A small sampling of interesting robots:
Pleo is one of the newest robot toys on the market. This is an adorable little guy, about the size of a cat, with many play behaviors. He can learn certain things and in some respects acts as though he's alive. I have friends who own one, and I want one, too!
Pi-Tronics: this is a home builder's page and he has a number of easy robotics projects using cheap materials on his page.
Boston Dynamic's BigDog robot another one of my favorites. Built like an animal, it can carry packs, hop, jump, and walk around on very slippery ice without falling over. It models its motion from animal motion -- the video shows how it can recover its balance on a slippery surface. You almost forget that it's a machine that you are watching.
Leghorn is a "battle robot" from Japan. This small robot, which looks like a cartoon chicken, is one of the world's top "battlebots" in the lightweight division.
Honda's Asimo robot looks like a human and can speak and dance. I did see a performance piece where several Asimos danced a traditional Japanese dance in unison.
The Ever-1 Robot looks very human -- she blinks, moves her head, and gestures although if you look closely the movements are not completly convincing. She speaks and can understand around 400 words. One possible use for her is in information booths -- the Japanese don't like asking strangers for information and direction (I am glossing over some very complex cultural behaviors here... while the "don't like asking" is not precisely correct, it's close enough for a basic understanding.)
The Roomba vacuum cleaner -- this one is a great little robot that cleans up your house while you do other things. We have several -- a good investment for busy people. The I-Robot corporation also makes other interesting robots.
There's also a robot lawn mower. I don't have one, but I want one!
Lego Mindstorms is a wonderful robot building kit. I have several and they're fun to play with. The advantage of these is that you can build and rebuild robots into new configurations. Although the instruction set is fairly simple, people have built some odd and interesting projects with Lego Mindstorms.
The kits that we use in class come from the Omnico OWI robots. They make wonderful project kits for all levels of robot builders.
