For Building DIY Droids, It Helps to Live In Japan 38
destinyland writes "Want to build a robot this summer? 'Robot-loving Japanese are tinkering with screwdrivers and motors instead of heading to the beach,' and this article identifies the stores and sites serving robot hobbyists. Several sites are actually selling leftover industrial robots, but there's a variety of smaller-size robot vendors, from Tokyo's Vstone Robot Center to Carl's Electronics in Oakland (which sells sound-activated 'Hydradzoids' and solar-powered robots that crawl). Hasbro even sells their own functioning R2-D2 droid with real sonar navigation and a 'voice recognition response module.'"
Re:In the US ... (Score:2, Informative)
idiot
Re:What's really going on in Japan hobbyist roboti (Score:3, Informative)
Sad thing here, 20yrs ago I could pick up just about anything I needed for my electronics needs. 10yrs ago, I had to start finding specialty stores within a 25mi radius, sometimes as far away as 100mi. No, most of those stores are gone. I really enjoy tinkering with stuff like this, the problem is people in North America don't. It's seems as if innovation has dried up and died.
instructions to build a robot (Score:2, Informative)
I'm probably extremely biased, but I do believe this is the best website ever to learn how to make robots:
http://www.societyofrobots.com/ [societyofrobots.com]