It’s time once again to give away some cool robot prizes to celebrate the 10th birthday of GoRobotics! If you didn’t win last month’s contest, have no fear, try again this month (and the month after!). We have some great robot prizes from our sponsors, SuperDroid Robots, Apress, Pololu and Trossen Robotics.

There are three ways of entering this month’s contest:

1. Simply comment on this post and tell us why you should win.
2. Follow GoRobotics on Twitter and leave a comment below telling us your Twitter username.
3. Retweet the following, “Enter @GoRobotics.net’s 10 Year Birthday Robot Giveaway http://wp.me/pgDpL-kM“. Leave a comment when you do.

YOU CAN DO ALL THREE (three comments) TO INCREASE YOUR CHANCES OF WINNING!

Winners will be chosen at random. Three winners will be chosen and the first winners will get his/her choice of the prizes, second place gets second choice and third place gets whatever is left over! The contest ends FEBRUARY 28th, 2010 at 12AM EST. Comments are moderated to prevent spam. Your comment won’t show up till the moderator has approved it. Here are this month’s prizes:

1st Place Prize – Penguin Robot (donated by Trossen Robotics) worth $200 USD.

The Penguin Robot by Parallax is a unique walking robot. Using two micro servos and precisely CNC machined parts, the robot can walk via a “tilt-stride action” gait. The cute little penguin comes equipped with a digital compass to track its heading, two photoresistors for sensing ambient light and light tracking, and two infrared emitters and a detector for obstacle avoidance. The Penguin Robot comes with a 7-segment LED indicator and a piezo buzzer for making sound. This is a great kit for getting into robotics, and you should set aside about 4 hours to assemble him.

2nd Place Prize – Build Your Own CNC Machine, Extreme NXT, and LEGO Mindstorms NXT 2.0: The Kings Treasure (donated by Apress) worth $75 USD

The second place prize is a whole raft of excellent books from Apress.

Build Your Own CNC Machine is the book to get you started in fabricating your own parts. CNC expert Patrick Hood-Daniel and best-selling author James Kelly team up to show you how to construct your very own CNC machine for about $500 – $1000 USD. Then they go on to show you how to use it, how to document your designs in Computer-Aided Design programs, and how to output your designs as specifications and tool paths that feed into the CNC machine, controlling it as it builds whatever parts your imagination can dream up.

Extreme NXT shows you how to advance the NXT with more than 45 exciting projects that include creating a cool magic wand that writes words in thin air, building a remotely guided vehicle, and constructing sophisticated robots that can sense color, light, temperature, and more. All projects are explained with easy-to-follow, step-by-step instructions, so you’ll be able to create them successfully whether you’re a novice or an expert. This book also shows you how to expand the programming software and use the alternative language NXC.

LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT 2.0: The King’s Treasure is written for children ages 10 and up who want to learn to design, build, and operate robots using LEGO’s immensely popular MINDSTORMS NXT 2.0 robotics kit. The book leads readers through a series of five projects centered on an engaging story line. It can be read by kids alone, or it can provide the spark for a wonderful series of parent/child activities.

3rd Place Prize – 2x 24V 195 RPM Gear Motors (donated by Super Droid Robots) worth $40 USD

These powerful 24V motors donated by Super Droid Robots will kick-start your next robot project. They are high-quality motors with steel gears (not cheap plastic), and used in Super Droid’s All-terrain robots. They use a 1:27 gear reduction and have an amazing 12 kgf-cm of torque. That means they could lift a 26 lb (12 kg) load using a 1 cm lever arm! They are rated for < 250 mA of drive current. Get started building something cool!

Update: Congratulations to our winners, Gerry Blondeaux, Dalton Caughell, and Matt Thouvenot.

Rules/Regulations/Fine Print:

• To enter the contest, you must comment on this post.
• Giveaway ends February 28th, at 12AM EST (9PM PST)
• One prize package per winner.
• No purchase is necessary to enter the contest – it’s free!>
• Everyone is eligible, but shipping is free to only those in the Continental US – if you are outside this area, you will have to pay for shipping.
• PayPal is required to pay for shipping if you live out of the Continental US
• Winners will be contacted via email supplied in the comment form.
• You have 48 hrs to respond to the email and choose your prize package.
• GoRobotics.net makes NO WARRANTY or GUARANTEES about these prizes.
• GoRobotics.net can change the rules WHENEVER IT WANTS.

