More from the irrefutable Magnus Würzer:
This is Mr. Robotics’ progress on his Mechwarrior, which so far he has spent exactly a day and a half on, using parts we had lying around at home, deep down, as a procrastination tool. He will still kick ass and/or take names.
Magnus Würzer of RoboExotica and Shifz fame has taken this video in my very own kitchen. It is of our Intern’s marshammlow roasting robot, a fine tetrix-based contraption that results in burned sugar par excellance:
See more awesome like this at this year’s RoboGames, oh boy that’s a lot of robots.
So, for a little background: Stephen Nelson is one of our favorite people that most of the six of you who check this site regularly have never heard of. He builds things like power tool racers and, more importantly, robots.
His stable include Evelyn, a Modified Dawg (watch out, 16mg video download); Eva, the beer retriever, and his latest and gnarliest creation, Ethel, (named for the Zappa song). As Mr. Nelson says, “The goal of building Ethel is a learning experience with software and vision system on a off road robot.” At least this was the goal when he started, she has since sprouted a flamethrower and a portable DJ rig, amongst other things. But I digress.
I will now turn over the tale of the latest adventures with Ethel to Mr. Nelson himself posting from his garage while nursing his road rash:
Dude.
I mean, wow.
Seriously, how has no one thought of this earlier? Aside,of course, from the whole “oh my god I just lost my finger” thing:
Geek Replaces Lost Finger With 2GB USB Finger
A Finnish programmer who lost his finger in a motorcycle accident has now replaced it with a prosthetic finger that has a USB drive built in. Jerry Jalava can now peel back his “nail” and reveal a 2GB “finger drive” for storing photos, movies and software.
Jalava had his left ring finger amputated last summer after crashing into a deer with his motorbike near the Finnish capital Helsinki. Given his profession as a computer programmer, the doctors treating him joked that he should have a USB “finger drive” and Jalava went for the idea.
[Thanks Vexed Magazine! (we found this through their twitter feed, which we have had for a while now.]
The advent of this robot clearly means Rosie the Robot is imminent, so people can stop asking, already.
From Bre Pettis and Adam Cechetti, here are the fruits of a long, punchy night at NYC Resistor:
Bre has established that Skynet will enable itself via tasty cheese-filled snacks:
This is one of those robots that I swear is alive. The noises it made were like an animal and it seemed that everytime we looked the other way, it was coming to life and changing things with the setup.
It shows that the revolution will come via Arduino and reprap controllers, and will be commented on by XKCD.
So back a couple days ago I mentioned I-Wei Huang, who is still cooler than you and sheds mechanical ninja-fu like some people shed viruses. Well, he’s shown up again, saving me from actually having to look for something good to post:
Embrace the Crab-Fu, people.
Being as The Head Rotor, Mr. Robotics and myself live in San Francisco, so along with the usual ballot type measures, we get the fun stuff like Prop R Prop 8. Yes on the first, HELLS no on the second (if we may be permitted to lodge oblique political preferences on this website, which we are, on occasion).
In the meantime, this video is the emblem of a sweet future for our robot overlords:
Thanks Laughing Squid for the video!
I will be watching the results on Twitter (follow WashPostResults for state-by-state reporting) while attending a very important business function at Lagunitas Brewery this evening, which will entail drinking enough beer so that we can’t tell the difference between the hero and the villain, Purim-style.
However you pronounce it, it’s freaking cool:
I have one-a them nifty Lynxmotion hexapods, I imagine if I just applied myself one of these days I, too, could someday be cool. That’s what my guidance counselor always used to say, anyway.
Many tanks to the many tentacled wonder, Laughing Squid.
. . .From the adorable Grant Imahara:
Yeah, do like Grant did and get yerself one-a them sexy stickers over in the sidebar there. Then you can say you were one of the cool kids way back when.
[Thanks Grant!]
I wrote a wee piece on io9. It’s an interview with Mythbuster Grant Imahara, an interesting lunch date and all around neat guy.
Check it out over there, then come over here for some upcoming awesomeness about Giant Killer Robots.
Channel Nine’s priorities are straight, of course, in a data set where giant killer bipedal robots firing airsoft pellets are top priority. Which they are. So have a watch and get all slobbery over MechWars, and then build one and inhale the awesome.
This Week on C9: Dynamic Silverlight, VSTS, buying Caio, and Mech Wars
[Thanks Andrew!]
Katyusha Kalashnikova the Foul-Mouthed Midget sends us this neat little software bot that locates closed-captioned movies in whatever zip code you happen to be in.
Fomdi is a happy little search bot that enables the deaf and hard of hearing to find a movie they can actually enjoy in a theater. You’d be surprised how annoying this is to do ordinarily.
In addition, today YouTube unveiled a new captioning service for its videos, which is very forward thinking and not-evil of them to do. YouTube joins the ranks of other like-minded companies like the BBC, CNet, UC Berkeley, MIT and Gonzodoga that have realized that you you can just do the darndest things with all this new technology, and make friends and influence people besides.
Cedric Dupont, engineer for Volkwagen and collaborator on Stanford’s DARPA Grand Challenge team, has written an enchanting article on building Stanley for the 2005 DARPA grand Challenge.
Why Stanley? Stanford was originally planning to use a Ford SUV for this project, and Mike thought it would be clever to call the robot “Stan” (Stanford, get it? I thought you would). Obviously this joke did not work with the VW Touareg, and the team chose “roadrunner” as the new codename. In fact most of Mike’s original code still refers to “roadrunner”. A few months later, when the time came to have our first press event we revisited the issue of naming. Both Pamela Mahoney (our liaison with major sponsor MDV) and myself felt that “Roadrunner” did not sound likeable enough, and there was also a brief consideration of trademark issues (Plymouth produced a Road Runner). Reminiscing the early Stan I proposed Stanley, which was deemed to sound more friendly, “human” and somehow recalled the pioneering/exploratory dimension of this project. And so the car was christened. Anecdotically, in the summer of 2005 Joe and I built a duplicate as back up, that we dubbed “Stanlette”. It was a near perfect copy, with a few minor differences in the skidplate and bumper guard, an improved electric system and a more modern engine (the 6-cyl TDI). For the record, we never had to use our backup and it is the original Stanley, the same one that survived thousands of miles of testing that conquered the Darpa Grand Challenge.
Stanley was installed at the Smithsonian in 2006.
[Thanks Lem!]
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