• Engadget has an article about a Japanese fire department which is employing a semi-autonomous robot for rescues. This track-crawling bot can get past very hot areas, locate people trapped by the flames, and carry them to safety. While on board, the bot can monitor the vital signs of the occupant. This may also be used for earthquake rescue.
• Hack-A-Day has an interesting video of a multi-mobility robot which can either use hexapod ground motivation, or fly using helicopter blades and motives.
• Continuing with the Helicopter theme, Engadget has an interesting article about flying drone robots which can be deployed to disaster relief areas to supply a wi-fi mesh network and phone service to areas during emergencies
• Engadget continues to wow us with stories and videos of household assistance robots.  I especially like the arm design on these robots, which allows for greater angular postions for thier arms that many other designs I’ve seen.  
• I’m still vaguely skeptical that it’s real, but Muckflash is reporting on a humanoid robot which “kidnapped” an intern who was working with it.  The robot had an powerful behavioral engine which made the robot “love” anyone who it saw, and it chose to block the intern from leaving the room, requiring technicians to come and shut it off to allow her to go home.

In my own robotic news, I picked up a Microrobot Avoider Robo Jr.  and soldered it together yesterday morning.  The torque it generates is a bit disappointing, but I’m hoping to use it as a simple wheeled robot platform.  I’m going to put together an adapter plate to attach either my Ardino or AXE117 board to the chassis to drive it.  

Also, i’m working on putting together the parts for a Jansen Linkage on the same Ponoko cutting i’ve built my adapter plate on.  Once I’ve got everything together, and tested, I’ll open source the plate(s).