The folks behind the Roomba robot vacuum appear to have another robotic helper up their sleeves. In this case, it\'s of the lawn mowing variety, but the final design is anything but final if the wide variety of shapes, configurations and features are any indication. A lawn-mowing Roomba-like robot... Lawmba? Loomba? Mowba.
According to a detailed 84-page filing, various configurations are on the table, including all-electric model and a gasoline-electric hybrid. The filing also depicts several acoustic and optical sensors that will allow the robot to "avoid hard surfaces, water and other barriers," in addition to its main job: cut grass. The robot can even sense uncut grass and make sure the blades are aligned properly.
Other features gleaned from the filing by Robot Stock News:
A possible edge trimmer along the outside edge of the chassis.
The possibility of collecting clippings and depositing them at a specified location
The possibility of using RFID tags or proximity sensors to avoid running into pets or people
The possibility of learning your lawn in the first cutting and remembering it for future cuttings
The inclusion of grass-combing technology to ensure that the grass is fluffed and properly oriented for cutting
IEDs, or Improvised Explosive Devices, are a sad fact of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, so you\'ll see the influence of these deadly weapons in this list of the US Army\'s top inventions for 2007. Every year the Army selects the top refinements, outright new inventions, or streamlined weaponry, and pumps out a list. This year\'s list features several new types of Humvee armor, GPS-guided artillery rounds, and a wheeled contraption for vehicles called SPARK (above), which sniffs out IEDs before they have a chance to do any damage.
Here is the XM982 Excalibur precision-guided artillery projectile. Soldiers are able to program map grid coordinates into an Excalibur round and use GPS to guide it to target with pinpoint accuracy. The Objective Gunner Protection Kit (OGPK) is a motorized, rotating turret mounted on top of Humvees and MRAP vehicles. According to the Army it offers protection from IED fragmentation and small-arms fire, includes transparent armor, a sling for the gunner, and super handy rear-view mirrors. The HMMWV Egress Assistance Trainer (that\'s better known as "Humvee") is a mockup of a Hummer\'s cabin, and can be spun around to simulate an upended vehicle. Soldiers use this invention to practice disembarking from damaged or overturned vehicles before they\'re deployed. [CNET]
Forget legs or treads or wheels, everyone, because tomorrow\'s robots will traverse the earth on a thin film of slime, just like the humble snail. At least, that\'s MIT associate professor Anette Hosoi\'s vision of our robot future, and she has the "Robosnail" prototype to prove it. Since 2003, Hosoi and a revolving cadre of students have studied her terrarium full of more than 200 snails in an attempt to recreate their slimy way of locomotion in a robot. They\'ve since got a working model together that can climb tree bark, walls, and—coming soon—perform invasive surgery procedures near you!
The Robosnail moves along various surfaces using moveable segments that ripple along a synthetic slime. Because the slime allows the robot to traverse vertical surfaces and even ceilings, Hosoi hopes to be able to deploy similar robots to adverse environments in the near future. It would be kind of like the slowest bomb sniffing or exploratory robot of all time, that can go anywhere, eventually.
Now, this sounds cool and you can call me shallow all you want, folks, but I don\'t Tricia Helfer would be *quite* as hot slithering around the universe on a trail of slime instead of those long legs of hers. Just an opinion. [CNN]
If German scientists have their way, your shirt may one day be able to pipe up with "I can see you\'re really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over." That\'s because they\'ve developed a new sensor that detects muscle excitation and thus detects stress. It\'s flexible enough to be woven into clothing and survive washing. Why would you want to do that? For sports training, coaches may be able to tell if athletes are tired out or still have some reserves left, or you may slide on a special vest that lets you control your games console. Makes a Wiimote seem kinda wimpy doesn\'t it? [Talk2MyShirt]
The Sierra Nevada Corporation claimed this week that it is ready to begin production on the MEDUSA, a damned scary ray gun that uses the "microwave audio effect" to implant sounds and perhaps even specific messages inside people\'s heads. Short for Mob Excess Deterrent Using Silent Audio, MEDUSA creates the audio effect with short microwave pulses. The pulses create a shockwave inside the skull that\'s detected by the ears, and basically makes you think you\'re going balls-to-the-wall batshit insane. The MEDUSA can also "produce recognizable sounds" and is aimed primarily at military uses, but New Scientist revealed there are other uses in the works, too.
