By Evan Ackerman

Over the past few weeks, between ICRA and the DRC Finals, we’ve had enough incredible and exciting and amazing and stupendous robots to last us the rest of the summer. But of course, while we were focused on Seattle and Pomona, other cool robotics stuff was happening. We’re going to get you caught up on some of it today, in a post that we promise will have zeroDARPA Robotics Challenge content, because after more than a dozen posts in like five days, we all need just a little bit of a break.

Rather than starting out with a robot and a ninja, check out something that might be even cooler: the latest iteration of the Blind Juggler, created by roboticist and artist Raffaello D’Andrea and his group at ETH Zurich. This machine uses no sensors to toss balls in a circular pattern between a cloverleaf of carefully machined and tilted paddles:   …[Read more]