This device is controlled with a couple of knobs on a relatively standard control unit and communicates wirelessly as you fly it through the sky in an impressive display of flapping, turning, and flapping some more. The newest version of this original Park Hawk will run you right around $289 if you want one right this second. You’ve also for one whole heck of a lot of other options from stores like Flapping Flight if you’re in the mood for some different models – like the Big Lazy Hawk whose wingspan is longer than a small child.

This bird is controlled with its rudder (it’s tail feather) and is able to both flap and glide. This means that if you toss it down into the Grand Canyon (and it doesn’t hit a rock right away) you’ll be able to mozy on down lazily the whole way with just a bit of flapping as you go. Seem like a good time to you? Maybe we’re all long overdue for some awesome remote controlled action, what do you think?

BONUS: time for some record-breaking rubber-band ornithopter action next!

[via Lusko]

What would you do with a helicopter about the size of your fist that can fly around (not entirely silently, mind you) and collect video and/or photos? Would you snoop around the neighborhood? I sure as heck know what we’d be doing: collecting evidence that the dog is, indeed, stealing the cat’s food each morning. For sure! With the Black Swann we’ll be doing such a thing, it having the clear advantage of “stealth” over “military.” Mostly in looks, if you’re wondering.

Then there’s the i-Fly Micro Lightening – this is a trend in remote controlled devices, and a pretty neat one if I do say so myself. One where they provide an infra-red connector to your mobile devices (iPhone in this case) and an app that allows you to use your favorite device as a controller. It’s good fun for everyone. Check out all of these devices out at Fry’s BrandSmart, and other fine retailers soon!

And your dog won’t be the only one watching the action go down, your cat and your kid will have a fit as well. What you’ll see in the hands-on video is the device running on one of its automatic modes, registering what’s in front of it to make turns and back up and flip out squawking and beeping and flaring up lights, and that’s not the half of it! This little beast gets a full 15 minutes of use per 40 minutes of charging, and the charging might be the cutest part of the whole equation. See that action up in the main picture? That’s the tank plugged in with its fold-out USB stick into the side of our laptop PC. When it’s charged to the top, it lets you know with a successful “blerp!”

In this case, the device is autonomous and does seem to enjoy pestering the pets, as it were – here are explanations of each of the three control modes:

Mode 1: In obstacle avoidance mode, the Tankbot searches for obstacles and does not travel in a straight line. If no obstacles are found, it spins around and goes to sleep. Waving an object within a few centimeters in front of the product will wake it up. If a climbing angle of Tankbot is too steep, it will reverse turn.

Mode 2: In light and sound mode, if a climbing angle of the Tankbot is too steep, it will reverse turn.

Mode 3 Control: iDeskPet Universal Remote must be aimed at the Tankbot from a distance of 1m to 3m and towards the front black screen of the Tankbot and not from behind. If the item is not controlled for more than 60 seconds, it spins around and goes to sleep.

This device can run on its own artificial intelligence via sensors dictating its path, or you can control it with your smartphone. A simple download and setup process will have you rolling around in no time, just a simple dongle deal with a couple of lights plugged into your smartphone’s headphone jack has it connected with great ease. You’ll notice in the official app that there’s a small family of these vehicles growing as you tap, catch them all as the group expands! Now we’ve only to wait and see how long it is before these little beasts learn to fly or run in the water – boats and spaceships ahoy!

You can head over to RadioShack right now for the least expensive place to pick one of these up: $19.99 and a perfect stocking stuffer you shall have. Know what I mean?

One of the things that the soldiers in Afghanistan have to watch out for are hidden roadside bombs designs to explode and destroy the vehicles driving by and to kill soldiers. The camera on the hacked RC truck shoots video back to a small gun mounted LCD. Sgt. Fessenden made use of the truck to keep him and his team safe when something on the road didn’t look right.

The Sergeant sent the little truck to check out something that was suspect on the side of the road. What the RC truck was checking out turned out to be a roadside bomb. The RC toy set the bomb off and none of the soldiers in the truck were harmed. Ernie is already working on a replacement truck to be sent to his brother to keep him safe in the future.

[via Hackaday]

The first step in the build project was to make the top of the can with its flapper style lid one piece and attach the Droid antennae. After that, the dude started to install the electronics inside the bot to allow it to be controlled remotely. An Arduino microcontroller board is the heart of the bot for controlling the lights and other stuff. The bot has a LCD on the lower part of its body. It uses a rechargeable battery that gets juice from USB.

