Oh this is super good my friends, it seems that our agents in the field have reported back with the Inductees of the 2007 Robot Hall of Fame (put on by all our clever friends at CarNAYgie Mellon). The winners were announced at the RoboBusiness conference and a good time is still being had by all.
–Update–
In the SciFi category, only one robot made it in this year:
Data from Star Trek: Next Gen
He joins C-3PO, R2-D2, Maria, and Gort, among others. Trekkies can rejoice. No longer is the hall of fame filled up with Star Wars bots. Data finally got in… I kinda expected him to end up as the Susan Lucci of robots.
The real question is, will the borg queen make it in next year?
3 robots from the “real world” made it in:
Lego Mindstorms

Where would the world of robot builders be without Legos? Almost every professional robot builder I know does prototyping in Lego Mindstorms. It’s the one kit that I recommend everyone should buy. It teaches you the basics of mechanical engineering, sensors, and how to program. You can make everything from a line follower to a copy machine (darn you, Tony Fudd.)
At RoboGames this June, there will be 10 different Mindstorms competitions, not to mention the combat robots, androids, and soccer players.
NAVLAB 5
NAVLAB 5 was the first attempt at a self-driving car. It could follow the lanes, turn, and do other simple maneuvers. If you think that Stanley is cool, remember that NAVLAB was done back in the dark ages of 1995.
12 years ago, it drove coast to coast all by itself. Beat that, Junior.

The Raibert Hopper was the fourth inductee. Almost all walking robots can trace their lineage back to the Hopper. You think it’s hard making a two legged robot walk? Try a one legged robot. Not only could it hop around the room, it was dynamically stable, and it could do backflips.
I bet you can’t do that.
Suicidebots.com does award you the dubious honor of
COOL ROBOT OF THE WEEK
Everybody party.
Update to the Update: CNET has pretty things to say about this as well.