NimbRo is a robot. A soccer-playing robot. A soccer-playing robot with some pretty kick ass software. If you can raise $25,600 to buy a fully assembled NimbRo, and you understand how really complicated technological thing works, you can get the software for free and help push robotics forward. NimbRo’s creators at the University of Bonn are NimbRo and open platform product to help break the always-starting-from-scratch nature of robotics.

By making the NimbRo’s software and hardware openly available, the robot’s makers hope to help other researchers develop active, midsize, bipedal robots. “Our goal is to stop reinventing the wheel over and over,” Sven Behnke, who led research on the NimbRo, said in a statement. “By using an open platform together with other researchers, we want to find solutions while saving on effort and expenses.”

Just think, robot-building soccer nerds: You could be the first person in history to program a robot to do a Cruyff turn.

::looks at video::

Yeah, that’s not going to happen for a while. Forget the Cruyff turn; “turn” seems like it’s going to be hard enough.

Just don’t screw up and accidentally hook the robot up to Skynet. And am I the only on that wants to call the robot NimBro? Someone is going to program this thing to play ultimate frisbee and wear a visor, I just know it.