The Aerospace Robotics Laboratory (ARL), operated at Stanford University, focuses its research "on improving robotic performance through the application of feedback control, integrated sensing systems, and task-level autonomy." The systems designed at ARL allow the human operator to have varying levels of control over the robot. Specifically, the robot performs given tasks until it reaches a point...

AI Topics (see also November 30, 1999 Scout report for Mathematics, Engineering and Technology) is "a dynamic library of introductory information about Artificial Intelligence." In this article, AI Topics provides an extensive listing of online resources for anyone interested in learning more about AARON Robot. Initiated by artist Harold Cohen, AARON is a research project to develop an autonomous...

This is the educational companion website to ASIMO (see MET report August 16, 2002, Humanoid Robot), a robot designed by Honda Motor Co., Ltd. The ASIMO North American Educational Tour introduces the Honda ASIMO robot to kids across America as a way to encourage students to study robotics and science. Although the online schedule shows no touring after July 11, 2004, they suggest you check back...

Botball is a workshop and competition presented by the KISS Institute for Practical Robotics. The program offers hands-on learning in robotics and is "designed to engage students in learning the practical applications of science, technology, engineering and math." Registered teams receive KISS Institute's kit of robotics equipment, but teams must have access to a laptop computer and the Internet....

The goal of the Carnegie Mellon University Autonomous Helicopter Project is to develop a vision-guided robot helicopter that can self-start, take off, safely fly to a designated area, search for and locate a designated object, track or pursue objects, and return home, all "within any weather conditions and using only on-board intelligence and computing power.� Recent flight tests of the linear...

Involving two universities and two research organizations, this multi-tiered project is "aimed at developing new technology to support the coordinated deployment of as many as 100 robots for missions such as urban surveillance." One of the most significant tasks concerns the problem of designing the robots to efficiently work together as a team. Many technical details of the project are given, as...

This website highlights robotics research from the Robotics and Manufacturing Automation Laboratory at Duke University. Their work is "devoted to the development of command and control systems for cooperative robots." Their website provides descriptions and some demonstration videos of their work in multiple industrial robot control, mobile robot development, sensor fusion, robot-World Wide Web...

This article from EE Times tracks the status of Team Overbot, "a group of enthusiasts, engineers, and partners" who are building an autonomous robot vehicle for the October 8, 2005 DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) Grand Challenge. The annual Challenge, sponsored by DARPA, requires designers to develop an autonomous robot vehicle that can successfully make a trek through all kinds...

Honda is widely known as a major car manufacturer, but it is also an innovator of new robot technologies. The company's "humanoid robot research and development plan" seeks to create a highly mobile, intelligent robot with the potential to benefit society. After many years of work, considerable progress has been made, and this is described in detail on this site. An overview of the development of...

The Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) is a subsidiary of Xerox Corporation. One of its most intriguing areas of study is "modular reconfigurable robotics," which is a technology that allows a robot to take itself apart and put itself back together again in a new form. This lets the robot customize its design for a given task. Several different models of robots have been constructed at the PARC, and...