The Shonkbot is what the team at Bristol Hackspace came up with for a robot that is obvious in its working and encouragingly easy to build, even for kids (with supervision).

We decided to make a company dedicated to making building these custom robots as easy as playing with LEGO.” The modules are assembled and tested by HEBI’s eight-person staff.

Robots make everything look easy, but there's actually a lot of work going on under the hood to make even simple tasks happen. But through impeccable design, practice, and some good programming ...

Robots are increasingly visible in everyday life. Factories and manufacturing facilities have used simple single-task robotic arms for decades to quickly ramp up production.

Cynthia Sung, head of the Sung Robotics Lab within Penn's GRASP Lab, is especially interested in getting high school students into engineering. Self-folding origami robots, anyone?

PyRobot could simplify the way researchers program their machines, and could even make it easier for non-robotics types to jump into the field.