Jason Falconer

Now that 3D printing technology is taking off, some truly unique projects are beginning to emerge from all sorts of talented people. Take Gael Langevin, a French sculptor and model marker who has spent the better part of the last year designing and engineering his own animatronic robot called InMoov. And it's open source, so if you're feeling confident, you can try to build one yourself using a list of off-the-shelf electronics and parts he shares on 3D file sharing site Thingiverse.  Read More

Robots by the dozen are prohibitively expensive, so actually testing how large swarms would work together is often limited to computer simulations. That's where Harvard's Kilobots are beginning to bear fruit – at a cost of US$14 each in batches of a thousand, they're a tenth the cost of their cheapest competitor. At such bargain-basement prices, Michael Rubenstein, Christian Ahler, and Radhika Nagpal at the Self-Organizing Systems Research Group have begun to build their own little robot army.  Read More

While 3D printing may be touted as bringing manufacturing back to the United States, that doesn't mean the rest of the world hasn't taken notice of the technology. Earlier this week, a 3D Printing Experience Pavilion opened in Beijing's DRC Industrial Design and Cultural Industry Base, where visitors were able to see how 3D printers work firsthand. With a few hours to spare, they could even have their own head scanned and printed as a bust, which follows the 3D printing booth that opened in a Japanese mall last year.  Read More

A new species of robot fish has been spotted in the Kalamazoo River in the state of Michigan, where more than a million gallons of oil spilled in July 2010. Developed primarily by Xiaobo Tan, an associate professor at Michigan State University (MSU), the robot's sensors detected crude oil at various sites along the river.  Read More

The current world record for triple-junction solar cell efficiency is 44 percent, but a collaboration between the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), the Imperial College of London, and MicroLink Devices Inc. has led to a multi-junction photovoltaic cell design that could break the 50 percent conversion efficiency barrier under concentrated solar illumination.  Read More

Have you ever dreamed of what it would be like to pilot a giant robot? If you have, you're not alone. A roboticist by the name of Hajime Sakamoto dreams of building his very own Gundam mobile suit, and he's making progress on a real 4 meter (13 feet) tall bipedal robot that can carry him around. So far the legs have been completed, and you can watch them stand up and take a few steps in the video after the break.  Read More

The common cockroach may make your skin crawl, but it turns out the household pest is the perfect model for miniature legged robots. That's why Duncan Haldane and his colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley, have been studying the six-legged pests to improve their millirobots. Their latest creation, the VelociRoACH, is made primarily out of cardboard and measures just 10 cm long, yet it can run 2.7 meters per second, making it the fastest robot of its size, capable of covering 26 times its body length in a single second.  Read More

There's an avalanche of new gaming devices coming our way, from tablets with controller attachments to Android-based consoles that can fit in the palm of your hand. On top of that, there's a growing class of devices best described as portable emulator machines, built to capitalize on older gamers' nostalgia, with the latest called the Game Consoles Worldwide (GCW) Zero.  Read More