Eclectic junk from the four corners of the ‘Net. And pictures too!
This is pretty cool, NASA is testing out a UAV that will seek out thermals to extend its flight duration. Once it finds a thermal the plane will shut down it’s motor and ride the currents. This is much like a large bird will do to save energy so they can hunt for food without getting to hungry while they are doing it.
Here are some handy tips on getting your idea for a robot into the real world by using simpler and easier to work with materials than say metal and formed plastics.
I was looking at my old Palm III PDA and thinking just how handy it was in it’s day. I still think the handwriting recognition on it was the best.
I was thinking that something so useful shouldn’t be stuck in a box somewhere to be forgotten, it should be hacked and mangled until it can do something else! 🙂
I found this book, “The Ultimate Palm Robot“. Looks like to might have some useful info on how to interface hardware on to the Palm platform. Looks like it uses the Palm Pilot Robot Kit as the base for the projects. The holonomic drive system will turn just about any head. You can read a nice review of it here at the Gadgeteer. If your up for spending $300US on your little ‘bot your doing better than me!
For $85US there is the SVX 203C Robotic development system, but it looks like they might not be sold any more.
Finally, there is this clever little paper manipulating robot that uses a Palm III as it’s brain.
So it looks like if you do have an old Palm PDA you can still get some action out of it in the form of a robot.
I saw this on the news and even before they said where it had happened I knew it was here in Arizona. Yeah, we have ‘special’ people here don’t we… I figure I’d blog this because a robot was used to ‘disarm’ the subject.
In searching for more info on the story, I ran across the following bits on info. Wikipedia has a nice entry on the subject of
bomb disposal, if your in the market for the latest in bomb disposal robots, the teleMAX looks very nice. Small and good at what it does. Two things I look for when I’m shopping for a robot. And finaly, there is even some vintage bomb disposal humor from WWII (I wish the scans were larger, some of the text is hard to read).
This is a great addition to the iRobot line of PackBots. The PackBot Explorer is equipped with a video camera and sound sensing gear that enables it to zero in on the source of gunfire. Once the gunfire is located the military personal can, as they say, ‘put mass on target’.
[via engadget]
Robotic-vacuum maker, BU team up on antisniper device
First off, what the heck is a ‘Catom’ you ask? Well, a catom is short for “claytronic atoms”. That would be atom sized robots that could assemble themselves into all sorts of handy devices with the aid of a computer. Think a bucket of smart micron sized LEGO bricks. You order up some way cool germ seeing micro glasses off the Internet and your computer commands your bucket of smart LEGOs to take the shape and functionality of it. Once finished you pull your micro glasses out of the bucket and start to freak out about how unclean your house is.
Right now researchers are trying to build centimeter sized robots that will do this so don’t look for your catom based replicator just yet, give them about 20 years for that.