An Actroid is a humanoid robot with strong visual human-likeness developed by Osaka University and manufactured by Kokoro Company Ltd. (the animatronics division of Sanrio). It was first unveiled at the 2003 International Robot Exposition in Tokyo, Japan. Several different versions of the product have been produced since then. In most cases, the robot's appearance has been modeled after an average young woman of Japanese descent.

Wines & Vines reports on a prototype grapevine pruning robot that could save vinyards time and money. The artist's rendering above shows the robot with a tractor drive unit that would propel it as it prunes the vines using a 3D vision system and multiple hydraulic pruning shears. Multiple images are compiled to produce an internal 3D representation of the vine, to which pruning rules are applied. The robot, developed by Vision Robotics, can work 24 hours a day in any lighting.

Visualizing Sensor Data With the Arduino using Processing and an Infrared Distance Sensor. This article was submitted by Cory Barton as part of the uCHobby giveaway program. Cory shows us how to combine the Arduino, sensors, and the Processing environment to visualize real world sensor measurements.

In this first picture we see an IR sensor Mounted to a servo on small robot