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When your office environment is genuinely filled with people who are rocket scientists, chances are that you’re bound to come up a bright idea or two. Such is the case with JPL’s ATHLETE (All-Terrain Hex-Legged Extra-Terrestrial Explorer) robot, which was developed by JPL with the help of Boeing, Stanford University, and NASA’s Johnson and Ames Centers. According to the NASA ATHLETE project page, JPL has been hard at work on a new autonomous robotic vehicle concept that combines six legs (capped with wheels) that each feature six degrees of freedom (DOF).

The current version has a paylod capacity of 450 kg, but future variants will be larger and more capable. JPL hopes that robotic vehicles developed under the ATHLETE project will eventually be able to cross most terrain types, have a 10-year life cycle (under hostile conditions), and “Demonstrate a useful ‘voice and gesture’ command mode to enable suited astronauts to interact with these vehicles.”

It all sounds very impressive, but let’s be honest: I’m sure at least one NASA engineer has entertained the thought of covering this thing with brown bristles, slapping on some plastic fangs, and sticking on some LED-powered peepers. What better way to scare the bejesus out of your neighbors at Halloween than to have a monstrous robotic tarantula-like thing at your beck and call? (And yes, I do know that tarantula have eight legs, not six. Don’t mess with my feeble attempt to turn this into the ultimate Halloween prop.)

Check out the NASA/JPL ATHLETE rover system page for some additional photos and video clips of this impressive new robot in action.

_{(Photo:© NASA/JPL Source: JPL ATHLETE rover system page) [- Jeff James]}

Building a small robot these days is far easier than it used to be, thanks in part to the introduction of products like LEGO Mindstorms and the Vex Robotics Design System. But what if you’re looking for something even simpler to construct, or perhaps you want to introduce robotics to a young child? A new robotics product dubbed roBlocks may be just what you’re looking for.

And I do mean simple: There aren’t any gears, sensors, tiny plastic pieces, or other microscopic bits or geegaws you have to fiddle with to contruct a functional robot. Using a variety of actuator, sensor, and operator blocks, roBlocks claims that you can simply snap them together to create simple robots. Each block is a 40mm cube, and magnets help the blocks snap together easily.

According to the roBlocks Web site, the product began as a research project led by PhD candidate Eric Schweikardt and Professor Mark D. Gross at Carnegie Mellon University. Pittsburgh’s WTAE-TV recently aired a story which shows the roBlocks in action, and also provides some additional background info on the project from the CMU team that developed the roBlocks system.

The roBlocks Web site indicates that the product will be available for sale in December 2008, and pricing wasn’t yet available.    

_{(Photo:© roBlocks Source: roBlocks) [- Jeff James]}