Artisan's Asylum is a hackerspace startup in Boston, MA that is hosting classes to build big, bad-ass robots.  Their first course set out to build 300-lb autonomous "vending machine robots."  That class is winding down, so they're starting a new project: a 2500+ lb. ridable hexapod "spider" robot named Stompy.  The robot will feature a propane engine generating 135 HP to hydraulically power six legs, and it will likely cost around $25k-$30k to build (versus $250k that would typically be involved in such an effort).  The guys teaching the class are professional roboticsts, having worked at Boston Dynamics, Barrett Technology, and DEKA.  So this is a serious endeavor!  They're following the same design methodologies that their (current and former) employers use to produce classics such as BigDog, AlphaDog, and PETMAN.  They're using the proceeds from the class to fund early development (a one leg cart), followed by a KickStarter project to fund the remainder of the robot (forthcoming announcement).  It's a clever way to fund a large robot hardware platform.  Conceivably, they could use the resulting robot to generate revenue to for the startup (rentals for promotional events, parades, or wedding processions!) and to bootstrap other robots.  Read on for details supplied by Artisan's CEO, Gui Cavalcanti.

It seems we're going to have a new DARPA Grand Challenge!  The BAA with formal details should be out very soon, but for now we're bringing you the unofficial, preliminary details based on notes from Dr. Gill Pratt's talk at DTRA Industry Day: The new Grand Challenge is for a humanoid robot (with a bias toward bipedal designs) that can be used in rough terrain and for industrial disasters.  The robot will be required to maneuver into and drive an open-frame vehicle (eg. tractor), proceed to a building and dismount, ingress through a locked door using a key, traverse a 100 meter rubble-strewn hallway, climb a ladder, locate a leaking pipe and seal it by closing off a nearby valve, and then replace a faulty pump to resume normal operations -- all semi-autonomously with just "supervisory teleoperation."  That's a tough challenge, but it should be fun!  It looks like there will be six hardware teams to develop new robots, and twelve software teams using a common platform (PETMAN anyone?!).  The most crazy part about all of this: The United States is getting back into the humanoid robot game... in a big way!  Updated 4/10/2012 with official details!

By now, you're probably familiar with the Nao humanoid robot from Aldebaran Robotics -- the robot that supplanted the Sony Aibo as the robot du jour for Robocup's Standard Platform League (international robot soccer competition) back in 2007 and retains that prestigious title yet.  Recently, Aldebaran announced a new Educational Partnership Program that aims to expose students of higher education to the joys of programming advanced robots.  Contemporaneously, Aldebaran announced a set of four product derivatives to match varied academic budgets, ranging from full humanoids, to upper-body manipulation rigs, and 2-DoF robot heads for audio-visual experimentation (see details below).  Crucially, this new initiative provides a stable hardware platform with a comprehensive software suite (alternatively, extensive open-source ROS drivers) to match your educational, research, or just whimsical robot needs.

PlasticPals just pointed out DLR's 10-month effort to build a biped robot -- an effort that yielded a 1-meter, 50kg walking robot (video below).  Mechanically, each leg has six degrees of freedom.  A DLR / Kuka Light-Weight Robot (LWR) arm segment comprises the upper-leg, and a custom lower-leg segment connects to the foot through a six-axis force-torque sensor. Realtime control algorithms and dynamic simulations are performed using OpenHRP3 and Simpack.  DLR claims that this is the "first electromechanically actuated bipedal robot with torque controlled joints," through which they intend to research compliant impedance control for biped locomotion. I share PlasticPals' musings: could these legs ultimately transform Justin into a bipedal walking humanoid?

Troody is a 16 DOF autonomously powered and controlled biped robot built to resemble a Troodon, a small carnivorous dinosaur that lived in the Cretaceous.   Troody remains one of my favorite robots of all time; when I was younger, its bio-inspired design (based off of actual fossil aspect ratios) and its lifelike movements were inspirational.  Unfortunately, Troody may have been a bit ahead of its time -- there was little hope of commercializing such a complex robot for aspiring youngsters like myself to play with.  Meanwhile, Troody's homepage has gone extinct, Troody is now in a traveling StarWars exhibit hangin' out with Darth and Yoda, and Peter Dilworth has moved on to WowWee (the creators of another pre-historic dinosaur robot, the Roboraptor).  We will miss you Troody...