The robots arms can move up and down and instead of little stubby legs, this robot has wheels that it rolls around on. The bots eyes are made with a pair of green LED lights. The power switch is on the back and you can see the robot in action in the videos below. That Android fans and fans of DIY will get a kick out of out of this cool project. Hit the source for tons more pictures.

[via Android Community]

The little bot rides on tank treads that are rubber and the one you see in the pics here is the first of its kind. The bot is waterproof to depths of up to three feet and it is strong enough that it can survive 15-foot drops. I guess that means you could just throw this thing over a fence to see what’s on the other side. It has a pair of outriggers that can flip it back over in the event it crashes.

The controller is a wrist wearable box that has a LCD screen on it that allows the driver to view the video generated by the four cameras that are on the machine. The device itself is quite small with a weight of five pounds and ten inches in length. It also has full audio so you can hear what the bad people are saying. It runs on internal batteries that are good for six hours of eavesdropping per charge.

[via Technabob]

The car can be controlled using a Kinect or it can be controlled using an iPad. The guy behind the hack used a custom-built HTML 5 app for his iPad that allows him to steer the car using the tilt sensor on the iPad. The app also uses the tilt sensors to activate the motor for forward or back.

The other method uses the Kinect and hand gestures that are mapped to virtual spaces the iPad uses. Both methods use an Arduino board to control the car with the controls wired to some opto-isolators. That Arduino controller is connected to a computer and the car waits for the app on the iPad or the Kinect waits to send input. Check out the video to see it in action.

The RC Bald Eagle sells for $499.95. For the price, you get the massive bald eagle that looks a lot like a kite with a propeller driven electric motor on its back. The engine and propeller has a multi-directional vector movement to allow the pilot to make agile turns and dives like the real Eagle can.

The wireless remote control is good for 100-feet from the bird and it has trim controls so you can get level flight. The bird is capable of loops and hovers when flying against the wind once you get used to the controls. The electric motor uses a rechargeable battery that is good for eight minutes of flying per 20-minute charge.

This little toy is really small and hovers around for your amusement. With just a 10-minute charge, the gizmo will fly around for between 5-7 minutes. Featuring a single propeller, this little UFO spins around in the air and has a flashing blue LED light.

To control it, all you have to do is slide the control up and down. That’s all there is to it. You can use more than one MicroFly on the same remote, however, so you could control your own little UFO army. The only drawback is that they require 6-AA batteries. You can get the MicroFly Tiny R/C UFO now for $19.99.

As mentioned, this toy takes “Duck Hunt” out of the video game world and attempts to bring it to life using a radio-controlled duck and a plastic gun.  We’re unsure of what exactly the gun shoots, but we’re guessing due to the “safe and fun” tag on the box that it doesn’t shoot anything particularly dangerous.

Duck Hunter’s pricing and release date are unknown at this point.  We’ll fill you in when more information becomes available.

[via I4U News]

The purpose of the exercise was so that if the heights or shapes of certain parts of the cavern changed, a precursor to collapses or other trouble, the people running the operation would be able to notice it ahead of time and either support the area or keep everyone away from it. So basically this robot has the potential of saving lives.

This is just one use for this particular machine though. I’m sure now that its proven itself worthy its uses will be greatly expanding, it may not be an R2 unit or C3-PO, but its nice to see robots being used in places where you never thought you’d see them.

[via DVICE]

You could even open a door by just stepping on the rug in front of it or touching the door handle as you go to open it, depending on how you rig up the readers. I’d say that it could be used with your vehicle, but proximity unlocking/starting key fobs are old hack so not much of an advancement there.

Its not as insecure as RFID, but it works along the same lines and offers similar conveniences. NTT says they even picture it being used in doctor’s offices to transmit patient data as the doctor or nurse examine you, meaning it could be transferred to another device via another human, just imaging exchanging digital business cards by simply shaking hands, god knows CES would have been a lot easier if that had been the case.

[via Gizmodo]

Since most robot programmers use C anyways, they just stuck with that but modified it a little bit. Well, this VEX robot programming kit is the first I’ve heard of ROBOTC since its inception.

With the kit you control the robot, or at least the start, stop, and pause of the robot’s current program from your computer. The kit will allow you to write and program in ROBOTC for these robots and it will only cost you $100, or you can buy a 12 license kit for $315.

