Paper Robots 1999 — where else are you going to find a paper Optimus Prime that actually transforms into a truck. ‘Nuff said.
Tag: Robotics
Excellent Giant Robot Costume
This page documents the five months one man spent building a giant mech costume, which he then auctioned off for charity at a sci-fi convention. The level of detail here is amazing.
GameBoy-based Controller for Lego Robotics
Charmed Labs manufactures an interesting Gameboy-based system that transforms a Gameboy into an embedded controller that can be used, among other things, to make Lego-based robotic systems. This product page for the Xport Robot Controller includes a number of demonstration videos in WMV format that are pretty interesting. Cost is $140 to $200 depending on the just how much you want in the devkit — Gameboy or Gameboy Advance not included.
ROM, The Space Knight
Lee Seitz has an authoritative site on Rom, The Space Knight, a Parker Brothers robot action figure that was pretty cool even though it flopped. I had a couple of these when I was a kid. Looks like go for about $200 if you can find them MIB on EBay.
It wasn’t that cool of a toy.
There was also a tie-in with a Rom comic from Marvel which ran for 75 issues. Hey, maybe someone should ask Michael Brian Bendis if he’s interested in doing an Ultimate Rom!
Robots Gone Wild
Recently I downloaded and installed the latest version of log file analysis tool Analog. One of the more fascinating things I happened to notice was just how much of my traffic was from known robots — about 20 percent of the 600,000 monthly page views I serve up are read by robots of one form or another.
Or to put it another way, that’s about 2 gigabytes of bandwidth each month just to keep feeding the robots.
Yikes.
A Rubiks Cube Solving Robot Built With Legos
This Lego project uses Mindstorms and Technic pieces to construct a robot that can solve a 3x3x3 Rubik’s Cube.