist Alonso Martinez

Boston Dynamics…

0:30 jump <3

“On flat surfaces with no objects in their path, wheeled robots are more efficient than tracked, legged, and even aerial robots. In sand, mud, and rougher terrain, tracks are superior to wheels. However, with fixed objects, obstacles, and vertical surfaces in the path of a tracked robot with no alternative path, legged robots are superior. Even if moderate objects and obstacles can be overcome by tracks, continuous unstructured terrain over a large field of operation reduces the energy efficiency of tracked devices when compared to dynamic legged robots.”

Berkeley’s leaping robot

“Scientists have built a robotic stingray made of heart muscle cells from a rat, a skeleton of gold, plastic fins, and light-activated algae proteins—because, why not?”