January 25, 2004

NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory has done it again! The of the pair of Mars Exploratory Rovers landed successfully on the surface of Mars at 12:05 am Sunday morning. Opportunity is already sending back lots of pictures of the surface of Mars.

These pictures are directly from the NASA JPL website The great thing about NASA is the fact they have the same philosophy that most robot builders have, "information is for sharing and knowledge belongs to anyone who wants it." That is why all of the pictures that Sojourner, Spirit, and Opportunity have taken on the surface of Mars are put online for anyone to view and to use to learn.

Spirit and Opportunity, much like may of the robots you see on television are not the first versions of their designs. There are many other robots that NASA JPL built to test ideas and technologies before they were included in the designs of Spirit and Opportunity. As a matter of fact, Back in 1997, Sojourner was the prototype to Spirit and Opportunity which was about the size of our MER Strider. The things that they learned from Sojourner allowed them to proceed with the bigger versions to be sent six years later.

To learn more about some of the different types of exploratory robots that JPL is working on check them out on their website about all of their rovers.

January 18, 2004

We just had another addition to our robot family. Say hello to our Mars Exploration Robot: Strider. We built Strider to commemorate the NASA MER robots Spirit and Opportunity. Spirit has been sending back amazing pictures and Opportunity is scheduled to land this coming Saturday, January 24th at 12:05 am EST (9:05 pm PST). If you want to see where Opportunity is right now then click here to head over to the NASA JPL site.

Strider is a rather acrobatic little 12 pound robot who is capable of traversing some pretty rough terrain. He will be our demonstration robot when we lecture at schools and even at the Florida Educational Technology Conference where I will be lecturing this weekend at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida.

Head over and learn more about this spunky little robot.

January 4, 2004

We just finished our Winter Robot Camp and it was a smashing success. We had ten students that spent the days around New Years learning about robots, building ther own bots and then competing in a robot competition.

Everyone toasts to a happy new year at midnight

Students and teachers with their robots

Click here to see the websites that each team made for their robots.

January 1, 2004

Our good friend Grant Imahara of Deadblow fame just released an awesome book called Kickin' Bot. It teaches you how to build a robot with ordinary tools that you have around the house. I have almost every robot book that has ever been published and I must say that this is one of the best books on building robots that I have. You would do very well to get this 500+ page book. Head over to the book store to get yourself a copy for less than $20!