The MyRobots.com App Store  is the first robot-specific App Store to list applications which are ready to buy! The first available applications are intended for use with the iRobot Roomba Vacuums, one of the most widely used robots in the world. All six million Roombas (estimated number of Roombas in the “wild”) can now benefit from these applications which are intended to make full use of the onboard sensors and commands to transform the little cleaning robot in to a telepresence solution. The Robot App Store is also open for roboticists and developers who would like create, submit and then sell their apps. Current apps are similar to the existing Android and iOS apps that need to be downloaded and installed into a device (a robot in this case). The MyRobots team is still working on creating and supporting apps that run in the cloud, but some hints on the site (such as the cloud icon in the top-right) lead to believe the functionality will be coming soon. The MyRobots App Store uses RobotShop’s e-commerce platform to handle transactions but it is foreseeable that in the future, transactions will go trough the MyRobots site, giving users a more seamless experience.

The RobotShop Ultimate Challenge is moving along quickly now; the Roomba 500 series has completed all the tests and its final score is now available. If you recall, the robot vacuums are being scored by 15 different performance tests: how well they pick up debris, how fast they clean, how loud they are, etc. With the Roomba 500 series’ results now in, you’re going to have some cold hard facts to back up your purchase decision.

Check out the video below explaining the results and demonstrating the tests. Watch until the end to see some rather brutal (and  funny) tests that  seem to have been rejected.

RobotShop launches the Ultimate Roomba Resource Center, a webpage dedicated to all things Roomba.

All brought together in one place, the Ultimate Roomba Resource Center has a little something for everyone, whether you’re looking to buy your first Roomba, or already are a seasoned Roomba owner and looking to get the most out of your robot.

Among other things, a detailed Comparison Table has been included that breaks each model down for you, so you can choose the correct Roomba the first time. RobotShop plans to continually update this resource to make it the one-stop for all things Roomba, check back regularly as we will be continually adding content.

This little gem came to me courtesy of my friend Greg Baker, who is a lecturer in Computer Science at Simon Fraser University. Thanks Greg! This one was too cool to pass up.

Gåågle - It’s not as weird to pronounce as you’d think. It’s actually pronounced like Google and you’ll begin to see why soon enough. Gåågle Bot is a modified remote-control Roomba that bears a webcam, fueled by real-time AJAX calls that zips around taking pictures and indexing the real world as it sees it. Vacuum, index. I love efficiency!

The name GåågleBot is a play on the words gÃ¥ and google bot. The Swedish word for go is gåå. Googlebot, is the name of Google’s web indexer. If you don’t know what Google is, you are either lying or out of luck. Hence GåågleBot is a “going” indexer, indexing the real world around us while vacuuming your home at the same time! Can’t find that library book that is due tomorrow? Relax, just Gåågle it!

Excited about this bot? Head over here and give it a try. There is also a pretty nifty video as well showing the bot in action. The main site has all of the components listed, the source code, and other tidbits to get you started building your own remote-control crawler.

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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