Category: To be used for Evil

Crusher, UGCV

The Crusher

To heck with UAV, UGCV is the real ticket. If you were wondering where the brains behind the DARAP Grand Challenge robots were destine to end up, it’s in a machine like the ‘Crusher’. Crusher is a 6.5 ton unmanned all terrain vehicle capable of packing loads of 8,000 pounds where it will be needed the most. It’s still years away from being a solders mechanical pack mule of choice, but when is does come into general use it should reduce the amount of casualties in convoys. That is assuming that the robots don’t decide to drive off the wrong direction due to a programming glitch.

[via neat-o-rama]

Engineers Unveil Futuristic Unmanned ‘Crusher’ Vehicle

Insect Eye Could Be Your Next Camera

Bug Eye Micro Lens

This could trump the Apple Big Brother LCD screen:

The eyes of insects such as bees and dragonflies are made up of tens of thousands of tiny components called ommatidia. These all point in different directions to give the insect a very wide field of vision.

Inspired by this, Luke Lee and colleagues developed an artificial compound eye consisting of a moulded polymer resin dome filled with thousands of light-guiding channels, called waveguides, each topped with its own miniature lens.

The artificial eye could be used to create surveillance cameras, cellphone cameras, and surgical endoscopes with a much wider field of vision, the researchers say. The whole eye is 2.5 millimetres in diameter. Each artificial ommatidia consists of a lens attached to a polymer waveguide that directs light towards the centre of the eye.

Sounds like an amazing device.

‘Bug-eyed’ lens takes a broader view

Big Brother Looks Like an Apple?

Now this is neat. Implant gobs of imaging sensors between the LCD pixels and have a chunk of software assemble the output as an image. Sounds Orwellian (yeah, that’s what everyone is saying about it…) to me. Might be handy though, I’m sure that advertisers will love this sort of thing, it so reminds me of Max Headroom.

[via core77] 

New Scientist Breaking News – Invention: Apple’s all-seeing screen

2006 Makefaire

MakeFaire 2006

 
The 2006 Makefaire is going on in San Francisco Ca this weekend. If your in the area or have enough cash burning a hole in your pocket to get a flight there you should go. Hobbyists, scientists, tinkers, gadget makers, Mythbusters, warrenty voiders, and a slug of other cool people are there discussing what they do and showing you how to do it. If your like me and are stuck at home, you can catch some video and see photos of it online.

Fisheye Lens for Your Webcam / Digital Camera

Cheap fisheye webcam lens

If you every play with webcams you quickly discover that the field of view just isn’t what is should be. These guys have put together a nice little hacking tutorial on how to mate a door peephole lens with an ordinary low end digital camera. Now I’ve been doing this for some time, either with peepholes like these guys or with some random lenses that I happen to have in my junk box (meniscus, plano convex, convex, etc.). Years ago I used to have a web cam pointed at a TV with a plano concave lens taped in front of it to expand the field of view. Worked great, it was fun to mess with. Adding a super wide angle lens to a low end camera will yield some pretty cool results, I suggest that you run out and pick a few peepholes up, they don’t cost much. I got mine and Home Depot for around $5USD. Heat up the hot glue gun and have fun!

[via Hack-a-day] 

The Aggregate: Fisheye Digital Imaging For Under Twenty Dollars

Catapult and Trebuchet Kits On The ‘Net

Trebuchet and Catapult Kits

I saw today that ThinkGeek is selling a few seige machine kits. Pretty cool if you ask me. How often have you wanted to practice your indirect fire skills in the cube farm?
However, once you get tired of these little kiddy kits, go shopping over at CatapultKits.com for some real fun. I’d suggest getting the Mini Desktop Mangonel. The sucker looks dead cool!:

Mini Desktop Mangonel

Hardwood, real leather, low price and a range of 20+ feet are just a few of the features of this high quality kit. I personaly want the Floating Arm Trebuchet kit, but I know I’d get in trouble with it.

[via Uncrate and Google]

ThinkGeek :: Catapult and Trebuchet Kits

CatapultKits.com