We love this sort of thing and eat it up just like the demo bot below rends concrete flesh from rebar bones:

That was just Number 6, see the rest over at Make:Blog

Thanks Heather Knight!

It was a controlled experiment with a chase car and few outside observers, but the car made it up Pike’s Peak at speeds of up to 45 mph. Humans can do it in 10 minutes, the robot did it in 27, but the terrain, elevation, and the fact that the freakin’ car did it all by its lonesome is awfully impressive.

Go Stanford.

Thanks Singularity Hub!

The speaker’s list if formidable, and includes RoboGames‘ own Academic Chair for 2011, Heather Knight.

Heather Knight – Robotic Touch: Capacitive Sensing to Understand Human Body Language
Rob Gilson – State of the Replicators
Chris Connors – MakerBot and emerging technologies in the classroom
Dustyn Roberts – 3D without the Glasses: Making Assemblies of Parts
Laura Greig – Helping Paintbots Become More Than Printers
Kio Stark – 9 Ways to Make Your Robot Come to Life
Ben Combee – Put a Web Server on Your Bot
Erik de Bruijn – Open source innovation: On empowerment, architecture and ecosystems
Mr.Kim and John Sarik – Makerbot Printable Transistors and OLEDs
George Hart – Cool Geometric Forms
Zach Smith – Compilers of Industrial Revolution 2
Ilan Moyer – Gestural Design: Product Design in an Age of Personal Fabrication
Iem and Andy Heng and Zhang – Autonomous and Non-Autonomous Flexible Robot
Amy Hurst – Nickel for Scale – automatically customizing 3D objects to fit YOU!
Adam Mayer – Tiny Robots Everywhere
MakerBlock – How to be a robot dad
Raphael Abrams – The Nine Step Program to Make a Robot Puppet that Will Haunt Your Dreams

This is shaping up to be THE conference about DIY robotics and the bright future for automated everything. Be there!

So get your tickets, slot in your extra RAM and get yourself to NYC ASAP for robot DIY, PDQ.

. . .that looks suspiciously like this tree harvesting machine of doom:

Here’s footage of the Kali-like tree creator-destroyer in action:

Yeah, that’s what we thought.

This is the perfect gift for the evil supervillain in your life, especially if they lack a suitably heebie-jeebie inducing perimeter security system. And it’s also stylish! They do come in flat packs, though, so make sure you get all the boxes and that little wrench thing before you install.

[Big ups to the robot lovin' gnomes over at <"http://www.botjunkie.com/2010/08/12/norwegian-mailbox-drone/">BotJunkie]

Thanks Ralf Burgert!

More cool stuff at Citadrobo’s YouTube page.

Image Courtesy Robot Magazine

From Popular Science:
Sure, you can make a robot walk or cook or even play beer pong, but can you make a robot friendly? Ben-Gurion University of the Negev wants to know, so the Israeli university will host the world’s first international competition to build a robot that can shake a human hand.

This is actually a lot cooler than it sounds, because handshaking is a more complex problem than puny humans realize. The conditions, pressure, etc are different every time; differences between hands necessitate decision-making on the fly and – okay remember what I said before? They do a better job explaining things over there at the bigfancy tech magazine, so read and enjoy.

I will indulge in one wholesome and heart-swelling demonstration of sentiment and say that it would be super swell if the folks who sign up for this competition refine their creations, and come to RoboGames 201l as a lovely demonstration of symbolic friendship and brother hood across all nations, creeds and climes. Science and love conquer all.

Yeeegh okay that’s enough. Back to the carnage-loving and haphazard robotic reporting so near and dear to this website’s heart. LOOK! Here’s a contest that rewards the robot who does the most inefficient and laboriously done trivial task! Stupid robot trick yeah!

Okay now I really have to go to bed.

The talk is “Build A Robot, Be A Rock Star: RoboGames” and it will be about various and sundry interesting tidbits about our seven years producing RoboGames.

So, grab a giant can of Tecate, camp out in the parking lot, and troop in to hear me talk a bunch about robots, games, and other things.

MakerFaire is this Saturday and Sunday May 22-23rd at the San MAeo Convention Center in lovely San Mateo, California. See everything cool you could possibly think up in the wildest realms of your imagination, all in one place, and learn how you can make each and every single thing yourself.

Whee! So much will be going on, you won’t even be able to absorb it all in one weekend. Yay!