Pay attention kids… If you want to grow up to be a robot, or an actor, or both at the same time, listen to Keanu Reeves:

FIRST is a robotics league for students that was founded by Dean Kamen (the guy behind this). It’s fun and competitive and there’s a lot of support, both in terms of mentorship and hardware… If you know any kids who are interested in robotics or engineering, this is an awesome way to get them started.

[ FIRST ] VIA [ Robots-Dreams ]

Okay, so this is not exactly your first introduction to the squiggly world of snakebots, but I liked the introduction to this particular robot, which is called OmniTread. It’s called OmniTread because, as you may have guessed, it is utterly betreadified, with treads on pretty much every available surface. OmniTread is made up of a series of independent square-ish segments (I think a three dimensional rectangle is technically called a “prism”) connected by three pressurized tubes, the rigidity of which can be independently adjusted to control the angle between OmniTread’s segments to a useful degree.

There are two version of OmniTread: one that can fit through an 8 inch hole that weighs 26 pounds, and a smaller bot that can fit through a 4 inch hole and only weighs 5.5 pounds, including on board power systems. The small robot also has the capability to “latch on and travel along small diameter objects such as water pipes, electric overhead wires, or on-wall electric conduits.” Developed by the University of Michigan, OmniTread is designed for rescue and inspection duties where humans either can’t go or really don’t want to go.

This is not a new robot, with the 8 inch diameter version from 2005 and the 4 inch diameter version from 2007 or 2008. Now it’s 2010, which means that even if these snakebots only followed a linear development path (and exponential is much more likely), we’d be looking at a half pound snakebot that can fit through two inch holes and probably feeds on kittens or something for power. Or maybe the project was concluded. I’m not sure. But if you see one, run very far away, and then let me know.

[ OmniTread ] VIA [ CrunchGear ]

You’re probably too busy drinking champagne and kissing someone you just met to be checking BotJunkie right now, and so am I, but I’ve queued up this post for the first minute of 2010 anyway. I just wanted to take a minute and say, thanks for reading. And more importantly, thanks for being interested in robots. It’s your enthusiasm (yes, you!) that makes BotJunkie worth it for me. I don’t write about robots to make money (although eventually it might be nice if that were to happen), I write about robots because I love robots, and I love sharing new robot stuff with you guys. Keep commenting, keep sending emails, and I’ll do my level best to keep delivering awesome robot news.

Speaking of awesome robot news, an extra super special thanks to sites like Robots.net, Robots-Dreams, Suicide Bots, Robot Watch, IEEE Automaton, Plastic Pals, Robot Stock News, Botropolis, Robot Living, GetRobo, and many others, including those sites that just have robot content every once in a while. I work hard to make BotJunkie the absolute best robot blog EVAR, and sites like these keep me inspired and help to come up with some great content. If you only read one robot blog, I hope it’s BotJunkie, but if you want to read ten or eleven, well, there you go.

So what’s in store for 2010? Well, we’re kicking off the year with a trip to the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show. For sure we’ll be hooking up with Keepon again and getting the latest updates on when you’ll be able to buy your own little squishy dancing robot, taking an in-person look at the new Neato XV-11 robot vacuum, and reportedly, meeting “the world’s first sex robot.” But as always, it’s the stuff that we don’t know about in advance that’s going to be the most exciting, so stay tuned… We’ll be there from Tuesday January 5th though Sunday January 10th with coverage as non-stop as I am physically capable of.

Also, I’m hoping to run a few more contests in the near future, starting with the 2009 Uncanny Valley Award for creepiest robot of the past year. Look for that after CES, with prizes that will probably include whatever swag we pick up at the show, among other things.

So again, thanks for reading, and thanks for being as fascinated with robots as I am. Happy 2010!