I use RSS to follow the news sites, blogs, etc. that I'm interested in. I also use it to follow the journals and funding agencies in my research area. Most journals publish an RSS feed of their recently published papers' abstracts and dump 20-30 new articles out every few weeks. Funding agencies also tend to release announcements in batches. In any case, it helps me to stay on top of the recent developments.

If you're a robotics and controls researcher, you might find my collection helpful to get you started. Most RSS services allow import of OPML files. You can grab mine here. This link will likely open in your browser if you just click on it, so it's probably best to right-click and save-as.