Can you code a mean Java hack? Are you into Robosapien V2? Will you be in Johannesburg in May?

If so, then consider joining in the Robosapien programming contest at Sun Tech Days. Using Starship System’s Java SDK, participants will compete on getting their robots to do, well, cool things. And what is a cool thing? Well, apparently whatever Sun’s James Gosling thinks is cool. The top coolest robots as chosen by Gosling will win a prize.

We are awaiting words of caution from fellow Sun persona Bill Joy.
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Tom Atwood, over at Robot Magazine, has put a review of the Robotis Bioloid "edutainment" robot kit on their website. You can also find more information on Robotis’ website, though, be warned that it’s a Korean company and the "English" version is a bit confusing.


ROBOT’s article also has two videos of the kit in action. This looks like a great kit with lots of potential. We’ll see how it stacks up against Mindstorms NXT which is due out in 2 months.



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This morning I awoke to find an email in my inbox from LEGO. The email says:


There you have it folks! Mindstorms will begin shipping on July 1st! That’s only 2 short months away. The totaly credit card bill was $259.99 and I was limited to buying 5 sets per order (I only got one. Have to save up for a wedding). The order can only be placed by calling shop at home and I had to mention the code "DEVPRE". I don’t know if that code is the same for everyone or not.

A screen shot of the mail is to the left.



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A partnership between WowWee Toys and Evolution Robotics was just announced today. You can read the official press release here. The release says that WowWee will be incorporating some of Evolution’s technologies, specifically their Visual Pattern Recognition (ViPR) software and their localization technology, Northstar, which uses project infrared light-spots on surfaces to detect where the robot is.

This news comes after WowWee’s annoucement last October that they were partnering up with Segway, the makers of the Seqway Human Transporter.

So, if you put it all together, you get Tilden-esc robots that have machine vision capabilities, awesome movement and balancing, and know where they are all the time. So, what exactly is WowWee up to? Something amazing, or are they just hedging their bets against impressive newcomers like Ugobe and their Pleo?

Exciting times.


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