Not robotics related, but listening to a rebroadcast of “A Prairie Home Companion” when I heard this song:
Sushi-Yucky (Sukiyaki)
by Pat Donohue
Saturday, May 13, 2000
Listen (Sorry you need Real Player)
From: TreeHugger.com
Instructable user mszymczak has let us share his project with you for building a mechanical hand with plastic drinking straws. This project is a great primer for kids to spark their interest in building more complicated gadgets.
for the full article goto: http://www.treehugger.com/slideshows/gadgets/make-mechanical-hand-plastic-drinking-straws/
From: http://gizmodo.com/run-for-your-lives-self-aware-hexapod-is-self-aware-950951793
Many of you have expressed some, um, concerns about a few of the bots we’ve covered in recent weeks. ATLAS, for instance, is quite frightening, but it’s not yet self-aware. This tiny hexapod, however, is and it’s rather unsettling.
With all “limbs” intact, the hexapod gets along pretty quickly at 26 cm/s, but once you chop one of its six legs (?), it beings to stagger like a drunken sailor at about 8 cm/s. And then by the power of Greyskull or a series of algorithms, it runs through a series of tests to regain proper efficiency. In other words, it’s basically self-aware.
The correlation to humans the creators present is rather compelling:
On a higher level, this concept could also share some similarities with what human do when they are injured: if a movement is painful, humans do not fully understand what cause the pain, but they identify the behaviors that cause the pain; once they know that some move are painful, they learn to instinctively avoid them.
All joking aside, this is an amazing advancement in robotics and one that could have larger implications for other bots in the near term. Sure, it takes the little guy about 20 minutes to right the ship, but the fact that it can and does is pretty damn cool. [Spectrum IEEE]
From: http://blog.qmee.com/qmee-online-in-60-seconds/
Online in 60 Seconds [Infographic] is an infographic that was produced by Qmee
From: http://petapixel.com/2013/07/27/outdoor-nature-cam-captures-a-veritable-bear-hoedown/
This has really nothing to do with robots (unless you count the camera as a robot) but I just wanted to share it:
From: LINK
From: LINK
From: http://geekbeat.tv/aquabots-are-hexbugs-that-learned-to-swim/
Just because we’re headed toward an inevitable war with the robots, that doesn’t mean we can’t have a little fun along the way. We’ve told you about Hexbugs before – now they’re taking to the water, ready to inhabit a fish bowl near you.
Aquabots, the aquatic variant of Hexbugs, are available in either shark or clown fish varieties and in ten colors. Driven by electro-magnetic propulsion, they start swimming when they come in contact with water. These little guys are almost eerie in how well they mimic actually fish movements. The perfect solution for the person who wants a fish on their desk but just knows they’ll forget to feed it.
[I tried to find them online – I guess they are “Coming Soon” because I had no luck]
