Juxi's log

My friend Chad Jenkins turned me on to this very nifty and very functional robot arm for the iRobot Create. It's elegant in its simplicity, and would be a great weekend robotics project.

One of my fave websites at the moment is Hizook, Travis Deyle's robot news portal. Here's a snippet from a piece he posted about the University of Stuttgart and University of Karlsruhe's open source swarm robot project:

I'm a huge fan of so-called micro robots -- those with cm length scales, thus μ m3. I've posted about numerous micro robots before, including the amazing Alice micro robot swarms from EPFL, and I am a long-time micro and nano autonomous sumo robot advocate (see RoboGames). Perhaps that is why I'm so excited about the SwarmRobot.org open hardware micro-robot swarm, developed by the University of Stuttgart and the University of Karlsruhe. All of the hardware and software is open (in the GPL sense), including parts lists, circuit board and chassis designs, and software. With a stated goal to produce sub-€100 robots, I'd really like to see this take off. Combined with a wireless power surface, a micro-robot in perpetual motion would make a great desk ornament!

Open Hardware Micro-Robot Swarm Project