Hardware. Solarbotics. Retired Robots - The Ants. The Ants are a community of cubic-inch microrobots at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab.
There are two main goals for this project. The first is to push the limits of microrobotics by integrating many sensors and actuators into a small package. How to make a simple laser communicator. Cool Robot Snake. Micro-Robot Swarm. Robots with a mind of their own. Autonomous walking Spider Robot. Anna Konda Firefighting Robot. Chinese microbot walks on water, skims the surface of insect-inspired design. The first robot that mimics the water striders' jumping abilities "Why Superhydrophobicity Is Crucial for a Water−Jumping Microrobot?
Experimental and Theoretical Investigations" ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces. Incredible Collaboration of Swam Robotics. DIY Tiny RC Quadrocopter. Video: Autonomous DIY Copter Drone Lands on a Moving Target Using a Wiimote's Eye. Pretty amazing stuff from the DIY UAV world: robotics researchers at the University of Tübingen in Germany have created a small, fully autonomous helicopter that can track and land on a moving target--a simulated aircraft carrier landing pad mounted on the back of another robot--tracking its LED runway lights with a Wiimote's infrared camera.
It's an interesting demo of what can be done with ultra-cheap, consumer-level parts. Reading the info from the harvested Wii IR sensor, as well as onboard accelerometers monitoring the orientation of the copter, is an onboard Atmega microprocessor.