Hasta La Gadget!

The world’s largest walking robot is crazy. It’s a 51-foot-long fire-breathing dragon named Tradinno. Surprisingly, this is not a Japanese creation, but a German one. It was made for a play called Der Drachenstich by industrial robotics company Zollner Elektronik AG.

This beast weighs in at 11 tons, and despite that massive weight it can still move and flap its 40-foot-wide wings. The size is impressive of course, but also impressive is the detail. The movement is a bit unrealistic, but who cares? This thing is badass! It breaths fire and squirts buckets of stage blood! And while it can walk short distances on its own, they need to move it on the back of a trailer for anything longer than a jaunt around the stage.

Check it out in action right here in the video. It looks like it was quite an undertaking to create this epic monster.

And if there’s any doubt that it’s the world’s largest walking robot, check the Guinness World Records.

[via C|Net]

Kindergarten is all about having fun while learning things like your ABCs and numbers. And what could be more fun than going to school inside of a giant cat?

Die Katze in Wolfartsweier near Karlsruhe, Germany is just such a children’s school. The building is designed to look like a giant, white cat. It was designed by artist Tomi Ungerer and architect Ayla-Suzan Yöndel. The building looks like it is ready to pounce at any moment.

The circular windows at the front are the eyes and the tail in the back is actually a slide, for recess time. What kid wouldn’t love to go to school here? Inside this school has all of the usual amenities like classrooms, coatrooms, a kitchen, dining room, and a main hall.

This is definitely one way to make kids want to go to school.

[via Like Cool]

Both Google and German auto supplier Continental made Nevada their high-tech vehicle testing grounds in 2012, but who’d have thought the companies might end up collaborating? According to German newspaper Daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the tech giant is very close to inking a deal not only with Continental but also with IBM. The paper’s sources didn’t go into specifics, only that the trio will collectively cook up an automated driving system for cars. It’s worth noting that what Continental tested in Nevada was a driver assist technology that makes it easier to navigate traffic. Whether Google is bringing the firm onboard to fine-tune its own self-driving car system or whether the companies will work on something new remains to be seen. However, if the deal does go through, we’ll know at least some of the juicy details in September, as Continental plans to officially debut the collaboration at the Frankfurt Car Show.

Filed under: Misc

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Via: Autoblog

Source: Reuters

Don’t let the name fool you, Mytaxi wants to drop off more than just people. The app-based service that began as a German take on Uber has now started using its fleet of drivers to offer one-hour courier deliveries in its home country. The Next Web reports that, once this initial trial is over at the end of the year, the 60-minute service could be expanded to cover US cities including Washington, D.C. (where Mytaxi already operates cabs), Denver, Miami and Seattle, at prices similar to existing shipping options. There’s a touch of irony in waiting around for the ambiguous domestic start date but, in the meantime, Google and eBay have you covered.

Filed under: Transportation, Mobile

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Source: The Next Web

Robots are slowly but surely taking all of our jobs. Even jobs that we thought were safe – like being an artist. e-David is a robotic painter developed by the University of Konstanz in Germany. It takes photographs, then uses its software to develop a unique set of brush strokes to make a one-of-a-kind painting of the subject. There’s another job gone.

It creates using five different brushes and a palette of 24 paint colors. It can also change its painting style on the fly, making adjustments to future brush strokes by observing the results of those it has already made. e-David even signs its work with a reverse-written signature, which is a nice artistic touch.

The team built the robot painter to learn more about the techniques human artists use. They want to boil painting techniques down to their basics by creating algorithms that can mimic them.

Sure, e-David paints a great painting, but can it cut it’s own ear off like Van Gogh? Nope. No passion. No crazy. No heart. How is that art again?

[via Geekosystem]