Sometimes you are in the mood for something moody, something fantastically stylish and ALSO something confusing and intriguing.
Behold: mannequins, automata, style for days and also …
people behaving … as … such???
(click through to the ‘tube for embiggening)
and thank you, the ever amazing Coilhouse!
Hello again!
A new installment to the Deus Ex series has been released, and to celebrate the launch Rob Spence was commissioned to report back on the current state of bionic prosthetics.
Rob Spence lost his right eye and replaced it with a video camera, earning the self-proclaimed cyborg the nickname of Eyeborg!
The video contains a good deal of game footage of Deus Ex: Human Revolution in order to compare the cybernetics in the game to their closest real counterparts.
DISCLAIMER: Skip to 0:16 if you want to avoid footage of Rob Spence’s eye being operated on.
Enjoy:
Love robots? Now they can love you back!
Welcome to Hooman Samani’s Lovotics – an area of research dealing with human-to-robot relations.
Across 11 research papers, Samani has outlined — and begun to develop — an extremely complex artificial intelligence that simulates psychological and biological systems behind human love. To do this, Samani’s robots are equipped with artificial versions of the human “love” hormones — Oxytocin, Dopamine, Seratonin, and Endorphin — that can increase or decrease, depending on their state of love. On a psychological level, by using MRI scans of human brains to mirror the psychology of love, the robots are also equipped with an artificial intelligence that tracks their “affective state”; their level of affection for their human lover.
Observe as this lovely combination of R2D2 and Roomba strives for your affection:
After reading this article I immediately visited this tv-tropes piece, knowing all-well that I could suffer a similar fate as this fellow.
I came to the conclusion that one of my favorite responses to “What is this thing you call love?” was from a jolly assassin droid by the name of HK-47:
“Definition: ‘Love’ is making a shot to the knees of a target 120 kilometers away using an Aratech sniper rifle with a tri-light scope. Statement: This definition, I am told, is subject to interpretation. Obviously, love is a matter of odds. Not many meatbags could make such a shot, and fewer would derive love from it. Yet for me, love is knowing your target, putting them in your targeting reticle, and together, achieving a singular purpose, against statistically long odds.“
Now please, stop asking us about pleasure bots.
I blame the Svedka robot.
It wants them BIGGER, PRECIOUS:
Video courtesy RobotCity
Can you freaking *imagine* huge, buzzing quadrotors on a skyscraper building site somewhere in Southeast Asia (I can only imagine it would happen in Southeast Asia first for some reason)? It would be so Terminator.
Granted, it’s *really* hard to scale up this sort of machinery (ask any humanoid developer) but the day when the low rumble of back-hoe sized armies of autonomous, insect-like manipulation robots capable of multiple degrees of movement and bent on their one and only overriding task will soon be at hand! Whee!
Video done up by Daniel Mellinger at the University Of Pennsylvania, Philly, creating tomorrow’s robot world domination today!
[Thanks New Scientist!]
Is the Rise of Wearable Electronics Finally Here?
Check out this article by Phillip Torrone chronicling the development of wearable electronic tech - Ranging from music and video players/recording devices, to a huge variety of USB devices, and much much more!
I’ve always wanted to utilize my wrist real estate to my shoes for electronics of some kind. Many of the “wearables” I’m going to share are from my project archives, some are now “real,” and others are products that are out now. I think we’re finally entering an era where wearable electronics can look good and work well.
Mentioned in an earlier post dissecting Hero Jr., Jeri Ellsworth spotted in the depths of this article, this time with her Nintendo Purse!
Special thanks to Make Magazine.
Lose a hand? No problem!
Yet another step closer to The Six Million Dollar Man, as an Austrian had his amputated hand replaced with a bionic limb!
“The patient, called “Milo”, aged 26, lost the use of his right hand in a motorcycle accident a decade ago.
After his stump heals in several weeks’ time, he will be fitted with a bionic hand which will be controlled by nerve signals in his own arm.”
The initial horror over an elective amputation was quickly overcome by intrigue over the mechanical new appendage:
“Such bionic hands, manufactured by the German prosthetics company Otto Bock, can pinch and grasp in response to signals from the brain that are picked up by two sensors placed over the skin above nerves in the forearm.”
Watching the video of another case in the article amazes me with how far the technology has come.
Previously, I was concerned with the plausibility of my USB-Hand that would allow high-fiving, fist bumps, and slapping people through the internet.
My dream yet lives.
-The Intern
We’re waking up with Electric Six a lot around our house these days. Here’s a totally non-gratuitous Robot Themed Song by those crazy awesome dance masters. Grids, romance, loose wires, gazing and blank stares, man railing against faulty technology.
Just in time to rock the weekend!