And if you\'re thinking ear plugs are this thing\'s Kryptonite, think again. Lee Sadovnik of Sierra Nevada Corp. said normal audio safety limits are off the table since the sound bypasses the eardrums and emanates from within the skull. "The repel effect is a combination of loudness and the irritation factor," he said. "You can’t block it out."
Wet blanket James Lin of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Illinois in Chicago wants more testing done, however, because of the perceived health ramifications of such a device. Lin said lower, whisper-level intensities work fine, but the higher incapacitating levels expected by the military could fry more than a few brains out on the battlefield. "I would worry about what other health effects it is having," Lin said. "You might see neural damage."
And those "other uses" hinted at above? Try subliminal advertising; or suggestive subconscious comments that you don\'t really "hear" but can influence decision-making anyway. Or, alternatively, the beam can be ramped up to 11 and just kill you outright. WIN!
Fun Taranfx Fact: The MEDUSA is useless against a raging pack of schizophrenics. [New Scientist via Danger Room]
I hope this SSD good/bad theme doesn\'t turn into one of those long-running "good for you/bad for you" food fiascoes (is coffee on the good list again, by the way? Blogging is thirsty work.) A new bit of investigation by Laptopmag seems to challenge the Tom\'s Hardware study that put SSD\'s battery performance in the shade. Citing flaws in the original method, the new study tried the drives under a more "real world use" test regime: cycling through webpages over and over.
They took a Gateway T-6828 with Vista Home Premimum SP1 and tried it with it\'s native Western Digital Scorpio WD2500BEVS and two SSDs: a Samsung SATA II 64GB, and a SanDisk SATA 5000 32GB.
And guess what? Both SSD\'s resulted in an extra 10 minutes of battery life, versus the native hard drive. That\'s not a huge difference, sure, but it\'s a completely different story to the Toms hardware study which showed worse battery performance.
Laptopmag admit that the absolute hardware choices both studies make may have a large impact, but they conclude "in real-world use, SSDs offer a small improvement in battery life." And of course there\'s the potentially faster loading times you get from SSD\'s, meaning your laptop\'s uptime may be more productive. [Laptopmag]
When the Mars Phoenix Lander touched down on the Martian soil, discovered water ice and microbe-friendly acidic alkaline soil last month, it was quite a feat—for a human-controlled robot. But what if the robots sent to distant worlds could think for themselves, a la Wall-E and his Apple-esque main squeeze, EVE? NASA\'s betting on it, and has actually already started work on a "tier-scalable reconnaissance" program that would see armies of small probes exploring the outer reaches of our solar system with minimal human intervention, if any at all. Of course, such self-sufficient robots wouldn\'t be as cute as Wall-E—they\'d actually be large hivemind dirigibles controlling an army of autonomous planet-side probes (think: Rush Limbaugh\'s radio program)—but nevertheless, the possibility for intergalactic robot love stories has never been closer to reality.
The experimental tier-scalable reconnaissance process begins with an orbiting spacecraft deciding on its own where to send an airship armed with further probes. The airship itself, once deployed planetside, could also override the orbiter and decide on its own where to send its stable of landers, NASA said. The first real-world example of the process is set to blast off in 2009. Called the Sky Crane carrier, the probe will hover above the surface of Mars (it\'s so hot right now!) on retrorockets before lowering an "SUV-sized rover using a winch and tether" onto the ideal landing site.
