Hasta La Gadget!

If there’s one word you don’t usually picture when you think about Daleks, it’s “cute”. But these plush Daleks are the cutest Daleks I’ve ever laid eyes on.

They’re made by crafter Fassbaby out of 100% acrylic baby yarn (sounds cruel),  stuffed with fiber fill, and are safe for infants who don’t know how evil a these cyborgs can truly be. They come in a variety of soft and soothing colors, and are just the thing to keep future Time Lords on their toes. Also, these are the only Daleks I know with jingly-jangly, timey-wimey bells inside of them.

You can find the Dalek plushies over on Etsy for $18 to $25(USD) each, depending on size. Grab ‘em up before Davros rises from the ashes of the Crucible, and commands them to exterminate us all.

When we were young, our favorite toy was slotting the right trains from Thomas the Tank Engine into a wooden shape puzzle, but times have moved on since then. Now, Jacob Sullivan wants to give those baby toys a 21st century makeover, eschewing personified trains for teaching kids the inner workings of your Tablet PC. The Tinkermite comes with Camera, WiFi, CPU, Memory and Battery “modules” that you fit into the slots, while on the flip side there’s a magnetic drawing board for doodling. The project’s accepting your cash on Kickstarter, we’re just worried about what’ll happen if your kids mistake your $500 slate for their $50 toy and get a crash course in how these devices are really constructed.

Continue reading Tinkermite replaces the wooden barnyard shape puzzles of yore with a tablet (video)

Filed under: Misc

Tinkermite replaces the wooden barnyard shape puzzles of yore with a tablet (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 04 Sep 2012 10:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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4moms, the small Pittsburgh-based company that’s re-imagining the baby products industry by incorporating robotics, electronics, and innovative engineering into things like strollers, infant seats and playpens, has raised $20 million from Bain Capital Ventures. The firm’s sister fund Bain Capital also has investments in Toys R’ Us (Babies R’ Us) and Gymboree, so there’s the opportunity for some knowledge-sharing and marketing opportunities here, it seems.

As for the 4moms products, in case you haven’t seen them – well, they’re pretty crazy. TechCrunch’s gadgets team has been going hands-on with these things for years, and doling out compliments like “the coolest gadget I have ever seen since the original TiVo…and it’s just a damn stroller.” Seriously, these things almost make you want to pump out babies (or more babies) just to try them out. Well, almost.

What makes the 4moms products so different? For starters, they’re not your typical baby products – they’re basically gadgets. This Origami stroller opens and closes with the tap of a button, for example.

This playpen works with one firm push.

If you don’t have kids, you may not realize exactly how impressive some of this technology is. True story: my husband and I had to google “how to set up a playpen” on our first attempt. We had to watch a YouTube video to figure it out, I’m embarrassed to admit. Another time, we forgot to set it up for the sitters (ahem, grandparents) in advance, and later found out they just let the kid stay up until 1 AM because she had nowhere she could get comfortable sleeping. Let me just tell you, the fallout from her sleep deprivation is not something I’d wish on anyone. Ever. So, yay: someone is working on building better versions of all this stuff, and making products that anyone could use.

That being said, there are some downsides to the 4moms products. The stroller is still a bit hefty, for example. But the bigger concern for some parents will be the price. These products are seriously high-end. A good chunk of the baby-making demographic can’t afford to spend nearly $900 on a stroller. But then again, maybe the grandparents owe us one?

It’s taken a year to get the sinister ticks and motions of Osaka University’s Affetto baby head out of our nightmares — and now it’s grown a torso. Walking that still-precarious line between robots and humans, the animated robot baby now has a pair of arms to call its own. The prototype upper body has a babyish looseness to it — accidentally hitting itself in the face during the demo video — with around 20 pneumatic actuators providing the movement. The face remains curiously paused, although we’d assume that the body prototype hasn’t been paired with facial motions just yet, which just about puts it the right side of adorable. However, the demonstration does include some sinister faceless dance motions. It’s right after the break — you’ve been warned.

Continue reading Baby robot Affetto gets a torso, still gives us the creeps (video)

Filed under: Robots

Baby robot Affetto gets a torso, still gives us the creeps (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 26 Jul 2012 06:47:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Plastic Pals  |  Project Affetto (YouTube)  | Email this | Comments