NEW4LR Robot: Teach a New Dog New Tricks

MAKE points out this new "New4LR," or "New Four-Legged Robot," an "open"—but possibly not open source—successor to Sony's now defunct AIBO robot dog project.

The Technische Universität Darmstadt, Germany has developed a new four-legged robo-critter they're hoping will be a worthy successor to Sony's defunct AIBO (at least among researchers, hobbyists and the education market). The bot is basically a big, badder 21st century take on AIBO. It works with both Linux and Windows CE, has a color headcam that's 10 times higher-res than AIBO, and uses a 500 MHz AMD-Geode-LX800 32Bit processor with 256 MB (extenable up to 1 GB) DDR-SODIMM main memory on a PC104 board from Digital-Logic. They never use the term "open source," but they say the bot will sport "open, modular and reconfigurable hardware and software structures." They hope to have it on sale by the end of 2007 for around (gulp) US$4800.

AIBO's open-source successor? [MAKEzine.com]