Creepy but true: researchers at the University of California, Berkley, have managed to create a live remote-control beetle. Using six electrodes hooked up to the beetle’s brain and muscles, and a 1.3g radio module carried on the bug’s back, the flying rhinoceros beetle can be remotely-controlled from a nearby laptop. While the researchers have managed to electrically-control insects before, this is the first time it has been done wirelessly.
DARPA is always coming up with interesting new military technology that we just can’t help but talk about. For instance, their new DBAC device could be used to save lives in the field. That’s definitely pretty cool by us.
New concepts and science breakthroughs are always interesting to read up on. That’s why when I saw what DARPA was up to yesterday, I just had to write about it for you all. DARPA is working to develop a submersible aircraft. Yup, you read that right.
The “Readybot Challenge” team have released footage of their domestic robot, intended to demonstrate the feasibility of a home-help robot capable of performing up to 80-percent of routine chores. This current Readybot prototype – which resembles a dishwasher with a bin-lid dome and outstretched “hug me!” arms – can tidy up mess left on the floor, empty trash and, thanks to a flip-down garage at the back, release a Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner.
Check out the video of Readybot in action, after the cut!
If you’re going to win the DARPA autonomous vehicle challenge, you’ve got to be pretty clever; even so, when General Motors (GM) invited the SlashGear CES team to be passengers in their Chevy Tahoe self-driving SUV, there was a little apprehension about giving up the keys to a robot! Of course, we shouldn’t have been worried: with 25 sensors, including five radar units giving a 360-degree view of its surroundings, two lasers from specialist Continental and GPS, all feeding data about the driving environment and any potential obstacles into advanced behavior algorithms, the Tahoe had more eyes on the road than the team did!
General Motors (GM) showcased one of its latest projects – a vehicle that can operate without a driver. GM indicates vehicles that can park and drive themselves will give passengers the ability to multi-task and will also help reduce traffic congestion, save energy and reduce emissions.
The SlashGear team is about to be driven in the world’s first ever self-driving vehicle. The Chevy Tahoe self-driving car won the DARPA Challenge.
A team at Vanderbilt University has been hard at work and has come up with a prosthetic arm whose characteristics are far closer to that of an actual human arm than anything else so far. The weight is pretty close to the same and its capacity for lifting and other tasks is pretty on par too.
I guess the biggest problem with battery powered arms was that in order for the arm to be able to lift anything it required a huge battery causing for a significant increase in weight making the bionic arm feel even more alien. This rocket-fuelled/steam-powered arm solves that problem by creating enough power on the fly to lift stuff and still managing to keep it all in a compact package.
Not so much something you’ll be seeing on the shelves of Best Buy in the next few months, but a sign of the guts of future gadgets and tech-toys: a team at the University of Texas at Austin have managed to craft what they’re calling a “supercomputer on a chip”. Unlike conventional multi-core processors, which rely on software being coded specially to take advantage of parallel data pathways, TRIPS (or Tera-op Reliable Intelligently Adaptive Processing System to be official) is a collection of CPU architecture streamlining techniques
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