Innovation First rolls out ROBOTC programming kit for VEX robots [via engadget]

It uses a Basic Stamp II microcontroller to run just about everything. The rest is a couple motors for forward and reverse motion, a couple pneumatic cylinders for up and down motion, an air compressor, and a power supply.

The best part though has to be the IR sensor that allows the guy to use his remote control watch to control the seat. Its apparently a fairly expensive project, but not too terribly pricey, it appears to still need to be plugged in, but making it battery powered with it lasting any respectable length of time might be the most expensive part of such a project. It is kind of nice to see someone do something like this and make it look simple, I think if an even moderately mechanical person with some decent soldering skills got a parts list they could put the hardware portion together, the programming of the controller would take the most skill.

DIY’er creates homegrown mini mech [via engadget]

The boxes are set-top boxes that convert the digital signal back to analog. Those of you resistant to change can get a $40 coupon to go towards one such box like these.

No word on price, but I assume they will be available on or before the switchover date. Chances are good someone, if not everyone, will be offering boxes as close to that $40 price as possible.

LG’s Zenith DTT900 Converter Competes with RCA for Grandma’s $40 Coupon [via gizmodo]

It comes pre-built and sits at 15.9cm tall. Its controlled by a 2.4GHz band controller that kind of resembles an Xbox (the original one) controller, but with just the two joysticks on it.

You can charge it for 15 minutes for about 5 minutes of play time, all that, the controller and the copter, requires a total of 4 AA batteries, and it appears the controller is the charging device for the copter portion. You can get it soon in Japan for $90, kinda pricey for something like this, but whatever floats your boat.

Funky Gadgets – The Robo Hopper – flying robot [via gadgettastic]

Combining the two with RC helicopters that shoot, and receive, laser beams just like laser tag, well that’s Head-Explodingly fun. The fun is only compounded by the fact that a laser hit makes the copter spin out of control and crash.

The copters are small and apparently rugged since they are designed to crash. They are so small they actually recommend launching them from the palm of your hand. There are blue LEDs for night flights. A 15 minute charge grants you a whopping 5-7 minute flight time, they charge from the remote control’s battery. They come in sets of two for $100 and should only be flown inside where there is no wind.

Battling Palmsize Havoc R/C Helicopter [via GeekAlerts]

Is it just me, or do those “treads” look like small rubber bands? Anyways, they are really small and only run off three really small watch batteries. And the whole swarming thing, yeah, that’s how they are supposed to work, but its to accomplish various tasks, not to eat you alive.

An 8K ROM processor is what runes this thing, there is also a temperature sensor on board. You can add a miniature camera, microphone, or a chemical sensor. They’ll go over several types of terrain, within reason, since if they tip, its game over, and they will move at a speed of up to 20…inches….per minute.

Tiny robots, smaller than a quarter [via technabob]

It turns out that credit for the original design must go to a high-school student – and now part of the WowWee team – Sean Frawley, who will in fact sell you the plans for his elastic-band powered Ornithopter kit for a mere twenty bucks.

I can’t wait to have a go of this myself!

Robots Rule [via Street Tech]

The twin engines provide double the power for take-off, propel the plane up to 20mph (200 mph scale speed), and allows easier steering for first-time flyers. A two-channel transmitter controls climbing and descending while the thrust-vector steering guides the plane through turns by adjusting the amount of power to each engine.
The plane has a 750-foot flying range and can fly up to five minutes before needing to recharge. Charge time takes about 30 minutes. The plane is designed by Estes, a renowned maker of model airplanes and rockets for nearly 50 years, and is crafted from damage-resistant material including plastic laminated foam wings. Priced at $99.95.

A Beginners RC Plane [Via: CoolestGadgets]

The camera is capable of shooting at 129,000 pixels while the car cruises around. The images are transmited to the 2.2-inch LCD on the remote controller. The model car also features sturdy suspension good for traversing rough terrain, headlights that light-up, and two speed settings. Priced under $200 with a 3-year warranty, this roadster will be available starting December 20 at Tchibo.co.uk.

Tchibo sells limited-edition Porsche Cayenne model with on-board camera [Via: Pocket-lint]

It comes with a 9.6v rechargeable battery and charger. You have to just hope this thing doesn’t guzzle your batteries the same way the real thing guzzles your gas. Priced at $99.

RC Hummer H2 is sooo cool! [Via: NewLaunches]