Via digg, here are videos and tons of information on a skillfully engineered two-wheeled robot that can balance itself as well as drive around. An electronic gyroscope and accelerometers help orient the ‘bot and keep it upright while moving, and a separate sensor provides tilt data while it is at rest. Built by David Anderson, the balancing nBot is an impressive piece of work.

IBM has an cool article detailing some techniques you can use to quickly build robots with common materials. Wireless robotics: Fast robot prototyping shows you how to use foam core, plexiglass, Erector set parts, and cardboard to put together a robot platform to build upon without breaking the bank on a design that’s likely to change. Neat stuff — I wasn’t even aware IBM published articles like this.

Here’s a great project I happened to run across while sorting through bookmarks. Henry Arnold’s Cricket is a six-legged walking robot, controlled by a BASIC Stamp II microcontroller. Full wiring diagrams, frame layouts, and source code are all available for you to make your own ‘bot.

While the site doesn’t look like it’s changed in the last five or so years, the project is none the less fun to build and learn from. I put one together one many years ago as my first robot built from scratch, not using pre-made kits or packages of any sort. All the materials had to be bought from various suppliers, cut, assembled, etc. It took a number of weeks to get it going, but it was a great learning experience. During the process, I emailed back and forth with the designer himself, and he was most helpful. The Cricket robot was my first introduction to programming microcontrollers, and that has since spurred on many other hardware projects.

Definitely give it a look if you want to get into electronics or embedded hardware.