Kyle Sherer

Expected to survive autonomously for extended periods of time in hostile conditions, Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs) could be seen as decidedly unglamorous in comparison to their airborne cousins – and none more so than the proposed Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot (EATR) from Robotic Technology, which will suffer the indignity of ingesting and expelling biomass to fuel itself, presumably with no toilet paper. Scatalogical humor aside, it's a remarkable project which promises to greatly extend the capability of unmanned roving bots with researchers estimating that 150 pounds of vegetation could give it enough juice for 100 miles of driving. Read More

Researchers at the University of South Florida have designed a system that uses an Electroencephalograph (EEG) to read the brain waves of wheelchair-bound people and allows them to control a robotic arm with their thoughts. The Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) captures P300 brain wave responses, the consistently detectable brain waves associated with decision making, and transmits instructions to the robo-arm “without the user moving a muscle.” Read More

A Japanese company called Little Island will manufacture your own custom-made robotic doppelganger. The pint-sized bot is produced based on a picture you send in and at USD$2,215, it definitely overshoots the “novelty buy” demographic, aiming for the true-believer market that is really, really into robotics. Read More

The Mars Organic Analyzer, fresh from seeking evidence of life on the red planet, has taken a new job to assist life on Earth. The MOA has been modified by researchers in California to detect potentially carcinogenic molecules, providing valuable information in environmental cleanup sites. Read More

The latest winner in this round of the Trossen Robotics competition combines both of man's best friends - dogs and computers. Despite its high tech capabilities, the autonomous pooch dubbed K-9 looks suitably low-budget from the exterior in-line with its namesake from the original Dr. Who television series. Read More

Here's an interesting idea for those readers out there facing bleak winter conditions to ponder. The Roofus robot concept will diligently wipe snow from rooftops, carting loads of up to 250kg to the edge and dumping it over the side. And though the concept designed by Michal Glogowski is primarily intended for work on icy surfaces, it can also be fitted with lawn mowing blades and sweeping attachments, making it a useful design throughout the whole year. Read More

Wind turbines, predominantly constructed from glass fiber reinforced plastics, are vulnerable to fractures and flaws that can be impossible for the human eye to detect - and even the cracks visible to humans can often only be spotted in a time-consuming and dangerous examination. Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute say that their latest robot creation, RIWEA, can solve both problems to increase the overall efficiency of the wind energy system. Read More

NASA's two STEREO spacecraft, launched on October 25, 2006, will align on either side of the sun on February 6, 2011, allowing scientists to view the entire sun simultaneously for the first time in history. The Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory is currently providing scientists with a view of 75% of the sun. Read More

HP released the details of its 09 lineup at CES, outlining new notebooks, a desktop, a gaming keyboard, a server, and a photo printing app for iPhone. Among them, the inch-thick HP Pavilion dv2 weighs less than four pounds and has a high-capacity hard drive of up to 500GB. Read More