Who doesn’t like coffee, coffee making, a robot with pony tails and a jaunty instrumental driving it along? I’m afraid I may watch this a few thousand times and fall into a virtual caffeinated stupor. Can’t read the text on mujakiclockwork’s youtube page or on clockwork.shikisokuzekuu.net, but I gather the robot’s name is Hina. There are a few pix on the blog suggesting Hina’s fabricational history. Could be my new BFF! If you have any further insight into this delightful creature, please let us know. My Moccamaster KBT 741 is pining for an introduction.
Have you always wanted to be part of the world domination “in” crowd? Do you get your celebrity gossip from Popular Mechanics? Does five gallons of motor oil, three car batteries and a set of alligator clips turn you on?
Boy do we have a party for you. Join ComBots, Laughing Squid and the Robotics Society of America for a night out to benefit this year International RoboGames. Guzzle tasty beverages made by your favorite robot bartenders, see works in progress and other junk made out of art, and hobnob with some of the leading lights of robotic society.
Get a martini from a robot!
Buy great robot art!
Drive a combat robot!
Get a robot-made roasted mashmallow (made w/a flame thrower!)
image courtesy Scott Beale.
Door charge is a sliding scale, all proceeds go to making RoboGames 2009 better than ever! Give til it hurts. We do.
Follow http://twitter.com/robogames for the latest updates.
Saturday, May 9, 2009, 7:00pm-2am
Secret Location
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.]
Mr. Robotics has conned the Revision3 Guys into letting him in on another robot-oriented episode of Systm! Not only can you learn how to play effectively with a Hi-Tec RoboNova, but you can also understand why Roger Chang, the producer, must have celestial amounts of patience on these shoots.
(Video embedded after the jump, this is for all you cats out there watching on tiny, tiny mobile devices. James Young, I’m looking at you.)
For a Robonova of your very own, check out The RoboGames Systm RoboNova page.
Moller International seem to be trying their darndest to make good on that whole Jetsons-flying-car future that we were all promised back in the ’60s.
It all sounds like pie to me:
From your garage to your destination, the M400 Skycar can cruise comfortably at 275 MPH (maximum speed of 375 MPH) and achieve up to 20 miles per gallon on clean burning, ethanol fuel. No traffic, no red lights, no speeding tickets. Just quiet direct transportation from point A to point B in a fraction of the time. Three dimensional mobility in place of two dimensional immobility.
Operators require a pilot’s license, and probably and airfield and a flight plan and a tower and safety equipment and some other stuff, but other than that it’s *just* like a car.
The Volantor is available for purchase, get in the first 500 delivery positions for a mere-smear $10,000 deposit!
Deposit is refundable until after a successful transitioning flight has occurred. Thereafter deposits are refundable only if Final Delivery Price exceeds List Price (as adjusted for CPI-W) by 5%, OR Standard Equipment List has been shortened OR Guaranteed Performance Specifications are not met, OR FAA Certification Date of the M400 Skycar occurs after December 31
Check out the video on the Moller website.
I am excited about the flying car, because the advancement of the flying car means that people will stop asking about &%$ Rosie sooner rather than later.
[via Gizmag]
For those of you sitting around doing frak-all with your Saturday night (like me), I present an oldie but a goodie:
From RoboCentral:
AquaJelly is an artificial autonomous jellyfish with an electric drive and an intelligent, adaptive mechanical system. AquaJelly consists of a translucent hemisphere and eight tentacles used for propulsion. At the centre of the AquaJelly is a watertight, laser-sintered pressure vessel. This comprises a central, electric drive, two lithium-ion-polymer batteries, the charge control device and the servo motors for the swashplate.
[via DesignNews]
Those wacky Germans. They’ve done away with human waiters. Replaced them with robots.
From the BBC:
Germany likes to call itself the “Land of Ideas” – and over the centuries it has certainly had plenty of them. It was Germans who invented the aspirin, the airship, the printing press and the diesel engine.
But Germany has surely never produced anything quite as weird as the automated restaurant. I say “restaurant” – but it actually looks more like a rollercoaster, with long metal tracks criss-crossing the dining area. The tracks run all the way from the kitchen, high up in the roof, down to the tables, twisting and turning as they go. And down the tracks – in little pots with wheels fixed to the bottom – speeds food.
Supersonic sausages, high-pace pancakes and wine bottles whizzing down to the customers’ tables with the help of good old gravity. One pot is spiralling down so fast, it looks like an Olympic bobsleigh (but it’s only Bratwurst).
What’s more, at the ‘s Baggers restaurant in Nuremberg, you don’t need waiters to order food. Customers use touch-screen TVs to browse the menu and choose their meal.
You can even use the computers to send e-mails and text messages while you wait for the food to be cooked. But all this may not appeal to those who like traditional waiter service.
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