Eclectic junk from the four corners of the ‘Net. And pictures too!
Oh cool! LiftPort Group Inc., of Bremerton, Wa. tested a robot that climbed 1,000 feet of ribbon suspended by a balloon. This is the fist step towards building an actual space elevator. A full sized elevator would reduce the cost of spaceflight to the point that a trip into orbit would cost as much as a regular international air flight.
Space elevator robot passes 1,000-foot mark – Space.com – MSNBC.com
Maybe this sort of thing can be adapted into technology that will let cars drive themselves.
The robots come in two colors, yellow (Y) and green (G), and float around on a cushion of air. Each robot is programmed to latch onto a green robot on one side and a yellow robot on the other to form 5-robot strings such as YGGYY or GYYGG.
These are being developed for the US military as well. The future of non-combat missions might one day be dominated by robots. Personally, I think this might cheapen the costs of war to the point where it become more common. Not a good thing.
According to design blueprints released during a meeting of science-related ministers, the robot will have six or eight extendable legs with wheels allowing it to move like an insect over uneven terrain. The robot will be armed with various weapons and will operate both by remote control and its own artificial intelligence system.
I’m first in line and no cuts! Won’t be out for the Christmas rush but when it is you can bet that people will be lining up for them. Just as a way to tell time it would be super handy. And lets not even mention the possibility of moving tatoos.
a “programmable dermal display” in which a population of about 3 billion display pixel robots would be permanently implanted a fraction of a mm under the surface of the skin, covering a rectangle 6 cm x 5 cm on the back of the hand. Photons emitted by these pixel bots would produce an image on the surface of the skin. This pixelbot array could be programmed to form any of many thousands of displays.
Augmented reality and virtual spaces are going to become more and more common simply because the hardware is dropping in price. Nowadays a video projector and good graphics card will only set you back a few hundred bucks and sensor technology is getting real cheap too. The Augmented Coliseum is a fine example of how this technology can enhance a real world application.
The University of Electro-Communications in Tokyo has developed Augmented Coliseum, an amazing (just have a look at the video) augmented reality game environment that enables virtual functions for playing a game using small robots and vehicles, superimposing computer graphics onto toys in the real world.
The remote-controlled vehicles scurry around, while status circles and other data are projected on the surface. As the vehicle moves, cameras and photo-detectors relay the movement to tracking software.
Images are projected to the areas corresponding to the actual positions and directions of the toys: virtual laser beams and missiles appear to fly out of the real vehicles; explosions are overlayed on the screen as they connect with their targets.
Hayabusa arrived Itokawa on 10:00 am, 12 Sep (JST: Japanese Standard Time) and is now hovers orbiting some 20 kilometers off from Asteroid Itokawa.