Sun 6 Jan 2008
WowWee is going to release several new robots: A FemiSapien who is in line with their popular home toy robot RoboSapien, but hopefully displays less neandertalian behaviour such as burping and farting. It will be interesting to find out if FemiSapien is also designed deliberately for hardware hacking. The other new robot from WowWee is a TriBot with holonomic wheels. This seems as a step back compared with the legged RoboSapien, but will allow for fast omnidirectional movements.
Wed 2 Jan 2008
Rumours say that Sony will come out with a new version of the Aibo robot dog. The robot comes together with Sony’s Playstation 3, and will be a real-world extension of a virtual avatar that can be steered and controlled with the Playstation. I don’t think this is completely implausible, since connecting virtual and real world was the key to the success of Nintendo’s Wii. However, steering the new Aibo with a standard Playstation controller cross might not be that fun.
The rumour has been spread in the latest edition of the Stuff Magazine.
Wed 2 Jan 2008
Happy New Year 2008 to everyone! As of today, this blog is resurrected – watch out for interesting stories and discussions. This year, the special topic will be Cognitive Robotics.
