A great example of the “Open Source” Community solving a real world problem! This open source project is for a artificial hand for those who need one. The project is documented at http://comingupshorthanded.com/
National Love Your Robot Day: Our 10 favorite robots in film and on TV
From Hypable.com
By Karen Rought at 1:00 pm, February 7, 2013
Valentine’s Day may be a week away, but our robotic friends get to feel the love early! Today just so happens to be National Love Your Robot Day, and we here at Hypable couldn’t let that pass without a little celebration of our own.
Robots come in all shapes and sizes, with a huge variation of purposes and talents. And we love them all. From old pals to new ones, we’ve seen a million different kinds, and the group below is just a tiny slice of a larger list of famous ‘bots. Each one comes from a different world, but they all have one thing in common: they’re some of the most loveable robots to ever grace our television screens.
1. Sonny, ‘I, Robot’ (2004)
2. WALL-E, ‘WALL-E’ (2008)
3. Bumblebee, ‘Transformers’ (2007)
4. AstroBoy, ‘Astroboy’ (2009)
5. K-9, ‘Doctor Who’ (2006)
6. Iron Giant, ‘The Iron Giant’ (1999)
7. Rosie the Maid, ‘The Jetsons’ (1985-1987)
8. R2D2, ‘Star Wars’ (1977-Present)
9. Rodney Copperbottom, ‘Robots’ (2005)
10. Number 5, ‘Short Circuit’ (1986)
Continue reading
From IEEE Spectrum – Video Friday
This video went viral this week, but if you haven’t seen it already, it shows a German metal band called Compressorhead, which consists of three hydraulic robots. They can play covers of Motorhead, AC/DC, and Black Sabbath. This is what you’d call Heavy Metal.
From: cnet.com
by: Tim Hornyak
Jan 23, 2013
InMoov is an open-source DIY printable robot that can obey voice commands. It’s slightly creepy, but at least it’s cheap. Full details at http://inmoov.blogspot.com/
From: IEEE Spectrum
Robots at CES 2013
Dancing speakers, new Lego Mindstorms, and a window vacuum were among the robots spotted at the show
BY Stephen Cass & Celia Gorman // Wed, January 16, 2013
The unveiling of the new version of Lego’s Mindstorms kit wasn’t the only robot news at the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. While educational and entertainment robots still dominate the offerings on the show floor, there were also robots meant to help with tasks such as window cleaning, reminding young students about homework, or helping autistic children develop better social skills.
Electronic Products
by Jeffery Bausch
Have you ever gone to plug something in but found yourself an inch or two short of the outlet? This may soon be an inconvenience of the past thanks to some outside-the-wire thinking by researchers at North Carolina State University. They’ve developed wires that can be stretched up to eight times their original length and still function just as effectively.
What’s more, beyond connecting to a power source, the can also be used for headphones. They also present a unique opportunity when it comes to electronic textiles.
How they did it
The group started with a thin tube made of extremely elastic polymer. They then filled the tube with a liquid metal alloy made up of gallium and indium, an effective conductor of electricity.
“Previous efforts to create stretchable wires focus on embedding metals or other electrical conductors in elastic polymers, but that creates a trade-off,” explains Dr. Michael Dickey, an assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at NC State and co-author of a paper on the research.
“Increasing the amount of metal improves the conductivity of the composite, but diminishes its elasticity,” he adds. “Our approach keeps the materials separate, so you have maximum conductivity without impairing elasticity. In short, our wires are orders of magnitude more stretchable than the most conductive wires, and at least an order of magnitude more conductive than the most stretchable wires currently in the literature.”
Video
While the video below isn’t exactly the most entertaining piece of media ever created, it does demonstrate the effectiveness of the stretchable wire pretty clearly.
Outlook
Manufacturing the wire is pretty simple, but it’s still going to be some time before it hits the shelves. Dickey notes that, of the challenges the group still faces with the technology, figuring out how to minimize leakage of the liquid metal should the wires be severed absolutely needs to be addressed.
In the meantime, you can check out the group’s paper, entitled “ Ultrastretchable Fibers with Metallic Conductivity Using a Liquid Metal Alloy Core ” in the online edition of Advanced Functional Materials. Free log-in is required.
Story via: ncsu.edu
