Hasta La Gadget!

Mikey Wally is serious about bikes. He’s also serious about gadgets, and he snapped this shot of an amazing but rather dangerous-looking iPad-powered bike stereo at June’s Subway Series Ride in Los Angles

The iPad handlebar mount, seen here on a BMX, appears to be as sturdy as the bike itself. It looks like nothing more than a sign-holder from a conference-center, with rubber strips slid in to offer a little protection against the rattling steel (take a peek at the full-sized picture, though, and you’ll see it is custom-built). It also shows just how perfect a ten-inch screen is for in-bike entertainment. Sure, here it’s just using iTunes to feed the stereo, but maps, movies and anything else would work great on the big (ish) screen.

So how serious is Mikey about his bicycles? First, he lives in LA and doesn’t use a car. Second, according to his Flickr profile, last summer he rode from New York to LA. That’s as bad-ass as the 40 Glocc track playing on the bike stereo.

BMX bike-stereo [Mikey Wally / Flickr]

My June Subway Series Ride Photos [Mikey Wally]

See Also:

• Sprocket Pocket: iPad Turn-Signal for Cyclists
• Hands-On With the Dual iPod Touch GPS-Kit

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If Panasonic can build an exercise horse then surely a robot that washes your hair should come as no surprise. Imagine being lifted from your robotic bed by a plush care-assist robot and placed into a chair for an automatic shampoo and scalp massage. That is the future of care for the elderly and sick in Japan, or the rich and lazy everywhere else. Panasonic’s hair-washing robot scans each human head three-dimensionally to apply just the right amount of pressure during the shampoo, massage, and rinse phases. It recognizes repeat customers and then applies that person’s preferred massage course using its human-like sixteen “fingers.” Each arm contains a trio of motors to power swing, press, and massage motions… or to snap your spinal column should you decide to sass.

Continue reading Panasonic’s hair-washing robot: rinse, kill, repeat

Panasonic’s hair-washing robot: rinse, kill, repeat originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 24 Sep 2010 07:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Seabird project is a concept for a phone with a dramatically overhauled user interface for a more productive device. Too bad it’s just an idea. pOriginally posted at a href=”http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20017508-264.html” class=”origPostedBlog”Deep Tech/a/p

If you can’t ride your bike safely with one hand, you probably shouldn’t be on the road. Poor control skills, though, are the excuse for the Seil bag, a bikers’ backpack with flexible LEDs and circuitry applied to the back which lets you make turn signals with both hands on the bars.

The Seil, by Lee Myung Su Design Lab, comes with a removable, bar-mounted wireless controller. Flick a lever on the side and arrows blink on your back to show where you plan to go. When not being used to warn other road users of your intentions, the LED display flashes with cute little symbols: space-invaders, hearts and the like, guaranteed to either distract or infuriate drivers.

Indicators on bikes keep popping up, either as concepts or as actual products, but never catch on. This is likely because anyone experienced and responsible enough will be comfortable with giving good, clear hand signals and would therefore never pay for extra blinking lights. These things are a novelty, and sticking them on a backpack is even worse. What if it stops working and you lurch across traffic thinking without signaling? Or if you don’t have your pack with you one day and (gasp) are forced to use boring old arms to signal?

Happily, the Seil remains a concept, not an actual product.

Seil bag [Lee Myung Su Design Lab]

See Also:

• Ultra-Bright Bike Tail-Light Resembles Star Wars Spaceship …
• Spooklight: Accelerometer Brake Light for Bikes
• Hands-On: Spaceship Bike Light Blinds Puny Humans

Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.

We’re as hopeful about the future as anyone. Sure, we fear robots, but we’re bound to have at least a few years of peaceful co-existence before they grow weary of our human insolence and irrational buffoonery. Claude Sammut, professor of computer science at New South Wales University in Australia (and RoboCup regular), believes that robots will surpass the abilities of professional human footballers (aka, soccer players) by 2050. For this to happen, he says that the field will require “major advances in perception, decision making, learning, and co-operative behaviours.” Of course, looking at the current field of RoboCup contestants or even around the house at the TV (largely unchanged since 1930), telephone (patented in 1876), and iPod (now 9 years old), it’s hard to imagine technology advancing that fast. That is, until the rate of technological change accelerates so fast that we achieve singularity sometime in 2030 or 2050, depending upon who you ask.

Robots ‘to beat world’s best’ human footballers by 2050 and other things said when high originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 24 Sep 2010 06:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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