SAN FRANCISCO--Robots of all shapes and sizes, with skills ranging from cocktail-mixing to flame-throwing, touched down here last weekend to compete in the sixth annual RoboGames, a geek paradise recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as the world's largest open robot competition.
Coming from 21 countries and almost every state, the hackers and engineers who have spent hundreds of hours--and sometimes thousands of dollars--on their projects, came together at Fort Mason to test their bot-building skills over the weekend of June 12-14.
Watch this audio slideshow to join us in the build pit alongside contestants as they grind metal, wire batteries, and weld defensive plates to 300-pound monsters outfitted with deadly spinning steel blades.
"The ocean needs more friends", says Graham Hawkes, who earlier this week unveiled the Deep Flight Super Falcon at the Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. The craft is the newest and most advanced production-model undersea flying vehicle designed by Hawkes Ocean Technologies. (More information after the slideshow)
The submersible, which is 1/10th the weight of its conventional counterparts, seeks to provide new methods of exploring the oceans. Typically, undersea submersibles are very slow, and Hawkes designed this vehicle so that individuals might be able to more safely and comfortably explore the vast oceans of the world, moving along with the the creatures of the deep.
This week, more than 500 robots and 10,000 students from around the country who have participated in regional competitions will head to the Georgia Dome in Atlanta for the FIRST National Robotics Championship.
Below is a panoramic photo from the auditorium where the FIRST Robotics Sacramento Regional competition was held. On the left, you can see student teams preparing to play this year's game, called Lunacy, as they make modifications and repairs to their designs in the mechanics' pit. Across the gymnasium and to the right sits the game floor, where their robots will attempt to score points and outmaneuver the opposing teams.
Four regional finalists are visible in this panorama image taken March 27, 2009, at the UC Davis-Sacramento Regional Competition in Davis, Calif. Teams 115 from Monte Vista High School in Cupertino, Calif.; 1323 from Madera High School in Madera, Calif.; 1717 from Dos Pueblos High Engineering Academy in Goleta, Calif.; and 668 from Pioneer High School in San Jose, Calif., are all there in the robotics pit where teams make final adjustments to their bots and prepare for their matches. Can you find them?
Teams from around Northern California gathered this week at the University of California at Davis for the FIRST Robotics Competition, an event in which high school engineers design and build robots that must complete technical tasks throughout the games. (More details after the jump.)
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Update, Tuesday, 12:17 PST: This piece was originally intended as an audio slide show, but was published prematurely. We've reworked the images into a more traditional non-audio slide show embedded below.
Almost 40 years ago, Xerox opened the Palo Alto Research Center as a West Coast center of research and development. Since then, research at these labs has produced some of the technological innovations that have been widely adopted across today's modern computing systems, including laser printing and Ethernet.
Spun off as a subsidiary of Xerox in 2002, today PARC collaborates with clients, acting as an incubator and exploring a range ideas--from biomedicine to clean energy to intelligent computing.
Click image (right) for a slide show that delves into the halls and labs of PARC, the highly secure facility where many of the exploratory projects under way have yet to be patented.
If you're looking for new forms of alternative transportation, stop by Moffett Federal Airfield in Mountain View, Calif., where Airship Ventures is making an old mode of transport new again.
This week, CNET reporters hitched a ride on the first zeppelin to take flight over the United States in 70 years. The German-built, helium-filled dirigible will soon offer sightseeing flights from three locations in the San Francisco Bay Area. One of just three zeppelins operating in the world, the unique airships will begin flying later this month from Mountain View and in early November from other locations, with ticket prices starting at $495 per person.
Sail away in this audio slideshow from CNET News photographer James Martin.
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