Hasta La Gadget!

Researchers at MIT have developed a handheld milling machine that turns anyone into a skilled sculptor. Like with a 3D printer, users start with a 3D model on a computer, but instead of a machine laying down layers of plastic, the handheld mill removes only what’s needed from a solid block of material to eventually reveal a fully formed 3D object. This could basically turn anyone into a Michelangelo when we’re all able to buy one.

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Us humans do rely on touch a whole lot, as it happens to be one of our most primal senses, offering a method to tangibly interact and receive data concerning our surroundings. Over the past few years, many digital touchscreens have made their way into everyday devices, allowing us to use touch as a form of input in a range of ways, although it remains rather limited when it comes to actual interaction with our environment. To make sure that there is some semblance of the tactile, MIT Media Lab researchers have come up with a 3D, shapeshifting surface that they call the inFORM.

inFORM would enable users to execute common physical interactions with digital matter, now how about that? There is plenty of potential with this unique surface, ranging from holding a person’s hand with the subject being thousands of miles away from you, or to bring a 3D model to life. It does resemble that unique bed of pins that was recently seen in The Wolverine, and also part of Krypton’s technology that Russell Crowe loved to make use of in Man of Steel. inFORM will rely on a connected pinscreen alongside a hacked Microsoft Kinect and a laptop to get the job done, letting you alter and adjust the model using your bare hands. [inFORM Project Page]

inFORM 3D Shapeshifting Surface original content from Ubergizmo.

MIT Media Lab’s Tangible Media Group has invented a tangible interface that acts like a remote pinscreen. That is, it transfers gestures captured by a hacked Kinect to a platform of motorized pins, thus translating motion to physical reality. The device is called inFORM, and the researchers involved in the project want it to inform […]

Avengers, Assemble! That could very well be the rallying cry of MIT’s M-Blocks, which so happen to be a new class of robotic cubes which are aware of one another, and are fully capable of a self assembling process. This is the premise that was explored by the T-1000 in the movie Terminator 2, except that such a cyborg from the future was made out of liquid metal. Well, there is also the Transformers in the science fiction realm as well, where they are a race of humanoid robots that can transform into machines – vehicles especially. Just how far along is humankind to achieving such wonders? MIT’s John Romanishin, Daniela Rus, and Kyle Gilpin could have taken a wee step closer with the M-Blocks self assembling robotic cubes.

These simple yet independent modules are able to separate and recombine at will, letting you have the freedom to design a robot that will sport flexible functionality. The M-Blocks’ movement are self contained, which means there are no external moving parts. This is made possible thanks to a 20,000 RPM flywheel that will impart angular momentum to each cube, letting them make their way across the floor, roll over one another, and even have the ability to leap around. Hence, you get a system that will be able to join together to develop a shape, before breaking apart and assembling into a different shape altogether. Pretty neat, no?

MIT M-Blocks Are Self Assembling Robots original content from Ubergizmo.

Welcome to our continuing series featuring videos of robots that will, when they become autonomous, hunt us down and force us to work in the graphene factories of Mars. Below we see Wild Cat, a fully untethered remote control quadrupedal robot made by Boston Dynamics, creators of the famous Big Dog. This quadruped can run up to 16 miles an hour and features a scary-sound internal gas engine that can power it across rough terrain. Wild Cat was funded by the DARPA’s M3 program aimed at introducing flexible, usable robots into natural environments AKA introducing robotic pack animals for ground troops and build flocking, heavily armed robots that can wipe out a battlefield without putting humans in jeopardy.

Next up we have ATLAS, another Boston Dynamics bot that can walk upright on rocks. Sadly ATLAS is tethered to a power source but he has perfect balance and can survive side and front hits from heavy weights – a plus if you’re built to be the shock troops of a new droid army. ATLAS can even balance on one foot while being smacked with wrecking balls, something the average human can’t do without suffering internal damage. I can’t wait for him to be able to throw cinder blocks!

Finally we present these charming self-assembling robots from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory which we covered earlier today. The robots exert an internal force to spin and then connect with each other using magnets, allowing them to fly into the air for a second and then fall down next to their brothers and sisters in exactly the right spot. This allows these completely featureless squares to form any shape they want and, like autonomous LEGOs, they can build complex devices out of a few simple shapes.

“There’s a point in time when the cube is essentially flying through the air,” said researcher Kyle Gilpin. “And you are depending on the magnets to bring it into alignment when it lands. That’s something that’s totally unique to this system.”

They may look innocuous but imagine these things self-assembling into, say, a wall, a door, or even a plate of explosives. They could sneak through pipes into your home and create a robotic assassin to destroy you in the sleep, thereby freeing up your “Schlafplatz” for other humans who have been reduced to sleeping out of doors after the robots took over most habitable locations for the storage of fermenting human slurry. Stay frosty, humans!