For educators and parents who want to introduce robotics to their kids, the LEGO's MINDSTORMS is a godsend. Introduced in 1998, this unique robotic kit comes in the form of LEGO toy pieces that kids know and love, and all electronic parts are pre-built and packaged in kid-safe format. The programming is simple yet flexible enough for those who wish to make more complex robots. The MINDSTORMS robotic kit is designed for children 12 years and older, and it's an excellent starter kit for first-timer robot builders, both children and adults.

RoboNexus 2004, hosted by Robotics Trends, brings the robotics fever to the West Coast. We've taken you through some photos of the products exhibited in our First Look report . Here are more products and photos from RoboNexus 2004.

Vacuum and Surveillance

iRobot introduced their second generation robotic vacuum, the Roomba Discovery, this summer. If you haven't read our review of the Roomba Discovery, head over to this link: http://www.everydayrobots.com/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=7&Itemid=25.

iRobot has sold over 1 million of these robotic vacuums, making the company the envy of the consumer robotics market.

Looking for the cream of the crop among robotic vacuums? The Trilobite, in Electrolux's signature Cayenne red silk finish, takes aim at the high end market. The Trilobite, named for a pre-historic creature that cleaned the ocean floor, is a fully automatic robotic vacuum cleaner that lists for $1,799 in the US. That's significantly more than the popular Roomba Discovery and upstart Sharper Image e Vac, so what do you get for your money?

The Trilobite offers a more sophisticated robotic sensor system: rather than relying solely on bump sensors, the Electrolux has sonar sensors that warn it of approaching obstacles, so it need not bump into them in most cases. It also has a more powerful vacuum that's about as loud as the Electrolux Harmony canister vacuum (their "quiet" canister vac).  The unit has a large dust bin that uses the thickest, most effective filter I've seen on robotic vacuum. While none of the current robo-vacs have HEPA filters, the Trilobite's micron filtration does trap and filter a great deal of dust.

If you are a starter in building robotics and playing with robotics kit, LEGO MINDSTORMS is a good kit for you to get your feet wet. If you are a serious robotics researcher, hobbyist or educator looking for a teaching platform, you will need something that's both easy to use and powerful enough to build projects or applications upon. The R1 Mobile Robotic Platform from Robotics Connection is designed for this purpose. It comes with powerful motors, durable and easy to work with material, very flexible programming options and a system that can be easily expanded to fit your needs as a robotics platform.

Before the RoboNexus show even starts, we got a sneak peak at the products that will perform in the competitions or on display. We will bring you more in-depth reviews and reports on some the products here, but in this first look, we give you a peak at some of these robots.

At the Innovation Japan 2004 Conference/Expo, Japanese universities showed off their research projects to industry leaders. The Tokyo Institute of Industry (東京工業大学) demonstrated some of their robots.

Roller Walker, a robot that can move at a fast speed and stand steady with its wheels flattened.

You can also check out a video showing how the Roller Walker moves here.

While both low and high end robotic vacuum cleaners have much in common when it comes to overall design philosophy, Karcher dares to be different with their RC 3000 RoboCleaner. What makes it different? The robot's base station automatically empties the dirt from the robot so you don't have to. Many folks have expressed a great desire for this feature, and the Karcher is currently the only robotic vacuum to offer it. Since you don't have to empty the robot's dirt bin every two hours, the vacuum can clean literally all day long without human intervention. To top it off, you won't have to invert and bang a dust bin over your trash can, sending dirt back into the air and your lungs. This and the RC 3000's ability to reliably return to its base station for cleaning and charging then set out again cleaning make it a very autonomous and worry-free robotic vacuum.

Two years ago, Roomba was the only affordable home vacuuming robot on the market. Now we have a few competitors in the under $300 space, with the $199 Sharper Image e Vac being the most recent entry in June 2004. It was $299 but Sharper Image reduced the price at the end of August to $199: an even better deal! While some robo-vacs look like clones of the Roomba, Sharper Image’s e Vac has a distinctly different look and design philosophy.