Hasta La Gadget!

Being able to grow a garden if you’re a shut-in is pretty much impossible considering how much light plants need on a regular basis. But a new garden called the Smart Herb Garden may allow those of you who completely shun the daylight to finally be able to grow those “herbs” you’ve been dying to have.

The Smart Herb Garden uses an LED growing lamp to grow your herbs and a few select vegetables without any need for that dastardly sun. All you need to do is snap in your plant cartridges, fill in the water reservoir, and sit back to have the Smart Herb Garden do all of the actual growing for you. The garden doesn’t even use soil as it uses a nanotech material that’s been specifically engineered to supply the plant’s roots with the amount of oxygen, water and other nutrients it needs to grown. (more…)

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Nabisco’s recent Oreo videos have been gaining a good amount of attention as they feature people who are passionate enough to create methods of separating the cookie and cream filling. We first met a man who built a machine which completely removed the cream filling and then met two people who invented a machine that allowed both cookie & cream lovers to co-exist. Today, we meet HERB.

Robotic researchers from Carnegie Mellon University built HERB, who is a Household-Exploring Robotic Butler, originally to assist people with their household duties, which we’re hoping one day includes doing the laundry and cooking up some Steak ‘Ems. HERB’s duties shifted a tad recently in order to help separate Oreo cookies, which HERB says, “Apparently, that is a big deal for humans.”

HERB attempts to separate an Oreo cookie a number of times, the majority of the time resulted in a crumbled Oreo. Ultimately, HERB not only learned how to successfully separate an Oreo cookie, but he also used additional tools that helped completely remove the cream to prepare it for human consumption.

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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.

Continue reading Butlers, lunar rovers, snakes and airboats: the best of Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Institute

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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