metaincognito.com » robots

Hummingbirds. Cool.

admin — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 06:12:06 +0000

Researchers recently determined that the hummingbird is the fastest bird alive when you measure relative to size and by that measure it actually flies faster than the space shuttle re-entering orbit, or an F-18 – 385 times its own body length a second.

Hummingbird Diving In Action from Science News on Vimeo.

Today wired covered some promising hummingbird bot development, which is looking really impressive (and just got more funding). One wonders how such a thing would be powered for long period of time, but first things first.

Fear of Israeli Robotic Snakes

admin — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 07:26:11 +0000

Snakes are the most terrifying form of robot I can think of, maybe because I just watched Terminator Salvation. That scene with the robots in the water …. shudder. So my eyebrows went up when I saw the Israeli snake robot covered at engadget today (video below). It looks almost ready for deployment, but also a bit like a sock puppet, so not too scary. Meanwhile, the Biorobotics Lab at Carnegie Mellon University has snake robots rolling, swimming and climbing which freaks me out a bit more – but to be clear, I’m afraid of snakes – not robots. Oh and robotic snakes.

via engadget

Robot Sidekicks

admin — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 20:08:34 +0000

Wired has published a scale of robot sidekicks from solid gold to scrap medal, ahead of the anticipated film Moon, out June 12, by Duncan Jones (David Bowie’s son). Apparently the robot companion that Sam Rockwell is stuck on the moon with is played by Kevin Spacey. If I was stuck on the moon with only an AI for company, i would NOT want it to sound like kevin spacey. That is just asking for something weird to happen. Give me Padma any day.