Watch the NASA Space Shuttle Remote Manipulator System (ARM) deploy a payload.
Compare the arm to the action of the hydraulic shovel in the next video. What is similar? What is different?

Operation of a Hydraulic Shovel
Compare the video of the Shovel Robot and the Manufacturing Robot next listed. Are their mechanical design's similar? In what ways? Discuss their controls, human and computer automated. List the strengths and weaknesses of each controller.

Industrial Manufacturing Robot Arm

Robot Navigating Through a Maze

MIT Advanced Robot Development Creature Named KISMIT

MIT leglab Blob Robot
The Blob is a shape-shifting conformal robot that resembles a tank tread without the tank. This video shows the pneumatic version built by Geo Homsy, then some simulations done by Jerry Pratt. The two simulated blobs show how a genetic algorithm can effectively choose either the most efficient or the fastest "gait". Finally, an electric version of the blob built by Andrew Allen is shown. Able to control its joints smoothly, this blob is shown executing the efficient gait .

Robot playing tennis.
How does the robot know where the ball is going? Examine the movie carefully to answer this question.

Robots playing soccer.

Demonstration of a Robotic Ball

Watching the movie try to explain what is in the ball that makes it roll in different directions.

Animation of Mars Rover landing

Mars Science Laboratory Mission Animation - Planned for this decade. This animation demonstrates how the rover will enter, descend and land on the surface of Mars.
Click here for a .pdf file explaining the Mars Science Laboratory Program.

Hollywood Robotic Science Fiction Movies as a Teaching Tool

I, Robot , the movie to be released in summer of 2004.

The movie mystery deals with the three laws of Robotics posed by Isaac Asimov in the early 1940s.