Tweeting from weird places (like a space station) is the new “I installed linux on a weird thing”… Next up, the space station will tweet on its own… Expedition 22 Flight Engineer T.J. Creamer made first use of the new system Friday, when he posted the first unassisted update to his Twitter account, @Astro_TJ, from […]
Over at Boing Boing, MAKE bud Xeni Jardin has an interview with MSF (aka “Doctors without Borders”) Logistics Supervisor Laurent Dedieu in New York, and Hocine Bouhabib in Haiti, about the inflatable hospitals they’re setting up in Port-au-Prince. How do you create a surgery center in a disaster zone in the shortest amount of time […]
I just had a major “the future has arrived” moment when I saw this video, taken aboard the ISS, of three spherical robots doing precision formation flying in zero-g. Note that the video embedded above is clearly time-lapsed–they’re not actually moving that fast. Here’s another video (with inevitable Strauss accompaniment) that shows two of the bots orbiting each other at actual speed. They maneuver using compressed carbon dioxide. It’s all part of MIT’s SPHERES project. [via BotJunkie]
Hewlett-Packard sets their sites on the budding, low-cost 3D printer market by signing a deal allowing them to brand Stratasys‘ pre-established technologies (see above demo) – Stratasys Inc. (Nasdaq: SSYS), the leading manufacturer of 3D printers and 3D production systems, today announced it has signed a definitive agreement with HP for Stratasys to manufacture an […]
The folks at Council, think tank focused on the Internet of Things, have declared April 9th the Global Internet of Things Day to help focus attention on this anticipated burgeoning of smart/RFID-enabled/networked spimes. Council proposes to hold very small Council meetings anywhere in the world on April 9. These can vary to having a cup […]
Roboticists at Israel’s Ben Gurion University, led by Dr. Amir Shapiro, have posted a cool video on YouTube showing four of their wall-climbing bot designs in action:
First, a magnetic climber that has compliant magnetic wheels and is capable to climb on ferromagnetic surfaces. This robot can be used for inspection of ship hull or bridges. Second, is a Snail inspired wall climbing robot capable of climbing on non metallic surfaces using hot melt glue. The robot secretes the adhesive at the front and peels off the track from the wall at the bottom leaving a trail behind just like the snail does. Third, is a robot that uses sticky wheels in order to attach itself to the wall. It simply has 3Ms sticky tape on the wheels. It can climb on smooth surfaces like glass. Fourth, is a four legged wall climbing robot for climbing on rough surfaces. It has 12 claws made of fishing hooks mounted on each footpad, and it climbs like cat or other rodents.
I think the second bot, the “snail” one, is my favorite. It starts around 0:30. [via Bot Junkie]
Google has just filed a patent application for a method to automagically detect billboards in Streetview-type imagery and replace them in real time with Google’s own dynamically-generated ads. It’s just a patent application at this point, so there’s no way of knowing if it’s actually going to happen yet. Still, an interesting idea. [via Gizmodo]
