Hasta La Gadget!

Once touted as the next big thing in television and film, 3D has ultimately failed to find an audience. It’s been five long years since Sky first introduced 3D programming, starting with a Premier League match between Manchester United and Chelsea, b…

Don’t judge a tiny robot by its size because these petite powerhouses can pull up to 2,000 times their own weight.

A pair of Stanford University PhD students at the school’s Biomimetics and Dexterous Manipulation Lab have developed what they call MicroTugs, or mini bots that use adhesive power similar to what’s found on the feet of geckos and ants to pull off incredible feats of strength.

One robot weighing less than a third of an ounce can carry a 2.2-pound weight vertically up a glass wall.

“This is equivalent to a human climbing up a skyscraper while carrying an elephant,” David Christensen and Elliot Hawkes write on the lab’s website.

Another robot weighs less than half an ounce, but can drag 2,000 times its own weight on a flat surface.

“This is the equivalent of a human adult dragging a blue whale around on land,” the researchers note.

What’s even more amazing is that the tests are actually bound by the limits of the actuators in the robots, not the adhesive power of the feet. That, the research team said in the video description, should allow them to pull almost twice as much — or the equivalent of a human dragging two blue whales.

The tiny bots contain a battery, a winch, a processor, a motor, wheels and an adhesive layer on the belly. The adhesive layer contains small rubber spikes similar to the “setae” that cover the toes of geckos, NBC News reports.

As the video above explains, the adhesive layer doesn’t stick unless the bot is pulling a load with its winch. When it does, the wheels lift and the belly lowers to stick to the surface. Once an object has been pulled, the adhesive belly lifts and the wheels come back down, allowing the robot to move freely again.

Eventually, the technology could be used on larger robots to carry heavy items around a construction site or in emergencies, such as bringing a rope ladder to someone trapped in a tall burning building, according to New Scientist.

The MicroTugs will be the subject of a presentation at next month’s International Conference on Robotics and Automation in Seattle. The authors have also published two papers on their developments, which can be found here and here.

(h/t Gizmodo)

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Actress Jayne Meadows Cotter, who took turns lighting up the stage as well as the small and silver screens during her five-decade career, died Sunday at her home in Encino, California, reportedly of natural causes. She was 95.

Meadows was married to legendary TV personality (and frequent collaborator) Steve Allen for 46 years until his death in 2000. She was also the sister of actress Audrey Meadows, who starred in the Jackie Gleason sitcom “The Honeymooners.”

But Meadows was no wallflower.

Born in 1919 in Wuchang, China, where her parents were serving as Episcopal missionaries, the “glamorous” redhead, as The New York Times describes her, came to the U.S. as a child. In her teens, she discovered a passion for acting and began her career performing at several summer stock theaters. From there, she worked her way up to acting in films, television and on Broadway.

“She was not only an extraordinarily gifted actress who could move audiences from laughter to tears and back again all in one scene, but she was the greatest storyteller I have ever known,” her son Bill Allen told Variety in a statement.

Allen and Meadows are shown at their wedding, July 31, 1954 in Waterford, Connecticut.

Among her many Broadway performances, Meadows starred in “Many Happy Returns” (1945) with Mary Astor, “Kiss Them for Me” (1945) with Richard Widmark and “The Gazebo” (1958) with Walter Slezak.

Meadows’ first movie role was in the 1946 film noir “Undercurrent,” with Katharine Hepburn and Robert Taylor. She also appeared in “Lady in the Lake” (1947) with Robert Montgomery and “Enchantment” (1948) with David Niven. As her film career cooled in the early 1950s, her first marriage to screenwriter Milton Krims ended. She then wed Allen in 1954.

Meadows became a household name for her many small screen appearances. She was a regular panel member on the game show “I’ve Got a Secret” from 1952 to 1959, and appeared in numerous long-running TV shows including “Hawaii Five-O,” “The Love Boat” and “Murder, She Wrote.” Meadows would go on to earn three prime-time Emmy nominations for her roles in the series “Meeting Of Minds,” “St. Elsewhere” and “High Society.”

Explaining his wife’s appeal in a 1977 Los Angeles Times interview, Allen said: “She’s an old-fashioned woman, old-fashioned in terms of her attitudes, her manner, her demeanor, her voice. She has a dignity that is rare these days. But she also has a lightness, an airiness, a girlishness and a certain degree of social innocence.”

According to the Times, Meadows is survived by her son Bill, three stepsons, three grandchildren, eight step-grandchildren and several great-grandchildren.

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BAE Systems recently announced that it has adapted the active damping suspension originally made for F1 cars to a Swedish Combat Vehicle, the CV90. This is reportedly the first system of its kind for a tracked vehicle, although BAE has been working o…

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — The South Korean ferry captain responsible for last year’s disaster that killed more than 300 people, mostly school children, was given an increased sentence of life in prison Tuesday by an appellate court that convicted him of homicide.

A district court in November had sentenced Lee Joon-seok to 36 years in prison for negligence and abandoning passengers in need but acquitted him of homicide. Victims’ relatives criticized the verdict at the time, saying it was too lenient. Prosecutors earlier had demanded the death penalty for Lee. Lee’s sentence was increased because the Gwangju High Court additionally convicted him on the homicide charges while upholding most of other charges that led to his November conviction, according to a court statement.

The appellate court sentenced 14 other navigation crew members to 18 months to 12 years in prison, the statement said. In November they had received sentences of five to 30 years in prison.

The court said it decided on Lee’s homicide conviction because he fled the ship without making any evacuation order though he, as a captain, is required by law to take some measures to rescue his passengers.

Lee’s behavior was “homicide by willful negligence,” the court judged. “For whatever excuses, it’s difficult to forgive Lee Joon-seok’s action that caused a big tragedy,” the court statement cited the verdict as saying.

Lee and the 14 crew members have been the subject of fierce public anger because they were among the first people rescued from the ship when it began badly listing on the day of the sinking in April last year. Most of the victims were teenagers who were en route to a southern island for a school trip.

Lee has said he issued an evacuation order, but the court statement said two of the 14 crew members acknowledged that there was no evacuation order. Many student survivors have said they were repeatedly ordered over a loudspeaker to stay on the sinking ship and that they didn’t remember there any evacuation orders made by crewmembers before they helped each other to flee the ship.

Court spokesman Jeon Ilho said both prosecutors and the crew members have one week to appeal the verdicts.

A year after sinking, 295 bodies have been retrieved but nine others are missing. There is still lingering public criticism against the government over its handling of the sinking, the country’s deadliest maritime disaster in decades. Violence occurred during a Seoul rally led by relatives and their supporters earlier this month, leaving dozens of people injured.

Last week, South Korea formally announced it would salvage the ship from the ocean floor off the country’s southwest coast. Relatives of the victims hope that might locate the missing, including four students, and help reveal more details about the sinking. Some experts are skeptical about those wishes and remain opposed to spending taxpayer’s money to lift the civilian vessel.

Officials say the salvage job is estimated to cost $91 million to $137 million and take 12 to 18 months.

Authorities blame excessive cargo, improper storage, botched negligence and other negligence for the sinking, and have arrested about 140 people. Critics say higher-level officials haven’t been accountable.

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