At TEDxNASA, Dennis Hong introduces seven award-winnning, all-terrain robots — like the humanoid, soccer-playing DARwIn and the cliff-gripping CLIMBeR — all built by his team at RoMeLa, Virginia Tech. Watch to the end to hear the five creative secrets to his lab’s incredible technical success.

Cool video… some great intro’s to some of these robots… Google the robot for more details.  :)

Right around 12:23 – Dennis talks about how he gets some of his ideas.  What I find amazing, isn’t the fact that he keeps a journal by his bed, to write down ideas he gets while trying to sleep (lots of folks have done that…. Dennis has a cool LED pen he uses to not wake-up the wife).  What I find amazing, is that he talks about what he does with those ideas afterwards.  Some ideas are junk… sometimes his journal is blank.  Sometimes… he has a nugget. 

Watch the video to find out what he does with that nugget…

You often see people trying to mimic animals.  Especially in how they move.  I’ve seen robots that crawl, walk with 2 legs, walk with 4 legs, swim, slither and now… run.

Robert Full shared some ideas on TED way back in February 2005.  He shows some great research that was done in how certain critters can move so fast over such unstable mediums, such as screen, gravel, or vertically up a wall.

It’s definitely worth watching… maybe someone will create a running robot with some LEGO parts and some ideas from this video?  If you do, send me a link!  :)