After months of trying, NASA is calling it quits on freeing the Spirit rover from the Martian sand that it’s been stuck in since May of 2009.  Unfortunately, after six years of tireless service, the end might be very near for the rover, which faces a severe Martian winter in its current position. NASA engineers will spend the next few weeks preparing Spirit to face the winter weather, and hope that it will be able to continue on as a stationary scientific platform.

“Spirit is not dead; it has just entered another phase of its long life,” said Doug McCuistion, director of the Mars Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “We told the world last year that attempts to set the beloved robot free may not be successful. It looks like Spirit’s current location on Mars will be its final resting place.”

The Martian winter will begin in May. Until then, NASA will try and use remaining power to change the inclination of Spirit in order to help it capture more sunlight. NASA says that unless Spirit can be positioned in a better position, it is unlikely that it will survive.

Meanwhile, Opportunity, Spirit’s sister, continues to amble onwards towards a crater called Endeavor. NASA has some good videos summarizing Spirit’s six years.

It’s time to kick start our 10 Years of GoRobotics celebration! Our first giveaway features some great prizes from our sponsors, SuperDroid Robots, Apress, and Pololu. Entering this month’s contest will be simple. Here’s what you need to do: simply comment on this post and tell us your favorite robot. Winners will be chosen at random. Three winners will be chosen and the first winners will get his/her choice of the prizes, second place gets second choice and third place gets whatever is left over! The contest ends JANUARY 31st, 2010 at 12AM EST. Comments are moderated to prevent spam. Your comment won’t show up till the moderator has approved it.

Here are this month’s prizes:

First Prize Package – Parallax Scribbler Robot – worth $99

The Scribbler Robot is a complete robotics platform designed for ages 8 and up. It comes with a full Parallax Basic Stamp 2 processor, many sensors, and intuitive software for getting started quickly. Perfect for beginners and intermediate builders.

Second Prize Package – Micro Maestro 6-channel USB Servo Controller + Practical Arduino Book (donated by Pololu and Apress) – worth $25 + $35

Pololu’s Micro Maestro 6-channel USB servo controller allows you to control six separate servos from your PC via USB, TTL serial from a microcontroller, and allows basic scripts to be executed on the controller itself. It also incorporates general I/O. This controller is one of the best controllers on the market, with 0.25us resolution with built-in speed and acceleration control.

Practical Arduino: Cool Projects for Open Source Hardware, by Jonathan Oxer and Hugh Blemings will tech you how to create your own Arduino-based designs, learn the arduino programming language, and will guide you through many practical projects from home automation to test equipment. This book is for hobbyists and developers interested in physical computing using a low-cost, easy-to-learn platform.

Third Prize Package – Remote Control Robot Construction Set (donated by SuperDroid Robots) – worth $46

The Tamiya Remote Control Robot Construction kit provides parts for wheeled remote control robot. Twin-motor gearbox, crank-axle gearbox, remote control box, ball caster, tires, universal arm, and other parts are included. The control box has 4 channels and enables control of 4 different movements by adding separately available gearboxes. It comes with instructions for building several different robots.

Keep reading for the complete rules, and TO ENER THE GIVEAWAY!

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A french company, named Parrot, unveiled an iPhone controlled, wifi-enabled, quadrocopter at CES 2010.  The robot, called the AR.Drone, is a sophisticated and snazzy quadrocopter that is controlled via an iPhone or iPod Touch over a wifi connection. The AR.Drone has two onboard cameras, one of which streams live video back to the iPod screen, an ultrasonic altimeter, and a gyro/accelerometer based stabilization system. The drone also has a neat “augmented reality” system that overlays computer generated graphics and objects on the video feed, to allow users to play games or compete against each other with multiple AR.Drones. CNet says, “You’ll get about 15 minutes of battery-powered fun on a one-hour charge”, and reports that the vehicle will retail for around $500.

The most interesting part of the AR.Drone is that the wifi interface will have an API! This means that there is significant potential for building complex robotics projects using an inexpensive flying system (robot swarms, anyone?). Parrot has already created a developers website and has uploaded demo code for getting started with programming for the AR.Drone.

Update: Chris at DIYDrones has some unboxing photos of the AR.Drone.

More images after the jump.

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As we say goodbye to the 200x’s and welcome the 201x’s it’s good to pause a bit and think about the world as it was ten years ago. There was no Wikipedia, no YouTube, internet access was still dialup for a huge portion of the population, and we didn’t have a whole heap of really cool robots. To highlight some of the great inventions of the past ten years, we’ve selected 10 of the best robots fom the past 10 years.

With any sort of list like this, things are pretty arbitrary, but we tried to pick robots that have made an impact in our culture or have impacted the hobby or science of robots in a major way. Below you’ll find 10 amazing robots from the military, toy industry, consumer industry, and science community that have had a lasting impact on robotics.

Take a look and tell us what you think. If you had to nominate 10 robots of the decade, who would they be? Keep reading for our picks for robots of the decade.

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Welcome to 2010 everyone! Thanks for making 2009 a great year for GoRobotics.net. We saw a 40% increase in visits from 2008, and more than doubled the number of subscribers to our RSS feed.  Below are the top news posts from 2009, along with some perennial favorites on the site.

2010 is a special year for us, as it marks the TEN YEAR ANNIVERSARY of GoRobotics.net! Whooohooo! I’m super excited about this (and a little shocked). In April of 2000 I first bought the domain name ‘robotshop.com/gorobotics’ and moved the site there. Previously, it has been running under the name “robot central” on a free hosting provider. Time sure have changed!

To celebrate this HUGE milestone, we’ll be doing a series of giveaways leading up to April and the big finale! Not sure what’s it’s going to be yet … but it’s gonna be good. I’ll be posting the upcoming and current contests on the Ten Years of GoRobotics page.

Anyway, back to 2009. Here are our top posts from 2009 (in reverse order):

8. Fantastic Retro Robo-Art

7. Boeing’s Truck Mounted Laser Weapon Destroys Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

6. The Rise and Fall of Pleo, a Fairwell Lecture by John Sosoka, Former CTO of Ugobe

5. Battlestar Galactica Returns to Sing Its Final Song

4. Cornell Wins the 12th Annual Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Competition

3. Upcoming Biomass Powered Military Robot

2. US President Defending Against Robot Apocalypse

1. 10 Years of LEGO Mindstorms – Limited Edition Black NXT

and of course our perennail favorite articles:

• How to Crimp Connectors

• How to Build a Simple Robot – Beetle Robot

So, once again a HUGE THANKS to all of the faithful readers. I’m forever in your debt and I look forward to 2010 and the future!