Special Thanks to Our Sponsors! BUY STUFF FROM THEM:

It’s time to kick start our 10 Years of GoRobotics celebration! Our first giveaway features some great prizes from our sponsors, SuperDroid Robots, Apress, Pololu and Trossen Robotics. Entering this month’s contest will be simple. Here’s what you need to do: simply comment on this post and tell us your favorite robot. Winners will be chosen at random. Three winners will be chosen and the first winners will get his/her choice of the prizes, second place gets second choice and third place gets whatever is left over! The contest ends JANUARY 31st, 2010 at 12AM EST. Comments are moderated to prevent spam. Your comment won’t show up till the moderator has approved it. Here are this month’s prizes: First Prize Package – Scribbler Robot (donated by Trossen Robotics) – worth $99 The Scribbler Robot is a complete robotics platform designed for ages 8 and up. It comes with a full Parallax Basic Stamp 2 processor, many sensors, and intuitive software for getting started quickly. Perfect for beginners and intermediate builders.

Second Prize Package – Micro Maestro 6-channel USB Servo Controller + Practical Arduino Book (donated by Pololu and Apress) – worth $25 + $35 Pololu’s Micro Maestro 6-channel USB servo controller allows you to control six separate servos from your PC via USB, TTL serial from a microcontroller, and allows basic scripts to be executed on the controller itself. It also incorporates general I/O. This controller is one of the best controllers on the market, with 0.25us resolution with built-in speed and acceleration control. Practical Arduino: Cool Projects for Open Source Hardware, by Jonathan Oxer and Hugh Blemings will tech you how to create your own Arduino-based designs, learn the arduino programming language, and will guide you through many practical projects from home automation to test equipment. This book is for hobbyists and developers interested in physical computing using a low-cost, easy-to-learn platform. Third Prize Package – Remote Control Robot Construction Set (donated by SuperDroid Robots) – worth $46 The Tamiya Remote Control Robot Construction kit provides parts for wheeled remote control robot. Twin-motor gearbox, crank-axle gearbox, remote control box, ball caster, tires, universal arm, and other parts are included. The control box has 4 channels and enables control of 4 different movements by adding separately available gearboxes. It comes with instructions for building several different robots. Keep reading for the complete rules, and TO ENER THE GIVEAWAY! (more…)

Several online robot retailers are offering some sweet deals for the Thanksgiving weekend holiday, a.k.a Black Friday. If you’re looking for some great gift deals, now looks like your chance.

First up is Trossen Robotics – they’re offering 10% off all in stock items from Black Friday through Cyber Monady (Nov. 27th – 30th) with the coupon code “cyber09“. You can snag yourself nearly $30 off a RoboBoard Starter Kit ($289) or some heftying savings on a Bioloid Kit ($899) or some Hexapod kits.

Next up is Pololu Robotics and Electronics. They’re offering big sales on many items with up to 60% savings from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monady (Nov. 26th – 30th). Their popular 3Pi Robot is being sold for $50 (half off! Use coupon “BF3PI“), which is a fabulous deal if you’re quick.  Or, you could pick up a 6 channel servo controller board for only $10 (coupon “BFMAESTRO”).

Finally, Parallax is offering free shipping this weekend on orders over $100.

Get ‘em while there hot!

Update: iRobot is offering a free Dirt Dog robot with any purchase over $350 – Thursday and Friday only. Robots.net tipped us to BGMicro’s sale – 10% off front page items till the 30th of Nov.

The Christmas season is upon us, and it’s time to whip up your gift lists. Why not put a little robot love on there? Here’s some great suggestions for robotic gifts. We’ve featured 10 great products that will make excellent gift ideas for your robot loving friend or relative.

