Hasta La Gadget!

Someone call MIT’s researchers and tell them their terrifying cheetah robot has a long-lost teensy sibling in Switzerland. Developed in the laboratories of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, the “cheetah-cub robot” is a four-legged metallic critter modeled after a house cat. The scientists focused on designing legs that can move like our feline friends’, paying particular attention to their stability while moving on uneven surfaces. While it has a long way to go before it becomes a graceful daredevil, it’s a fast little bugger that can run seven times its body length in one second. The researchers hope their creation gives rise to more robots for exploration and search-and-rescue missions in the future — a far more noble goal than some cat-owners’ dream to have their pets’ pictures land on the front page of Reddit.

Filed under: Misc, Science

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Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week’s most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us — it’s the Week in Green.

By now “reinventing the wheel” has become a tired euphemism — but that’s exactly what skateboarder David Patrick did when he created the SharkWheel, a cube-shaped wheel that’s surprisingly smoother and faster than conventional skateboard wheels. Patrick isn’t the only inventor to challenge conventions this week, though. In an effort to develop a more sustainable source of protein, designer Mansour Ourasanah developed a terrarium for growing edible insects in your home. That invention might be a tough sell for some people, but this one is sure to be a crowd-pleaser: English telecommunications company Vodafone unveiled a sleeping bag that uses body heat to charge your gadgets as you sleep and a pair of shorts that harness kinetic energy to charge your cellphone. Meanwhile architect Richard Moreta Castillo unveiled plans for a solar-powered, man-made island that will clean up the ocean while generating renewable energy, and Tokyo installed an impressive bicycle elevator that can store as many as 144 bikes underground.

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Each week, our friends at gdgt go through the latest gadgets and score them to help you decide which ones to buy. Here are some of their most recent picks. Want more? Visit gdgt anytime to catch up on the latest, and subscribe to gdgt’s newsletter to get a weekly roundup in your inbox.

Filed under: Misc, Apple, Google

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Bosch recently released an $450 charging solution for EVs, but if you want to go wireless, it’s going to cost you a lot more. The company has formed an exclusive partnership with Evatran for the distribution and installation of its wireless chargers for the Nissan Leaf and Chevy Volt. Each Plugless Level 2 Electric Vehicle Charging System (now that’s a tongue-twister) costs $2,998 for the Volt and $3,098 for the Leaf, not including taxes and installation fees. It’s comprised of a wall-mounted control panel that provides electricity to the parking pad, which transmits power to your vehicle. You’ve got to admit it’s convenient when all you have to do to juice up is park on top of the pad, but would you actually shell out that much cash in the name of convenience when plugging a (cheaper) charger in is no Herculean task?

Filed under: Misc, Wireless

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Via: Plugin Cars, Autoblog

Source: Bosch

Missing your earnings target by five cents a share wouldn’t trouble most companies — but IBM isn’t like most companies. That’s why it’s reportedly implementing a billion-dollar restructuring program that’ll see up to 8,000 jobs being lost from the firm. The Alliance@IBM union is reporting that over 1,600 jobs in the US have already been cut, including 165 from chip research and 121 from storage development. Given that the company is also working out ways of making supercomputer Watson pay its own way, it seems that no-one’s immune to a spot of belt-tightening.

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Via: Bloomberg

Source: Endicott Alliance @ IBM