The previous bot I posted is from the lab of Raffaello D’Andrea. His revolutionary robotics company Kiva Systems produces the bots in the video you see below. Last week, +Amazon.com acquired Kiva for an astounding 775 million dollars!
Soon, Amazon's 65 (and growing) distribution centers will be fully automated with Kiva robots.
You can read more about Amazon's acquisition of Kiva here:
You can read a more about D'Andrea's ingenious engineering approach here:
http://spectrum.ieee.org/robotics/robotics-software/three-engineers-hundreds-of-robots-one-warehouse
I am shamelessly stealing these robot videos and links from the wonderful Robots Podcast. The link below contains a fascinating interview with D'Andrea, which touches on both the robotics and the Amazon deal.
http://www.robotspodcast.com/podcast/2012/03/robots-dynamic-systems/
For anyone interested in robotics and cybernetics from a science and engineering perspective, this is a wonderful source of cutting edge work in both the industry and the academy. Their podcast from two weeks ago on Self Organized Systems is required reading for anyone interesting in the complexities of the digital age.
https://plus.google.com/u/0/117828903900236363024/posts/ifZhHqeQp9Q