The Christmas season is upon us, and it’s time to whip up your gift lists. Why not put a little robot love on there? Here’s some great suggestions for robotic gifts. We’ve featured 10 great products that will make excellent gift ideas for your robot loving friend or relative.

LEGO Mindstorms NXT

I wonder if LEGO fully understood what they were getting into when they first released their “Robotics Invention System”, or “RIS” in 1998? Now, two revisions later we have the LEGO Mindstorms NXT system, which is about as perfect of a product as you can imagine. Involving a tight-knit team of LEGO and robotics enthusiasts, LEGO developed NXT from the ground up and surprised the public with their new system in 2006. The NXT system supports over 40 different programming languages, and supports a wide range of additional sensors created by 3rd parties. The kit comes with 3 motors (with feedback), 4 different sensors, and 571 pieces. You can check out some of the fabulous NXT creations over at The NXT Step Blog.

Mindstorms NXT retails for $250 USD.

Buy LEGO Mindstorms NXT from RobotShop.

Wall-E RC Toy and DVD

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Pixar is known for creating beautiful, heartwarming, and sophisticated animated films that appeal to both children and adults. Their latest masterpiece is the story of Wall-E, a trash robot stranded and alone on Earth.

One of the more interesting product tie-ins is the U Command Wall-E “interactive robot” which uses an IR remote for control and can be programming with hundreds of different actions and combinations. This may be ripe for hardware hacking and is extremely cute, to boot.

Of course, if you’re looking for something a little less costly, the 3 disk Special Edition of Wall-E on DVD would make an excellent gift for your robot loving friends.

Buy U Command Wall-E from Amazon.com.

Buy 3 Disk Special Edition Wall-E from Amazon.com.

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Both RobotShop and Hammacher Schlemmer are now offering the “World Smallest Humanoid Robot”, I-Sobot, for an astounding $99 price tag $95.99 price tag ($99 at Hammacher). This appears to be partly due to the fact that I-Sobot is being discontinued by Tomy. For $96 this would make an excellent Christmas gift for any robot lover in your family.

I-Sobot stands about 6.5″ tall and can perform all sorts of tricks, like somersaults, martial arts, push ups and is fully controlled via an IR remote control. Various movements can be sequend together to create complex motion patterns. I-Sobot also reponds to voice commands.

Times are tough, why not splurge a little? Video of I-Sobot in action after the break.

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The US Army has decided to move it’s Robotics Systems Joint Project Office to Warren, MI, outside of Detroit. In response to this, many large robotics companies are following suit and opening offices in the area. The office is currently hiring engineers and designers to create robots to do “dull, dirty or dangerous” jobs.

Robot ground vehicles are said to be the main focus and officials say that should produce about 100 new jobs by next year and maybe double that in the future. Which future is still in question, though. Already, money is flowing into local universities for robotics research and iRobot, Foster Miller, and QuinetiQ are looking to open local branches.

So, is robotics the hot new industry for Southern Michigan? It sure looks like they could use a few new ideas.

 

In what is pretty stunning news to me, iRobot has purchased Nekton Research for $10 million USD. The reason this is so stunning, is because Nekton is 30min down the road from me, and I’ve interviewed there! Nekton is a small business located in Durham North Carolina and specializes in underwater robots. You can see one of their robots, the Transphibian, operating after the jump. Up till this point Nekton has based it’s business on government research contracts and hasn’t done any large scale product sales – this looks to change. iRobot says they plan on moving their “Maritime Programs office” to the Raleigh-Durham area. Eventually iRobot plans to have all their underwater research and development happen at this location. This will be where the Seaglider program eventually moves to.

iRobot has updated their website to reflect the new acquisition and features the Seaglider, Ranger, Transphibian, and “High Speed UUV“. I’m looking forward to see what exciting things will pop out of the water, so to speak.

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Ok, so here’s the question: Is all the economic turmoil causing you to spend/build less on your robots? Vote, and let us know!