Meanwhile, back here on earth scientists at Caltech have started testing new pseudo self-aware algorithms with three small rovers and a camera that surveys a simulated indoor landscape. The camera identifies targets of opportunity and obstacles, and in turn commands the rovers to drive around obstacles to reach targets without an ounce of human intervention. Eventually, the camera will be replaced with the hivemind airship. The cylon wars will follow soon afterward, we imagine. [MSNBC]
I\'ve changed my mind: this has to be the most jaw-dropping NES mod ever, beating April\'s one. And this time the space-time continuum is at risk of ripping. Modder Darkeru over at Ben Heck forums has twisted reality around by including an entire NES emulator system, plus controls, plus an LCD screen into an original NES cartridge. It got a tiny bit beaten-up during the mod work, but I think we can forgive that because it\'s so ingenious. If I was wearing a hat, I\'d doff it in Darkeru\'s direction. [Ben Heck Forums]
For some reason or other, we\'ve shown you a lot of robotic snakes here on Giz. But this new one is kind of a robot snake in reverse: it\'s designed to float just beneath the surface of the sea and capture wave energy, which it then turns into electrical power. A science team in the UK has been working on the design, and is now testing small versions in a test tank: ultimately the "real" machines would be 23 feet across and 650 feet long, and be able to generate 1 megawatt. Check out the video to see how "Anaconda" works.
Basically the rubber snakes are moored at the right height to bend as a wave rolls past, generating a bulge in the sea water inside. This gets pushed down the tube by the wave to a generator built into the tail end.
A full-scale device would be able to generate enough power for 1,000 homes, and the developers at the University of Southampton think it may be more resilient than other wave-generators due to its lower moving part count, and the fact that it\'s made mostly of materials that resist salt-water corrosion.
Plus, it looks satisfyingly sci-fi, in a scary surprise for divers kinda way. [New Scientist]
Oregon resident Kent Couch finished what our friend the priest could unfortunately not: he got into a lawn chair rigged with huge party balloons, and floated his way to Idaho.
Couch brought GPS but he also brought along a satellite phone, altimeter, and a second GPS device attached to his chair for redundancy. Then there was his pole with a hook, for bringing wind-whipped helium balloons into firing range, and containers of Kool-Aid, which served as ballast. His in-flight meal consisted of a boiled eggs, jerky and chocolate. Video:
For his efforts and meticulous preparation, Couch, a 54-year-old gas station owner, was able to keep the balloon rig at 200 feet for most of the 200 mile journey.
"If I had the time and money and people, I\'d do this every weekend," Couch said before getting into the chair. It was his third balloon flight in three years. "Things just look different from up there. You\'ve moving so slowly. The best thing is the peace, the serenity." And landing, Couch, landing. Right? [CNN]
All you travelers coming home tomorrow from your wild and crazy Independence Day weekend vacations, don\'t be one of 12,000 people who lose their laptops at airports every week. That\'s right, that ain\'t no typo—12,000 dudes and dudettes somehow manage to misplace their portable computers every seven days. That\'s 600,000 machines a year, many containing sensitive information that companies need to account for.
According to a study by the Ponemon Institute and Dell, only 30 percent or so lost laptops are ever recovered. Los Angeles\' LAX airport reported having the most lost laptops out of any other airport, with 1,200 going missing every week. The most likely place for you to lose your computer is at security checkpoints and departure gates—so no matter how many beers you downed this weekend, try to be a little more alert while going through those areas, yeah? [Newlaunches]
One of the coolest things about the Batpod from the upcoming Dark Knight movie is the fact that it actually works. Previously seen being straddled by Meredith Viera on The Today Show, the decked out motorcycle burned rubber at the slightly more dignified British Formula One Grand Prix this weekend. Who else would give anything to be Jean-Pierre Goy, Christian Bale\'s stuntman, right now? [Gizmag]
Before there was the Game Boy, there was Game & Watch. DS Fanboy has a sitdown with two dudes who scoured the world to collect every Game & Watch handheld ever produced: 60 in all, each one a unique and delicious plastic bundle with a single game, like Snoopy Tennis or Donkey Kong Jr. How obsessed is collector Michael Panayiotakis?
