Speaking of robots and toys that American consumers buy, I recently pulled out an old Armatron from the garage and thought I’d see if new batteries would get the old boy to activate. No luck, but that warranted further investigation, and what I found, I was really surprised by. Read more…

Via Cognews I found “Robot Consumers, Grow Up!” by Lance Ulanoff. His basic premise is that the more that robots look like real humans or animals, the more put off the American consumer is by it. But I couldn’t disagree more with this analysis, and there’s a very different way of looking at it. Read more…

Some students at George Mason University have put together a wiki that will document the construction of a small open source robot (costing roughly $800). I don’t have much to add to this other than it’s cool and that I’ve been looking to upgrade from Mindstorms for a little while now.