Robot VW Golf GTI

Is a robot the ultimate test driver? VW has transformed a Golf GTI into a very cool robot car. Could the robot Golf beat a human driver? Look at this video to find out.

Invasion of the Media robots

It looks like a new robot trend. The last months a number of media robots have been introduced. They all have two things in common: the all are very nice looking robots and they all are able to play all kinds of media.

Here are three examples or recently introduced media robots: the Murio, the Murider and the Rolly.

Robby moves!

This video shows the first steps of my brand new RP6. In the coming weeks I want to make the first small extensions like adding some LEDs and light sensors and use these to create some test programs.

Robby has arrived!

Yesterday evening my Robby RP6 has been delivered. I was positively surprised by the quality of the robot. It all looks and feels very solid and made to last. Thanks to the extensive manual it was quite easy to setup the basics. Within half an hour I had uploaded my first example program and could let the robot run through the living room, finding its own way by avoiding the furniture.

I've attached some first pictures, one or two videos will follow shortly.




One last photo of my two robots together: I-Qbot and RP6.

MegaBot 0.3

I created a little video of MegaBot 0.3. This tool allows you to control the I-Qbot robot from your PC, PDA or SmartPhone. In this video MegaBot is installed on my SPV M600 smart phone.

Almost 4 years at Mars

Next january 24, it will be 4 years ago that the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity arrived at Mars. Although their mission was planned for 90 days, they are still alive and kicking.

Qrio

Sony's Qrio, still one of the most amazing robots:

Rubik's cube solver

A great Lego Mindstorms NXT robot that solves Rubik's cube! It will take some time before I can learn my RP6 or iQbot a trick like this...

RP6 Robot

I made a decision today: I ordered the rp6 robot from conrad.


This is the brand new version of the rp5 (robby) robot. It has a ATMEGA32 microprocessor that can be programmed in C and is highly extensible. So I think this will be a perfect platform for further experiments!

Books

After visiting the great Robot Room web site of David Cook, I decided to buy his two books:

• Robot Building for Beginners
  
• Intermediate Robot Building

Having read Cook's site and having read the review's on Amazon.com, I'm convinced these books will be a great start in learning more about robotics and especially electronics.

Let's get started!

I've always been interested in robotics and have always looked with admiration to robots like Sony's QRIO. Being a software developer for more than 10 years I've always been very interested in the programming side of robotics.
Until now I never took the step of building my own robot, since I'm a dummy in the field of electronics and mechanics.
This year I decided to change that and use robotics to learn more about electronics and mechanics. As a starting point I joined the I-Qbot project of deAgostini. This project allows me to build my own robot step by step and learn along the way.
Being a software developer I could not wait to develop some software for the I-Qbot, so I created MegaBot, a tool to control the I-Qbot from a PC, a PDA or a Phone.

As a next step I will order some books on robotics and I want to select an educational robot kit like the Boe-Bot or the Asuro.

I'll keep you posted!