One of the joys you get to experience whether as a proud parent or pet owner is that a lot of things get left around haphazardly. You could of course …read more

We have seen a number of self-playing chess boards over the years, but the general theme has been standard chess pieces moved by either an internal electromagnet or an external …read more

When it comes to robots, few are as iconic as Robby. [Ogrinz Labs] has wanted to build one and even examined a real one up for auction to get high-res …read more

Are you familiar with pop tubes? Resembling the corrugated section of a bendy straw, they are at the core of PopTuber, an intriguing research project from the Actuated Experience Lab …read more

If you were making a multi-limbed symmetric nightmare of a robot, where else would you look for a name but Greek Mythology? The team at Duke University that came up …read more

People seem to be rather into the Unitree Go2 quadruped robot, if only for the low price tag. But perhaps more interesting are the motors that propel it — they …read more

We talk about all kinds of autonomous vehicles here at Hackaday, from aerial drones to rugged rovers. A little less common are the submarine builds, likely due to their technical …read more

Biofeedback is the idea of making one conscious of a biological process or feature, and then using this to try and exert control over the very same. [Mariia Hruntes] demonstrates …read more

Given that some of the more famous demos were by Honda and Tesla, you might be forgiven for thinking you need pockets as deep as a car company to get …read more

The vibrobot – a vibrating motor and battery attached to the head of a brush – isn’t truly a robot, since its movement can’t be controlled, but it’s whetted the …read more

[Mellow_Labs] picked up a few LiDAR matrix sensors and found them very exciting. While a normal time-of-flight sensor can accurately determine a range, the matrix sensor is like an array …read more

Continuing on his quest to expose the dark underbelly of modern technology, [Benn Jordan] recently did a deep-dive into the rise of so-called robot dogs. Although their most striking resemblance …read more

Humanoid robots are a thing now, and here’s an interesting research project that explores using one as a form of haptic media. Specifically, using a humanoid robot to move a …read more

Well, it depends when you’re going to be househunting– if it’s anytime soon, Betteridge’s law applies, but if your time horizon is a ways further out, [Miana Smith] at MIT …read more

[Aaed Musa] has been building robot dogs for a long time now, so it was only natural that he would make one for the senior design project of his mechanical …read more

Emergent properties include examples like murmurations of starlings which can’t be predicted from looking at a single bird, weather which can’t be predicted by looking at a few air molecules, …read more

Usually, you think of bird decoys as being a tool to lure birds to an untimely encounter with a hunter. However, [Interesting Engineering] has a story about robotic bird decoys …read more

If you want to work with robots you can do all sorts of learning with software and simulation, but nothing quite beats getting to grips with real machinery. That was …read more

Air hockey is one of those sports that’s both incredibly fun, but also incredibly frustrating as playing it by yourself is a rather lonely and unfulfilling experience. This is where …read more

There are many chess robots, most of which require the human player to move the opposing pieces themselves, or have a built-in mechanism that can slide the opposing pieces around …read more

Fish are popular animals to keep as pets, and for good reason. They’re relatively low maintenance, relaxing to watch, and have a high aesthetic appeal. But for all their upsides, …read more

Animatronic displays aren’t just for Halloween, and hackers today have incredible access to effective, affordable parts with which to make spectacles of light, sound, and movement. But the hardware is …read more

Matt Denton]’s SpoolBot is a surprisingly agile remote-controlled robot that doesn’t just repurpose filament spool leftovers. It looks exactly like a 2 kg spool of filament; that’s real filament wound […read more

Oliver Pett] loves creating automata; pieces of art whose physicality and motion come together to deliver something unique. [Oliver] also has a mission, and that mission is to complete the […read more

One of the joys of browsing secondhand shops is the possibility of finding old, perhaps restorable or hackable, electronics at low prices. Admittedly, they usually seem to be old flat-screen …read more

Pneumatics are a common way to add some motion to soft robotic actuators, but adding it to a robot can be somewhat of a chore. A method demonstrated by Jackson […read more

Although there are a few robots on the market that can make life a bit easier, plenty of them have closed-source software or smartphone apps required for control that may …read more

It was January 25th of 1979, at an unassuming Michigan Ford Motor Company factory. Productivity over the past years had been skyrocketing due to increased automation, courtesy of Litton Industry’s …read more