The 475-foot "drop tower" in Bremen, Germany, is not a rocket disguised as a building, but a giant hollow tube used for experimentally dropping things—letting go of objects, watching them plummet toward the ground, and using those nearly 10 seconds of free-fall as a way to study the effects of weightlessness.
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The NHL and NBA playoffs have wrapped for the year, so we’re officially into summer vacation programming. Look below for the highlights this week, followed after the break by our weekly listing of what to look out for in TV, Blu-ray and videogames.
Dexter
Everyone’s favorite serial killer is back for an eighth and final season on Showtime this weekend. Even if you think the show itself should’ve been dismembered and dumped in the harbor a couple of seasons ago, it will be interesting to see if a department full of cops can finally figure out there is a killer right underneath their noses. Check after the break for a couple of trailers for the new season.
(June 30th, Showtime, 9PM)
Catfish
After a successful first season and Heisman runner-up Manti Te’o’s embarassing revelation, it seems no one had a better 2012 than the makers of Catfish. Nev and crew will be pursuing an entire new slate of internet hoaxsters this season, and we doubt they’ll run out anytime soon.
(June 25th, MTV, 10PM)
Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD
How was your week? We got to spend a couple of days trekking around the Carnegie Mellon campus in Pittsburgh, PA to check out some of the latest projects from the school’s world renowned Robotics Institute — a trip that culminated with the bi-annual induction ceremony from the CMU-sponsored Robot Hall of Fame. Given all the craziness of the past seven days, you might have missed some of the awesomeness, but fear not, we’ve got it all for you here in one handy place — plus a couple of videos from the trip that we haven’t shown you yet. Join us after the break to catch up.
Butlers, lunar rovers, snakes and airboats: the best of Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Institute originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 27 Oct 2012 12:45:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Want to do something about pollution in our water and air? Carnegie Mellon’s CREATE Lab is working on a few interesting solutions to the problem of localizing pollution data with a trio of devices aimed at making the process accessible and affordable for regular people. First up is AirBot, a “particle counting robot” that monitors pollutants that can contribute to breathing problems like asthma. Aimed at a $99 price point, the little black boxes are portable enough to bring around with you, so you can, say, compare the air quality in areas when apartment hunting. The lab has made six prototype devices (one of which was on-hand during our visit), and is aiming to bring them to market next year.
WaterBot, meanwhile, is set to bring the solution to streams near you. Stick one end in a body of water near your home and it will upload water purity information to the web via a built-in ZigBee module. CREATE’s also cooked up the CATTFish, a method for recording such information in your home via, yes, your toilet. Dip one end in the reservoir and the box on top of the tank, and it will give you a reading of the cleanliness of the water being used to refill. That information can then be uploaded to the web via a USB port. The lab is shooting for a $50 price tag on the device.
The big thing here is the ability to let the community take its own readings to build a bigger picture of water and are purity levels through online applications. More information on all of the above devices can be found in the video below.
Continue reading AirBot and WaterBot help localize pollution data collection (video)
AirBot and WaterBot help localize pollution data collection (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 25 Oct 2012 22:17:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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