After collecting them all, he reset his goal and sold most of them to collect only sealed games, ones in their original blister pack or rare versions (like the special edition Super Mario Bros. box he spent $1200 on). They\'ve also got a pretty sweet gallery retrospective of the Game & Watch that\'s definitely worth checking out on this lazy weekend. [DS Fanboy]
With soaring fuel costs and greenhouse gas concerns, zeppelins might get their second chance to be a relevant mode of transportation. According to the New York Times, several countries are now looking into developing dirigibles for transporting things such as sightseers, postal deliveries and scientific payloads. France\'s postal service, La Poste, seems to have some of the most ambitious plans in mind: using airships on routes between France and Corsica or the Antilles in an effort to reduce emissions.
Most experts say that the dirigibles will likely remain a niche vessel. The flying machines can only reach top speeds of around 100 miles an hour, fly in fair to good weather, and hold a maximum capacity of several dozen passengers. Not to mention, each one is still about the size of a football field. But at least now, thanks to improvements in materials and safety standards, passengers won\'t have to worry about being trapped in another Hindenburg. [New York Times]
Here\'s a great product to ensure that you\'ll never be invited to somebody\'s backyard ever again—the “Easy Install Twist Chair.” Instead of having four legs like regular chairs, the Twist uses a corkscrew base that you plug into the ground and spin until it\'s solidly placed. Bring the chair along the next time you go to a garden party and see if your hosts appreciate you aerating their lawn. [Yanko Design]
Have you ever searched for new updates with Windows Update in Vista? It\'s slow as balls, no matter how beefy your machine is. But! Windows Update is getting an, um, update that will make it run a lot faster—scan times are down almost 20 percent. If you have automatic updates turned off, obviously you won\'t get this happy joy update when it rolls out at the end of the month, unless you go to Windows Update and install it manually. And you should, unless you want update scans to still take forever. [Microsoft Update Product Blog]
Sony is probably OLED\'s most vocal prophet as the TV of the future. But according to Nikkei, they\'re hedging their bets and getting more serious with another next-gen display tech: field emission display, which is a lot like a good ol\' cathode ray tube, except that it\'s super thin—it has all the benefits too, like deep blacks and zero motion blur. A "dream panel" says Nikkei. Plus, they\'re easier to build at large sizes than OLED TVs. Sony just agreed to take over a plant run by Pioneer to begin mass production of FED panels in late 2009 after holding the tech at arm\'s length for years.
Sony\'s plans for FED displays are to push them to broadcasting and medical apps first, building slowly, rather than to jump right into the high-stakes plasma/LCD war, where nobody\'s making money thanks to the very bloody price war. Then it\'ll inch into the consumer market, first with 60-inch displays (at the level they can be more profitable, obviously). Looks like after plasma vs. LCD, we might have yet another fight on our hands: FED vs. OLED. [Nikkei]
For the ultimate game of Duck Hunt, Marksman Training Systems is offering the ST-2 shooting simulator—the first on the market for shotgun and rifle shooting. Co-developed by the British Association for Shooting and Conservation, the simulator is so accurate that its used by Russian and Slovakian national clay shooting teams as a way to practice before the Olympics.
The ST-2 gives exact feedback after every shot, including hit position and a replay of the aiming movement. Results can be saved and kept in a file to record short- and long-term progress. You can even bring your own gun, which can be hooked up to the system\'s programs. Pricing is on a case by case basis, but you can expect this outfit to cost a pretty penny. Snickering dog not included. [Marksman Training Systems via Born Rich]
Someone I know once had the awesome idea of turning a laundromat (popular here in my neck of the woods) into a singles bar. With this concept washer and dryer from Indian designer Harsha Vardhan, we could up our prospective plans a notch and instead turn laundromats into singles lounges. The make believe washing machine doubles as a large seat whether it\'s in active or passive mode. The inner chamber of the chaise acts as a pressure washer and cleans clothes with ionized air instead of water.
