It’s finally September. FINALLY. As of now, I am effectively unemployed, and can spend every waking moment living, breathing, and getting probed by robots. I’m SO EXCITED. In addition to resuming a normal, reliable (!), practically every day posting schedule, we’ve got some pretty awesome events coming up, including RoboDevelopment, CES, and later this month, Arse Elektronika (potentially excitingly NSFW).

Oh, and I’m definitely going to try and put together a contest or two. Free robot stuff = good, right?

We’re back, baby. With a vengance. So stay tuned…

Later today, Halifax Health will be webcasting a live robot-assisted gynecologic oncology surgery. The robot assisting (or actually performing the surgery) will be (surprise surprise) a da Vinci surgical system. Here’s the scoop, kind of:

Watch it online here, starting at 7pm EST.

[ Halifax Health ] VIA [ Communist Robot ]

Dogs are great at a lot of things. Like, being furry. Playing fetch. Lying down. The Dream DX dogbot from Sega Toys is able to do all of those things except for the last two, although I think it was just being ornery about the lying down bit. It can move its eyes, mouth, head, and tail, and is able to recognize and respond to about as many phrases as your real dog probably is. Look for it in Japan sometime soon for the equivalent of $270.

VIA [ Newlaunches ]

It’s always kinda fun to see how animals interact with robots; since robots aren’t something that are generally designed to work with animals (with some exceptions) or vice versa. Now, everybody knows that dolphins are the second most intelligent form of life on earth, so it’s especially interesting to see them checking out this little robotic seaplane:

To the researchers, it appeared that the dolphins thought the UAV was a pelican diving for fish, said Ella Atkins, a researcher from U-M’s Aerospace Engineering Department. Finding the craft wasn’t a bird that had spotted tasty fish swimming below, the pod of three dolphins began playing with it, repeatedly swimming in formation with the little seaplane and diving underneath on one side to surface again on the other.

The autonomous seaplane is called Flying Fish and was built by the University of Michigan on (guess what) a DARPA grant. It’s about 20 pounds with a 2 meter wingspan, and can take off, circle, and land autonomously in even 6 foot seas. It’s designed to provide long duration surveillance of an area of ocean, and it currently being outfitted with solar panels, which should enable it to keep on station indefinitely.

[ Flying Fish ] VIA [ LiveScience ]

On sale today only and possibly for a very limited time, as is with all things on woot. Not a bad deal, considering that one of these is still $90 (+shipping) from Amazon (or rather, from Target). If you’re interested in what Roboquad can do, check out this post over on OhGizmo.

[ woot! ]