Blender: Justin robot controlled by iTaSC – 3 targets from ben2610 on Vimeo.

I’m a sucker for what I call “bidirectional animatronics,” the discipline of actuation moving both from virtual to real and from real to virtual.  To me it’s a natural extension of the overall arc of this century, the breaking down of the barriers between the real and imagined worlds.

So here’s a neat tool under construction: the OpenRobot Simulator!

By combining Blender and physics simulation, complex robotics tasks can be simulated in a fully CG environment before being run on working robots.  If your rapid prototyping is happening off-site with Shapeways or even just your local hacker collective, such a tool could really speed up robotics designs, and help you develop code for driving your robots before the hardware portion is finished!

Like this Triple-Mengered Icosahedron! (Try saying that three times fast!)

There’s just a TON of new blood on Thingiverse lately, and some of what they’re putting up is pretty rad!  Since the contest started, there’s been fanciful uploads like a TARDIS and the KeyBlade, geek toys like guitar parts and boomerangs, practical ones like corner brackets and Towel Pins, and a few really super-ambitious ones like an actual, honest to botness Rubix Cube.

Here’s hoping the contestants stick around and help make Thingiverse even more awesome!