Blogs by Community: Robotics
Robotics
In May Google and Willow Garage announced the first pure-Java implementation of ROS - Willow Garage's Robotic Operating System. Called “rosjava”, the new library is still at alpha level, but it is clear that active development continues. Several vendors now provide hackable kits.
Yesterday Liquid Robotics announced its Pacific Crossing (PacX) Challenge. Four Wave Glider robots with oceanographic sensors will launch from California attempting to travel the longest distance at sea ever completed by an unmanned marine vehicle. Best science from the collected oceanographic data wins the Challenge.

I just had the chance to play around with my friend's Lego Mindstorms robotics kit. Installing Java was easy, and in about an hour we were hacking out programs for the NXT brick. Here is a quick summary of how we got Lejos on the NXT via USB.

I was cleaning up my bookmarks, and then I found some jewels in there: Sun Spot starting points and Ubuntu running on VMWare.
This is the keynote which is a "must see" for people like me who like to get their hands on hardware. This was typed live during the keynote so please excuse the inevitable typos and questionable grammar.
Sony will halt production of Aibo and humanoid robots as part of a company-wide restructuring.
You've probably heard something about this already - a car with square wheels offset by 22.5 degrees, propelled by a spinning weight.
This week saw 3 special talks and 9 RFI response presentations. The Robotics DSIG has formally changed to a Domain Task Force, which means that there is enough participation to actually start working on standards.
An international competition, created to reward excellence in artistic creativity in the field of artificial life.
The chip-enabled soccer ball is being developed by German sportswear manufacturer Adidas-Salomon, software company Cairos Technologies and the Fraunhofer Institute.





