WowWee's WiFi-enabled Rovio

Now, this is something that I think I could use. You know when you go away on vacation and you're worried about your house burning down while you're gone? Having this robot would be worth it just to check to make sure your house is still there.

It has a Northstar GPS system and it knows where it is in the room and can locate it's recharging station on your command. You can use the Internet, cell phone or game console to control it's actions.

It has a bi-directional microphone so you can speak to people who are in the room with the robot. ("Hey burglar get out of my home! I'm calling the police." or "Warning you have violated the sanctity of my home prepare to be annihilated!")

It will be available in the summer for $299 which isn't too much for eyes and ears into what's going on in your home while you're away. Which could be very convenient when you want to check up on your teenagers while you're away. ("I thought I told you no parties while I was away, miss! You are so grounded and don't even think about touching Mommy's Rovio! It better be in one piece when I get home.")

Here's a video of Rovio in action.

Robotic Bugs Mingle With Cockroaches

This is pretty cool:

Tiny robots programmed to act like roaches were able to blend into cockroach society, according to researchers studying the collective behavior of insects. Cockroaches tend to self-organize into leaderless groups, seeming to reach consensus on where to rest together.

For example, when provided two similar shelters, most of the group tended to gather under the same one.

Hoping to learn more about this behavior, researchers led by Jose Halloy at the Free University of Brussels, Belgium, designed small robots programmed to act like a cockroach.

The robots didn't look like the insects and at first the roaches fled from them, but after the scientists coated the robots with pheromones that made them smell like roaches the machines were accepted into the group, nesting together with the insects.