While the Alternative Clothes Cleaner unfortunately still remains in the realm of fantasy, I\'d like to believe that someday an appliance like this will finally exist. Then we can all place bets on how many cosmopolitans I\'d need to chug before I can pull out my unmentionables in front of the cutie two sofa-washers down. [DVICE]
Sure, you might loathe Apple with every fiber of your Windows-running being. But look at this iPod USB stick. It\'s so cute. How can you hate it? It comes in 1GB and 2GB flavors for £19.95 (about $40, damn weak dollar) and £24.95 ($50). Yep, still adorable. Awwww. No? You probably hated Wall-E too. [BoysStuff via Nerd Approved]
Now that we\'re headed deep into the middle of summer, it\'s time to bring out water balloons and figure out ingenious ways to fling them at your enemies. Here\'s a great tutorial at Instructables for making a wicked water balloon catapult using surgical tubing, a rag and other random doohickies from around the house. According to the dude responsible for this weapon of watery destruction, this shooter will never explode the water balloon prematurely, unlike some of the types you get in stores. [Instructables]
Making robots even more hardcore, British roboticists have designed machines that will only dance to punk rock music. Standing 2 meters tall, padded in leather and decked in various punk scene insignias, the pogoing robots wait until they hear the familiar strains of anti-establishment rock before they start dancing. Is it just me, or do these things sound like they\'d be a minor threat in the mosh pit?
The machines were designed by a collaboration of artists and scientists from Queen Mary University in London. They use neural networks, a collection of computer processors that function like a simple animal brain, to differentiate between Black Flag and say... Bob Marley. The result: robots that can dance to a genre of music even if they\'ve never heard the song before. Check out the BBC link to see a video of the robots gleefully pogoing to The Fumadores. [BBC]
Windows Mobile users have had to look on in envy as people poked and drew penises on their friends\' walls with dedicated apps for BlackBerry and Palm, wistfully hoping that joy could one day be their own. And now it is! Apparently the first full Facebook app for Windows Mobile, FriendMobilizer will let you do all of the basics like stalk your newly single friend, send messages or ignore requests from people you\'ve never met. It\'s a lot greener (and uglier) than the Centro\'s app (which I like a lot) but hey, beggars can\'t be choosers. And I mean, you guys were begging for this, right? [Face of Mobile via ReadWriteWeb]
Father de Carli, the flying priest who got lost last April, has been found deceased in the middle of the Atlantic. In an effort to raise funds for a local charity organization, De Carli planned to stay for more than 19 hours up in the air using a thousand party balloons, taking a GPS with him to communicate his position in case emergency. Unfortunately for the generous man, the trip ended in disaster.
His body was found yesterday by the Anna Gabriela, a tug working for Brazilian oil company Petrobras, 683 miles (1,100 kilometers) from Father De Carli\'s starting point. His trip started on April 20 after a mass, and his last contact was a desperate attempt to learn how to use his GPS and communicate his position as the wind took him deep into the Atlantic Ocean.
I need to contact someone who can teach me how to operate this GPS, so I can give the latitude and longitude coordinates, which is the only way that people on the ground can know where I am.
An Petrobras official spokesman said that "his clothes and shoes indicate that it\'s him." And now I don\'t know if I should say "Godspeed, Padre" or "this is another candidate for the Darwin Awards."
[Editor\'s Note: I commend you for finding your way out of this world while trying to do some good for the rest of it. Rest in Peace, De Carli. -B.L.] [Bloomberg]
As part of Sharp\'s recent efforts to shove itself to the forefront of solar innovation, the company is showcasing a prototype of a 26-inch LCD Aquos TV that can be powered entirely by the sun. Now even the 1.6 billion people on earth without electricity won\'t have an excuse to miss the next season of Lost.
The set has a contrast ratio of 10000:1 and a 20mm thick display panel. It requires about 30% less power than regular LCD TVs and gets its juice from one of Sharp\'s triple-junction thin-film solar cell modules. The modules are about the same size as the television\'s screen.
