Robot Prototypes At Expo 05

expo

Loads of photos and video from the big robot demo at the 2005 Expo in Japan. The site is all in Japanese but don’t let that scare you, just click on the links and be amazed…
Walking robots, drum playing robots, robots that climb trees, robots that swim, robots that fly. Could this be the future? I hope so.

“Love terrestrial Hiroshi (Aichi international exposition)” on the 9th, displays the robot of 65 types “prototype robot spreading/displaying”

Love and earth Expo “Prototype robot exhibition” holding

Translated if you want to read the text. (Good chance that the links worn’t work.)

technology, robots, Japan,

Flybook A33i

Flybook

For a 9″x6″ laptop this is a fantastic deal. This would be the perfect computer to take with you on a trip so you can dump camera photos to it. Heck, it even comes in diffent colors!

The TechReport has some nice photos of the tiny Flybook. Measuring only 235x155x31mm and weighing 1.2kg, the Flybook has a 1024×600 pixels screen and GPRS, Bluetooth and Wi-fi connectivity built-in (3G Card available). The model in the photo is the A33i running a 1GHz Transmeta Crusoe-based system with 512MB. The A33i is already available already in Europe with a price ticket of about $2,000. The new Flybooks V33i and V35i feature the Pentium M “Dothan” running at 1.1 to 1.2GHz. Those new models are not yet on sale.
The Flybook A33i comes in six fun colors (see photo below). I would definitely get the yellow one. Flybooks are not available yet in the US, but might come soon. I would wait for the new V33i and V35i with the Intel CPUs.

Flybook A33i

cool, small, sub mini, computer

GFX Cards As A Super Computer?

POP!

Cool! I remember when there was an Internet hoax running around about a dedicated SETI at home crunching card. Everyone was all excited about the idea of pumping out gobs of work units day ana night with them. I wonder if the low cost (video card = cheap, super computer = not cheap) video card could be used to do this. There may be life yet for last years craphics card, you know, the one that it will only display a bazillion textures and a million FPS… 😛

The Scout programming language, developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico, US, lets scientists run complex calculations on a computer’s graphics processing unit (GPU) instead of its central processing unit (CPU).
In tests, the graphics processor was able to perform certain types of calculation 12 times faster than a single CPU.
Graphics processors generate smooth and realistic three-dimensional imagery by performing rapid calculations on visual data. And the latest graphics chips rival CPUs for raw processing power, thanks to consumer demand for hardware powerful enough to support the latest 3D computer games.
“These chips normally sit idle when scientists work,” says Patrick McCormick, a LANL researcher. “They have all this processing power but it’s just not being used.”

Computer graphics card reveals supernova collapse
(Thank you agent Greg for this info)
computers, inventive, science, space