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Now this would be really cool if it had a brain computer interface and could be controlled by a trained drummer's mind! Science and Technology Society and Culture Georgia Institute of Technology researchers have built a wearable robotic limb that allows drummers to play with three arms. The two-foot long "smart arm" can be attached to a musician's shoulder. It responds to human gestures and the music it hears.

A new blob-like robot described in the journal Advanced Robotics uses springs, feet, "protoplasm" and a distributed nervous system to move in a manner inspired by the slime mold Physarum polycepharum. Watch it ooze across a flat surface, The Blob style: Skip to 1:00 if you just want to be creeped out by its life-like quivering.

If you've ever flown an R/C plane, you know how nerve wracking it can be. Navigating in three dimensions opens up the possibility to run into so many things, and a single crash could be your last. Now, a team from EPFL's Laboratory of Intelligent Systems has been working on a UAV called the AirBurr.

An approach to robot design that makes sense. I can see applications to planetary explorers here.

The way that Mexican jumping beans move by detecting temperature gradients could be applied to designing robotic beans. Most animals move around by using their appendages, such as legs, wings, or fins. But a few exceptional creatures employ rolling as a mode of locomotion.

What does a robot feel when it touches something? Little or nothing until now. Researchers at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering publish a study in Frontiers in Neurorobotics showing that specially designed robots can be taught to feel even more than humans.

At the moment still in the phase of running in simulation, but who knows when the first robotic experiments will be.

paywall skipping: http://www.isir.upmc.fr/files/2011ACLI2061.pdf The most complete study I've seen so far on a new approach (Novelty Search) that has been gaining a lot of attention lately. And they even use parallel coordinates to visualize the results!! ;)

The grass mower uses the cut grass as fuel, but can also turn the grass into dried pellets for later use, for example for heating etc.

Neurobiologists from the University of Leicester have shown that insect limbs can move without muscles - a finding that may provide engineers with new ways to improve the control of robotic and prosthetic limbs

The researchers are busy working on a feasibility study assigned to them by the ESA. The idea is that by combining a rover that can navigate over large distances with a snake robot that can crawl along the ground and can get into inaccessible places, so many more possibilities could be opened up, e.g. collecting samples from tight spots that the rovers cannot reach.

New form of locomotion found in spiders. They say it could be used for a robot on Mars...don't immediately see how though. :)

True Marek :) The article does quote a Journal Paper though ..... published in zootaxa: a staggering 0.9 impact factor journal!! And watching the video you immediately understand why :)

I of course watched the video and have trouble sleeping since.

Using the angular momentum transmitted by an internal flywheel as an impulse, these cubes can move, jump, roll across the ground and climb over and around one another. They stick together using a set of small magnets, smart !

That is indeed a great way of using modular robots to build larger structures. I think we did bump into this some time back, but never really considered it much. Considering now the working group on structure assembling, I think we should add it to the list of building strategies and seriously consider it.

Small robots that jump on water have been created by scientists and could one day be used in surveillance and search and rescue missions. The team led by Seoul National University's Je-Sung Koh studied water striders to replicate the insect's ability to propel itself from the surface of water.

Finally the thing will have a little more artificial intelligence than just "bump into wall, turn a bit, repeat". We've known for a while now that iRobot has been developing robots with wireless integration along with intelligent navigation capability based on VSLAM (Vision Simultaneous Localization and Mapping). We've know this for enough of a while that it's been a little bit frustrating to see iRobot's most recent Roomba upgrades come out without those neat features.

couldn't find his legs ... but they might not be needed anyway on the ISS ....

Cool. Since ESA is always said to be inspired by NASA projects, can the ACT look at it from a different perpective? What about sending humans to the ISS without legs? Think of the mass and volume it would save. It would also improve robot-human interaction. Robots would no longer feel inferior. I'm sure most people would give up limb to go to space.

posted before, twice:)

"The cockroach robot provides a specific model that biologists can test." Apparently drawing hypotheses from an arbitrary model still does the job of getting you funding and published in trendy websites...

@Christos: still feeling strong, ey?