The most (eerily) impressive was Simon, how to do things as he was taught them. Simon, a product of the Georgia Institute of Technology's , was made using simple algorithms as part of a project designed to prove that programming a robot to do certain tasks didn’t have to be difficult for individuals, as well as how robots in the home could be in future.

A common sight this year was robots built usinf Lego Mindstorm NXT and Arduino kits. One robot, , was even made out of a child’s toy.

The coolest example of homemade fun has to be the . To use the scanner, you'd place an object on the machine’s two flat surfaces. The laser traces the object, and a Webcam picks up the laser-tracing, sending it to 3D modeling software on a PC. Awesome.

Did we miss your favorite robot of the year? Tell us in the comments!