Namely, a) what was the practical use of building a robot version of Postman Pat's pet? and b) why would you put lasers in its eyes?
In Sweden, students at the KTH Royal Institute Of Technology are building a robot version of singer Robyn (although it's still a long way off usurping the human version).
Zooming out from there, to take in the wider, "embedded, hobbyist, building a robot" community of Pi users — where Upton notes "Pi has been very strong" — well, those guys are clearly not going to have any trouble finding uses for the additional power that Pi 2 brings.
"It's a higher price than the RPi, but the experience of building a robot is less of a pain – no hassles for wiring, it has built-in battery inputs, and it boots up directly into a robot programming environment".
Building a robot has been one of humanity's longest-standing dreams.
The temple generated headlines in recent years for allowing monks to study sutras on iPads and building a robot in the shape of a pint-sized monk able to answer questions about Buddhism.
With safety in mind, Melhuish and his team are also experimenting with softer, more lightweight materials, in the hope of building a robot with lower body mass.
Born in 1931, Mr Sale displayed his talent for engineering at an early age by building a robot, called George I, out of Meccano.
This way Ph.D. students don't have to waste time building a crummy robot of their own, and instead can run their experiments on a powerful, reliable learning machine.
The costs of building a smart robot went down thanks to the open source Robot Operating System and, in short, it got much easier to build a helper bot without breaking the bank.
