Transformable Wall-E gets recreated with some love, Lego and DIY skills (video)

Sure, you'll have seen Lego-based Wall-E imitators before, but few recreate both the cuteness and the basic functionality of the drone quite like this one here.

The Robotic Butterfly That Flies Like The Real Thing

The ChouChou Robotic Butterfly is just like a real butterfly, except it can live forever.

40-Foot Optimus Prime Transforms Beijing Skyline

Visitors to China's Green Dream Park—not far from the 2008 Olympics' "Bird's Nest" stadium—are currently being greeted by a 40-foot tall, six ton Optimus Prime made from five truckloads of car and truck spare parts. Take that,Gundam.

Human Trials Next for Darpa’s Mind-Controlled Artificial Arm

Pentagon-backed scientists are getting ready to test thought-controlled prosthetic arms on human subjects, by rewiring their brains to fully integrate the artificial limbs.

Rex Bionics Has The Technology

This is Rex. Not the man, he's called Hayden—Rex is short for Robotic Exoskeleton, and it's the name of the robotic pants Hayden's wearing. Robotic pants that let him walk for the first time in five years.

South Korea enlists armed sentry robots to patrol DMZ

South Korea has been working on deploying armed sentry robots along the border with North Korea since at least as far back as 2006, and it looks like it's still keeping at it. While complete details are a bit light, they country apparently put a pair of new sentry robots in place in the Demilitarized Zone last month, which pack both a machine gun and a grenade launcher to ward off intruders.

Kondo aims lower down the food chain with cute turtle robot kit (video)

Kondo's bipedal robots have always filled us with a sense of awe, whether they're duking it out in the arena or practicing touchscreen moves. However, we'd never quite seen a Kondo bot that we'd classify as cute until this robot turtle came along.

Self High Five Machine Replaces One Awkward Situation with Another

There are few things worse than being left hanging when you go to give someone a high five. But high fiving a creepy machine with a disembodied arm? That might be one of them.

Revenge of the quadrocopters: now they move in packs (video)

In case you didn't find the original quadrocopter chilling enough, the GRASP Lab out of the University of Pennsylvania has gone and added a bit of cooperative logic to the recipe so that now multiple little drones can work together.

Bina48 is one humanoid robot you're going to want to hang out with

The photo you see above is of Bina48, one of the most advanced humanoid robots around. Bina48 resides at the Terasem Movement Foundation in Bristol, Vermont, and while she doesn't exactly excel at conversation, she's far more coherent than many we've spied.

Quadrotor Flying Robots Team Up To Lift Objects

What's even cooler than flying robots? Flying robots that work in tandem to grasp and transport objects across a room. Individually, the robots can't lift much but swarm them together and watch their strength grow.

The GRASP Lab at UPenn (yep, these same guys) placed a claw-like gripper on the bottom of each quadrotor so it could grab objects and developed a control method, basically swarm robotics, which allows the quadrotors to team together in any number and configuration.

I want at least 10 of these quadrotor flying robots in my future home. One can bring my iPhone to me. Four could team together to bring my laptop. And the rest can bring me beer. 

Kompott 'robotic agent' helps the elderly stay connected, enjoys a nap

Full-fledged humanoid robots helping the elderly are certainly well and good, but what about somebody that just needs a little help staying in touch with their family? They might one day be using something like this so-called Kompott "robotic agent" designed by some students at the Zurich University of the Arts Interaction Design lab.

Marines field autonomous support vehicles based on winning robot design (video)

Since their third-place finish in the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge, TORC Technology's had quite a climb -- the company founded by Virginia Tech graduates has since provided IED-scouting Humvee kits to the US Military, and a vehicle for the blind uses the drive-by-wire platform that they designed. Now, the Marines are testing a TORC kit called the Ground Unmanned Support Surrogate (GUSS), which autonomously navigate off-road terrain.

Hey, Lego my Droid, you remote-controlled fiend! (video)

That original Motorola Droid looking long in tooth? Not sure what to do with it once you upgrade toIncredible, X, or even the progenitor's most direct descendant? Take a cue from Mike Partain, who threw in a Lego NXT Robot kit and some ingenuity to create a rather clever proof of concept. The building blocks serve as the bulk of the structure and motor skills, the phone serves as camera, GPS, and compass.