What's New at RoboNexus

I took a spin down to Santa Clara last week to see what was happening at the RoboNexus show. It was small but lively. At times it felt more like the Exploratorium than a trade show; lots of kids, excitement, demonstrations, and fun stuff.



Here's a great use for your old notebook. Evolution Robotics, a provider of robotic vision and navigation technology, has an educational product called the ER1 Robot. You place a notebook computer on the motorized frame and use the supplied software and camera to create a robot capable of moving around your house. It's your own personal rover for $299.

John Swope showed off one of his balancing robots. For $329.95 you can get a kit to build one of these clever devices that uses optical sensors and wheel motion to keep itself balanced while it moves around the room. For an extra $150 you get the deluxe version and development environment so you can program it yourself.



White Box Robotics was demonstrating what it calls a PC Bot, a robotic shell housing a PC. They offer versions ranging in price from $699 (show special) for a fairly stripped down version to $1500 for a complete PC on wheels. The beauty of this product is that it runs standard apps and you can add PC hardware like USB devices or hard drives.



Here's a picture of the President and founder Thomas Burick roaming the show floor while controlling his PC Bot.

Personal robotics still have a long way to go before we all have R2D2s at our beck and call, but it's nice to see the market moving beyond robot warriors.