Sharp plans to market the LCD and the energy system as a pair and says that its product could be a hit with both people living off the grid and environmentally-conscious consumers. The company will be exhibiting this, and other energy-saving technologies, at the G8 summit on Monday. [Physorg]
The second Futurama DVD hasn\'t even stopped spinning in our drives and we\'re already looking forward to the third one. It\'s a much geekier affair than even Futurama fans are used to, as they\'re delving into the world of Dungeons and Dragons. Will this Ender\'s Game Futurama movie be any good? We\'re pretty sure it will, seeing as the Kirk and Spock heads are back, and that was probably one of the best episodes ever.
Before we completely bid adieu to our nation\'s birthday, we here at Taranfx would like to give one more shout out to the fourth of July. Seems like even the stars in the sky can\'t resist putting up a display for good ol\' American freedom. These red-white-and-blue pictures of Supernova remnant SN 1006 are what\'s left over from a star explosion first observed by humans in year 1006.
The flash in the sky is a remnant of a blast 7,000 light-years away in the Lupus constellation. Scientists say that it was the brightest observed supernova in recorded history, and that the light from the explosion could be seen in the daytime for weeks afterward.
The supernova sent a shockwave that traveled outwards at nearly 20 million mph. In the 1960s, radio astronomers first detected the ring of material pushed out by the shockwave. With the latest imagery, released by the Hubble Space Telescope\'s science team, you can see a gossamer stripe with starlight shining through it – the rocket\'s red glare indeed.
The Gadget: Lego Egg Timer. The Price: $7.99 The Verdict: It\'s cute. It\'s makes a wonderful tic-tock noise. It helps you do roasted lamb and chicken and Beef Wellington and cakes. It\'s Lego. Really, it can\'t get any better than that. I only wish it could do more than one hour.
I bought the Lego Egg Timer while visiting Legoland in Denmark, at the end of my visit to the Lego factory. Since then I\'ve used it many times and its design doesn\'t cease to entertain me. The top half of the mini-fig head rotates as it counts time, changing the expression as the minutes pass. Nothing else can be said about it, really, except that it\'s cute and it works great.
By the way, I will resume the chronicles of the Lego trip next week, after giving you a week of respite. Coming soon: an inside look at how the Lego bricks and sets are made, how they are designed from concept to final product, and what it\'s like to work there, among many other things. Stay tuned. [Lego]
How do you celebrate July 4th like a true Gizmodian? If you answered "waking up on the 5th with a severe hangover and sparkler burns where the sun don\'t shine," you\'d be correct! Oh, that, and visiting our July 4th tag.
Faithful readers will know I am not even close to finished exploiting my painful job experiences at the Chuck E. Cheese in the Bergen Mall for Taranfx fodder. God I hate that place. When I was growing up, the cooler place to be with way better pizza and far better games was ShowBiz Pizza. ShowBiz also had another advantage: this terrifying but captivating animitronic musical band called Rocka-fire Explosion, which is the subject of this documentary. I am watching it, and lighting a candle in remembrance. And Fuck Chuck E. Cheese. [Youtube via BoingBoing\'s David P.]
Here is the XM982 Excalibur precision-guided artillery projectile. Soldiers are able to program map grid coordinates into an Excalibur round and use GPS to guide it to target with pinpoint accuracy.
The Objective Gunner Protection Kit (OGPK) is a motorized, rotating turret mounted on top of Humvees and MRAP vehicles. According to the Army it offers protection from IED fragmentation and small-arms fire, includes transparent armor, a sling for the gunner, and super handy rear-view mirrors.
The HMMWV Egress Assistance Trainer (that\'s better known as "Humvee") is a mockup of a Hummer\'s cabin, and can be spun around to simulate an upended vehicle. Soldiers use this invention to practice disembarking from damaged or overturned vehicles before they\'re deployed. [CNET]
For his efforts and meticulous preparation, Couch, a 54-year-old gas station owner, was able to keep the balloon rig at 200 feet for most of the 200 mile journey.
