Jonathan turned the programming board game Robot Turtles into a version played with a real robot. A secondhand Dash robot moves across an alphabet foam-mat grid that serves as the physical game board.

NFC tags are attached to cards from the original game. Scanning them on a custom reader sends commands such as forward, left and right to the robot, and players can queue a sequence before running it.

A child was frightened of the family's robot vacuum and would turn it off whenever it started moving. To help the two get along, the maker fitted the vacuum with a motorized tail, inspired by the child's love of cats.

A servo pulls fishing line to bend the tail, with randomized speed and angles to make it feel more lifelike. The tail alone did not hold the child's attention for long, so the maker also added a fluffy cover. The child began petting the vacuum and offering it stuffed animals.

Daniel Simu, creator of the full-size acrobatic robot Acrobot, has built a miniature version called Micro Acrobot. The desk toy combines MakerBeamXS aluminum profiles, 3D-printed parts and an acrylic panel, and is offered as a DIY kit.

It has the same number of joints and the same hands and feet as its larger counterpart, so it can be posed for similar tricks, including handstands. Unlike the large robot, the miniature has no motors and must be posed by hand.

The Fully Automated Motomura Shichimi Sorting Machine separates the chili peppers from shichimi, a Japanese seven-spice blend, to produce ichimi, or single-spice chili pepper seasoning. It is designed to sort different types of ingredients.

The machine also incorporates Pockét YUZAN, a large language model that predicts the comments of Kaibara Yuzan, a gourmet character from the manga Oishinbo. Its creators, the five-member group Bishoku Club, work on recreating the labor-intensive food preparation depicted in the manga using modern technology.

See the Motomura Shichimi sorting machine section in the linked report.

Labububot is a spherical robot made by reconstituting twelve Labubu heads into a single form at the MIT Media Lab. With faces pointing in every direction, the project uses its deliberately strange appearance as a playful critique of social robots.

It was created by Miranda Lin Li, Jake Read, and Dimitar Dimitrov. MIT Media Lab describes the result as a “Frankenstein's Monster of pop culture iconography.”

A miniature version of a center-pivot irrigation system has been rebuilt to mow a lawn instead of watering crops. Multiple wheeled sections are flexibly linked together and coordinated from the outer section inward as the whole structure rotates around a central point.

The mower uses two motor-driven pivoting blades mounted on a carriage that travels back and forth along one of the linkages. The sections are controlled to stay aligned while the machine gradually cuts a circular area. It was built by rctestflight.

P.A.R. is a 37×18 display made from 666 two-sided square tiles. Instead of giving every pixel its own actuator, a single robot moves behind the panel and physically flips individual tiles as needed to draw monochrome pixel art.

Artwork can be submitted through a website, and the machine reproduces it on the physical grid. The CAD models and code are open source. The project was created by Zimm.

Rock-a-Pomo is a Pomodoro timer that starts crying when a work session ends and will not begin the break until the user picks it up with both hands and gently rocks it. A few seconds of appropriately gentle, rhythmic motion gradually fills a soothing meter; once the robot is calm and smiling, the break timer begins.

A single hard shake does not work, and rocking it too violently does not increase the meter either. The enclosure is deliberately large enough to encourage two-handed use so the user has to let go of the keyboard and mouse. It was created by nabekura.

For his student final project, Jude Robinson built Daisy, a robot that automatically makes literal daisy chains. Two opposing XY gantries with grippers alternate handling flowers, taking each daisy from a conveyor and threading its stem through the previous flower.

The machine makes a short slit in each newly added stem, then places a thin threading post through the opening to prepare for the next flower. Because daisy stems vary in shape and diameter, V-shaped grippers and other mechanical constraints keep the process aligned without relying on sensing.

The official report from Hebocon 2026, the robot contest for people with low technical skills held on August 29, is now online. It covers this year's matches and machines, including a robot that scatters candy like caltrops and a robot-bowling exhibition in which 16 eliminated machines run at once.

This year's event also featured HEBO-GPT, a dog-shaped toy connected to AI, while teams of children made a strong showing. The report includes award winners and many of the strange moments from the event in photos and videos.

A robot with rows of suction cups arranged like tracks can stay attached while driving from walls onto ceilings. As it moves, cups at the front attach one after another while those at the rear peel away in sequence.

The passive cups maintain adhesion without a vacuum pump. The robot traveled on glass, wood, metal and painted surfaces, and the roughly 3.5 kg machine also climbed while towing a 7.94 kg payload. The work was carried out by University of Michigan researchers Andrew Nguyen, Mingyuan Li and Daniel Bruder.

T1 is a robot that can transform itself between humanoid and robot-dog forms. It normally moves upright using two legs and wheels; when it reaches a step, it transforms into a quadruped, crosses the obstacle on four legs, and then stands back up as a humanoid.

The robot is about one meter tall and weighs roughly 16 kg. It was developed by China's Qiyuan Robotics and went on sale from 19,999 yuan, with shipments scheduled from October 1.