For the next three weeks I’m going to be teaching the Duke TIP robotics summer camp along with my good friend, Ken Boone. This whole week I’ve been swamped with setting up and training for that. Apologies on no posts. So, here’s the link dump from this week:

• The forty DARPA Grand Challenge teams were chosen this week. I happened to go out and see one team, Insight Racing, demo their ubercool robotic Bronco this morning. One of the team members, Brian Dean, is part of my local club.  The official press release is here. The 40 teams will go to semi-finals in late September and out of them, 20 will be chosen to go to the actual competition in early October. Good luck to you all. Short bit about CMU’s robot here.
  
• Here’s some discussion on walking robots modeled after the discovery the octopusses can "walk" on two tenticles.
• Here’s an article along the lines of "here’s a wickely cool new device (that won’t be ready for another 20 years)!!" Nanotech "clay" devices that can morph into anything. I’ll believe it when I see it.
• A newsbit about a robot that supossedly going to be protecting the Worldcup 2006 event. Costs 80k euros and capable of searching 10k sq/ft for 12 hrs before a tuneup/recharge. Here’s the company product lineup.