Eclectic junk from the four corners of the ‘Net. And pictures too!
I remember wanting one of these so bad when they came out, 32 bit CPU, QWERTY keyboard, huge LCD screen, graphing and real time 3D rotation… Man, these were the hottest things out there. Now days I think you can get all that and more in a PDA but they don’t look nearly as cool.
See more classics at the Datamath Calculator Museum
Traditionally, an air plane uses control surfaces like flaps to translate from one position and orientation to another in space (air). In England, an aircraft is being developed that will do away with movable surfaces and replace them with vectored thrust. Than means that in place of a flap there will be a vent that will blow air out of the trailing edge of the win. The result will be a plane with far fewer moving parts, lower cost, and an over all higher reliability.
The degrees of freedom on these things just gets better and better as time goes on. I keep thinking that a clip of dancing robots will surface showing the guys building ‘robot’ pyramids or doing monkey chains. Looking forward to when they become waterproof and start doing synchronized swimming routines. The coolest innovation so far has got to be the way they can be programmed. You can still use the old spread sheet looking method of setting the joint position on a time line sort of interface if you want but the coolest way is the following:
The simplest way to program ROBONOVA-1 is with the “catch and play” function. Using RoboScript or RoboBasic, just move the robot into any position and click the mouse to “capture” that position. Move the robot into another position and repeat the process. The software then links these “captured” positions and once activated, smoothly transitions the robot’s movements through these programmed positions.
Hard to beat that!
(Thanks to special agent Kevin who is on assignment at the digital frontier for this link)
Very cool but cool with a non cool price. Who would have known that a computer 2"x2"x1.7" would cost $1330!
[via Gizmodo]
I like lighter than air vehicles, I think that it’s just a matter of time until we start seeing them again in our skies (no, not dropping bombs on cities, anyway those were zeppelins). I think I saw this in an issue of Popular Science last month but I can’t remember…
[via Treehugger and Retro Thing]
That’s right kids and cadets, the SuitSat isn’t dead, its just keeping a low profile before it burns up. The reception has been ‘in the weeds’ for many people but it’s strong enough for people to copy bits of the transmission. SuitSat.org has reception reports from Hams around the world that have been able to make out what the oddball satellite has been saying.
ARRLWeb: "SuitSat-1" Alive, But Signal Weak; "Keep Listening!" ARISS Urges