LEGO Mindstorms NXT

I wonder if LEGO fully understood what they were getting into when they first released their “Robotics Invention System”, or “RIS” in 1998? Now, two revisions later we have the LEGO Mindstorms NXT system, which is about as perfect of a product as you can imagine. Involving a tight-knit team of LEGO and robotics enthusiasts, LEGO developed NXT from the ground up and surprised the public with their new system in 2006. The NXT system supports over 40 different programming languages, and supports a wide range of additional sensors created by 3rd parties. The kit comes with 3 motors (with feedback), 4 different sensors, and 571 pieces. You can check out some of the fabulous NXT creations over at The NXT Step Blog.

Mindstorms NXT retails for $250 USD.

Buy LEGO Mindstorms NXT from Amazon or Trossen Robotics.

Wall-E RC Toy and DVD

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Pixar is known for creating beautiful, heartwarming, and sophisticated animated films that appeal to both children and adults. Their latest masterpiece is the story of Wall-E, a trash robot stranded and alone on Earth.

One of the more interesting product tie-ins is the U Command Wall-E “interactive robot” which uses an IR remote for control and can be programming with hundreds of different actions and combinations. This may be ripe for hardware hacking and is extremely cute, to boot.

Of course, if you’re looking for something a little less costly, the 3 disk Special Edition of Wall-E on DVD would make an excellent gift for your robot loving friends.

Buy U Command Wall-E from Amazon.com.

Buy 3 Disk Special Edition Wall-E from Amazon.com.

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Both Trossen Robotics and Hammacher Schlemmer are now offering the “World Smallest Humanoid Robot”, I-Sobot, for an astounding $99 price tag $95.99 price tag ($99 at Hammacher). This appears to be partly due to the fact that I-Sobot is being discontinued by Tomy. For $96 this would make an excellent Christmas gift for any robot lover in your family.

I-Sobot stands about 6.5″ tall and can perform all sorts of tricks, like somersaults, martial arts, push ups and is fully controlled via an IR remote control. Various movements can be sequend together to create complex motion patterns. I-Sobot also reponds to voice commands.

Times are tough, why not splurge a little? Video of I-Sobot in action after the break.

Trossen is out of stock right now, but they tell me they have a shipment coming in soon.

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Trossen Robotics is sponsoring a robot building contest with some great prizes! The contest, which runs through the end of December, challenges entrants to building something cool. Something that will “wow” the judges. Other than that (and using electricity) the field is pretty wide open.

Projects will be judged on the “wow factor”, ingenuity, creativity, and on (the dreaded) documentation. Prizes are:

3rd Place: A Roboquad from WowWee Toys (~$60 value)

2nd Place: A Robosapien RS Media from WowWee Toys (~$180 value)

1st Place: A Pleo Dinosaur from Ugobe! ($350 value)

So, all you robot builders out there should get to work! When you’ve submitted your projects, how about leaving a comment and letting us know, and we’ll do a post about your projects.

The RoboBuilder robotics kits from a Korean company of the same name (or is it IRobou?) is now available for purchase from Trossen Robotics. The kits, which are similar to the Bioloid robotics kits from Robotis, employ modular components, like motors and sensors, to allow builders to quickly create a wide variety of robotic creations. RoboBuilder touts features such as metal ball bearings, PID motor control for precise motion, and reverse/over voltage protection. The kits also come with distance and sound sensors.

The basic RoboBuilder kit starts at $420 and goes all the way up to $1,500 for the Expert kit. Have any of our readers played with the kits yet? Let us know how they are by leaving a comment.

You can check out a video of the RoboBuilder humanoid model after the break.

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Trossen Robotics is having a summer sale on some of their humanoid robots. You’ll find some pretty good prices on i-Sobot by Tomy, Kondo KHR-2HV, Kondo KHR-1HV, and the Futaba RBT-1.


The i-Sobot, which normally sells for close to $200.00 is being sold at a 20% discount for $159.99. That’s a pretty great price for a neat little robot. Robots-Dreams has more info on the little guy.

The Kondo KHR-2HV Starter Kit is being sold at 15% off, for $1,257. This kit comes with the full KHR-2HV robot, the GENEX suit (to make him look super spiffy), gyroscope, remote control, and a battery pack.

If you’ve been coveting some hot humanoid robot action, then now might be the perfect time to drop some G’s.