Update- Apparently Flyfire is a secret still, since it looks like MIT has pulled the video, plus the website, just an hour or so after we posted this. Weird…
By Evan Ackerman
The problem with true three dimensional displays (displays that you can walk around) is that they require pixels to be floating in space. This has been done with lasers and plasma, but such technologies are super expensive and limited in many ways. MIT’s SENSEable City Laboratory in collaboration with ARES Lab (Aerospace Robotics and Embedded Systems Laboratory) has hit upon the idea of creating huge free form three dimensional displays out of individual “smart pixels” made up of micro helicopters carrying LEDs:
Gigantic 3D displays made up of swarms of micro helicopters that can be released into any open space… How awesome is that? More, after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »
I don’t know enough about molecular biology for how this works to make any sense to me, but apparently, researchers at NYU have created an autonomous bipedal walking robot out of a single strand of DNA with a linkage in the middle. I’m going to just let them explain how it works:
The walking device consists of a strand of DNA that contains a 5’,5’ linkage in the middle. One leg is called L-E and the other is called L-O. It walks on a track consisting of a series of stem-loops (T1-T4) that are part of a stiff DX motif. It is fueled by a pair of successive stem-loops (F1 and F2) that are in solution. The driving force for its motion is the formation of more base pairs than exist at any given time. The system is shown below…
We covered the Neato Robotics XV-11 robot vacuum in detail on BotJunkie back in December, and last night at Digital Experience here at CES we got a chance to check it out in person. Just to recap, the Neato is unlike most other robot vacuums in that it isn’t a gussied up Roomba knockoff but rather an original design, the flagship feature of which is a laser based room navigation system that can clean much faster and more efficiently than a Roomba’s pseudo-random patterns. Check out our earlier post on BotJunkie for more details, or just watch the demo, narrated by Neato Robotics CEO Max Safai, right after the break. Read the rest of this entry »
We’re continually bemoaning the fact that the selection of practical robotic vacuums is extremely limited here in the US (although not so muchelsewhere). Besides iRobot’s Roomba, you’ve got… Well, you don’t have much. Today, Neato Robotics (yep, their real name) unveiled the first new model of consumer robot vacuum we’ve seen in the US in quite a while: the XV-11.
Now, I hate to describe the XV-11 in terms of the Roomba, but for better or worse, that’s just kind of the way it is…
Even if you’ve got a micro air vehicle that provides its own power for thrust, like a Rhinoceros beetle with an implanted optical lobe stimulation controller, you still need power for the communication system itself. One ideal solution is to try and harvest electricity from the insect, but a more realistic approach (at the moment) might be a dependable long-life battery, and nothing is more dependable and long-life and potentially dangerous than a nuclear battery.
We first met Autom two years ago, back when she was a resident of the MIT Media Lab. Since then, she’s been significantly redesigned and her parent company, Intuitive Automata, is almost ready to unleash her upon the overweight world. Autom is sort of like your own personal weight loss coach, except she doesn’t annoy you by being human and in better shape than you are. Instead, she simply tracks your eating and exercise habits and talks to you about your daily progress. She’s able to figure out what works best for you and what doesn’t, adapting to your needs as they change. And she does a good job, apparently: people using Autom to help with their weight loss will keep to a diet and exercise routine for twice as long as people using more traditional methods…
This article, from Israel’s Yediot Acharonot newspaper, is titled “‘A Vacuum Cleaner Captured a Snake.” It looks like “captured” is a bit of an understatement… The Roomba 560 appears to have totally pwned what we’re told is a deadly viper threatening some kids (and possibly a cat) by sucking it up around one of its rotating brushes…
Could someone please explain to me why, exactly, roboticists seem to think that it’s such a good idea to give their creations swords? Like, I get that it’s a way to demonstrate grasping and dexterous movements, but if you start with robots demonstrating swords, you move on to robots fighting each other with swords, and this will be our terrifying future. And swordplay seems to be a bad idea for HUBO here more than most, since it repeatedly hits itself in the head with a sword that is thankfully not made out of anything dangerous…
Stanford University is already famous for its autonomous robotic vehicles, including Stanley (who won the DARPA Grand Challenge in 2005) and Junior (runner up in the DARPA Urban Challenge in 2007). This weekend, Stanford held an event to showcase their partnership with Volkswagen on a new $2 million autonomous innovation laboratory. On display was Stanford’s latest autonomous vehicle, a robotic Audi TTS named Shelley. Shelley currently holds the unofficial world speed record for an autonomous car at over 130 mph, and will be racing up Pikes Peak all by herself next year:
Stanford also demonstrated an autonomous valet parking system, where an almost stock Volkswagen Passat entered a parking lot, located an empty space, and parked itself:
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