Japanese robot maker HPI will be selling the four-legged robotic G-Dog later this month. The robot dog is powered by a 7.2V nickel metal hydride battery, features nine servomotors and is mostly made of aluminium. It’s sized at 375×135×190mm and weighs 570g. G-Dog can be controlled wirelessly via a Playstation-like joypad. He can sit up and beg, crawl and roll over to its side. Experience tells us that he probably looks cooler then he is, but we shall see.

[Crunchgear]

Some researchers from Duke and Georgia Tech now have a swarm setup that isn’t yet able to power robots beyond the Q L-C resonator-equipped table, but give them time. Looks like it works great in the proof-of-concept, where five bots are each equipped with a non-resonant pickup coil that follows a path around the table, or sits still to recharge their batteries. It all resembles a slow slot car race with robots. They even powered an LED light with the system. One day soon they eventually hope to expand the system into something that will power larger swarms of robots and get rid of the batteries. Video below.
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This RC car started life as a normal remote controlled car that couldn’t be driven beyond the line of sight. But now it’s an advanced Wi-Fi robot car that can be operated via the internet or a computer over a distance of half a kilometer. It sports a network camera for the eye, that provides live information and shows you where it’s at. It didn’t cost him very much to put this together as the base car was a mere $5. He added the network camera, router, heavier batteries, extra circuits, and a whole bunch of wires.

[Hackgadgets]

Pleo is cute and smart, but he’s also handy for learning about robotics. Some boffins at the Otto-Friedrich-University in Bamberg, Germany, known as GRIP (Group for Interdisciplinary Psychology) have posted two tutorials designed to wirelessly connect Pleo to a remote computer so that it can recognize faces.

Just add a small XBee module to the robot, via an internal serial port. This allows you to monitor Pleo’s current internal state and then send it instructions. With a wireless “spy camera”, they replaced the standard low-resolution camera in Pleo’s nose to perform real-time pattern recognition. They are using a remote PC for the processor since Pleo’s can’t handle it. Pretty cool. If anyone tries this, let us know about it.

[Slashgear]