Via, Akihabara News. See what 300 Euros will buy you in Japan? Judging from another picture on Akihabara, it seems you get about 9 servos, lots of wood, 3 battery packs, and some sort of proprietary controller board. The results? … I have no idea, because the company website is in Japanese. Looking at the PDF flier, it seems it "Greeting Stand Up" and "Walk Box Dance". Yay!

Oh, and it also looks like it’s radio controlled. Scratch that. Nothing new here, move along.


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It seems that Robo-Nexus has been ramping up it’s PR campaign as of late, targeting the major robotics clubs. Their robotics event, scheduled for the San Jose Convention Center, October 7-9, is being promoted to clubs, individual hobbiests, and companies.

The "User Group Outreach Program" offers robotics clubs, "Draped table and chairs", "Two free 4 Day Super Conference", "Five free expo passes for booth staff and guests", along with a listing of the club as an "Association Co-Sponsor." The cost? Simply list Robo-Nexus on the club’s page and tell all the club members about the event.

Pretty savvy, I’d say.

Tip: You can save $100 of your conference pass with the code "RNCD100" and $5 an expo-pass with code "RNEXD5".

 

The expo, targeted to the average consumer, is a show case of robots, competitions, and vender products.

The conference has an impressive line up of speakers and presentations.


I must say I’m pretty tempted to go, but getting myself from NC to CA on a student budget aint easy. Hat’s off to Dan Kara and crew for creating this.


Is anyone interested in blogging/podcasting from the conference for me?

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I found this off of Digg. It’s a pretty impressive short film showing the Honda ASIMO racing an old man on an airport people mover. Especially note how "easy" it is for ASIMO to transistion from running to walking and vice versa. They’ve got a 30 second and a 60 second version. You’ll need the latest version of FlashPlayer to view the video though.

Robots, racing old men today, trampling young men tomorrow. That means world domination next week.



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Dan Gates, with Southern Oregon Robotics, is selling their extended Mini Sumo chassis kit for $30. This about 33% off the regular price of $45. The kit includes hardware, wheels (from Tigerbotics), and two servos. Keep in mind the servos aren’t modified, but are easily hacked. The platform is ripe for expansion. Buy one and tell ‘em GoRobotics.net sent you.

Note: The sale has now ended.




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Well, it’s no secret that posting around here has been pretty slow lately. I do have excuses though – first the trip to San Diego, then much sleep afterwards, then a trip to the beach before school started, then school started on Wednesday, then catchup. So, here we are, back ready for more robot lovin’.

Today’s cool link would be the "build your own hot air flow soldering iron" howto article I saw. Having used a nice reflow station it’s pretty tough going back to my lousy iron in the shop. A system like this is perfect for desoldering chips from existing circuit boards, or cleaning up SMT boards after you’ve used a standard iron on them. Just run a bit of flux over the pads and blow some hot air on them – they’ll look just like a machine did them.

The guy in this article used copper tubing and some welding wire to create his heating element, and some silicone tubing as insulation and to bring in the air from a cheap air pump. Pretty nifty. Build one and let me know how it goes!


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