SMALdog, or Sorta Maybe Almost LittleDog, is Mike Ferguson’s (creator of the Arbotix Robocontroller) latest addition to his AX-12+ based quadrapod robot lineup.

Rather than utilizing the more common ‘lizard-style’ leg configuration, SMALdog has a more ‘mammal-style’ leg configuration that provides some interesting walking gait variations. The biggest difference is even with very little gait programming done so far, it’s already faster than the award winning Issydunnyet quadrapod. There is still a lot of work to be done on refining the walking gait, and the turning gait is barely functional, but this platform certainly shows promise. Check out Mike’s thread for more information and updates!

Speaking of my dashing good looks and superior mental prowess; Make also featured my currently shelved and ego-crippling project Hagetaka. Rest assured; my wife and 2 year old have picked up 2nd jobs to fund this project further and it will return with even stronger servos and bigger guns, ready to assist me in my plan for world domin- err, winning Mech Warfare.

Last but not least, Make Magazine readers got a quick and to the point review of the Roboard, the first full featured Robotics Computer on the market.

But seriously, be sure to pick up a copy as the entire issue is full of fun projects and robotic tidbits sure to appeal to your average robot-geek. And like Christmas, it only comes once a year!

XMOS event driven processors allow you to execute code in parallel which could open up a number of possibilities to evolve your robots “mind” to the next level!

I have some development kits to give away potentially, but before I give away all the details, I just wanted to see if there was any interest.

People have made some cool stuff with our tech before (See videos).

Some details of the processor itself which will be on the dev kit (to be released soon):

- Single core device (Although we do have quad core versions – ask me)
- 400 MIPS per core.
- 8 Threads per core.
- 64Kb RAM
- 8KBytes OTP memory for applications, boot code or security keys, with security mode
- 64 user I/O pins
- Support for high performance DSP (32 x 32 → 64bit MAC) and cryptographic functions
- Time aware ports provide up to 10ns timing resolution
- Designs implemented using a software-based design flow (can program in C or XC – very similar to C but with support for extras such as parallel execution)
- Scalable – can connect many kits together for crazy amounts of processing power using Xlinks.

He has made some serious progress with his latest A-Pod, and rather than gab away at how awesome it is, check out the video and prepare to be amazed.

We’ll also be revealing our big internal project which uses 14 of the RX-64 servos in the near future… =)