Gizmodo: robot kit

Get 10% Off Everything at Maker Shed Today

Elaine Chow — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 03:30:00 EST

In case you needed an extra reason to get that killer robot set, MAKE's been kind enough to offer all us Gizmodo readers 10% off their wares at Maker Shed... but only for today!

To get the discount, enter the code GIZDEAL on check out. [MAKE]

HPI's G-Dog Robot Kit Ain't No Aibo, Big Dog

Kit Eaton — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 05:00:06 EDT

Yo, suckers! You want this robot dog to guard your home? You're a nut! Mr. T only likes Big Dogs or hot dogs! HPI's little G-Dog thing is way too small, like Murdoch's stupid dog Billy. And it's some kind of kit, so you got to be putting all those fiddly parts like plastic pieces, three-axis acceleration sensor, servos and 7.2V nickel hydrogen batterys together. With no spark-welding, man! But if you're into this crazy robot stuff: I ain't gonna stop you. You're gonna have 15 x 5.3 x 7.5 inches of robot with some crazy motion processing software stuff, and it's gonna be doing robo-doggy do on your desk. What's it gonna cost? Cool it: we don't know the price. But you can get it from July, in Japan. [Robot Watch]

Beauto, the DIY Japanese Robot

Jason Chen — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 16:00:17 EDT

Although it's not a Roomba in the sense that it can clean up your junk, this Japanese Beauto robot can be programmed just like a Roomba. It comes as a DIY kit from Japanese robot maker VStone, which includes the connectors and software to design the robot's behavior. The Beauto is similar to Lego Mindstorms in that it's a relatively simple interface to design decently complicated AI interactions, but don't expect to be able to make Johnny Five. Johnny 0.5, maybe. [VStone via Tokyo Mango]