People are making a lot of comparisons between the cost of the Mars Curiosity Rover—incidentally, the cost was all spent in our economy not sent to Mars in a bag—and other events and projects. Among them, the cost of the olympics, as shown above. More »
Building a robot that can stand and walk on two legs like a human is challenging enough — but what about a robot that swims like a human? A team from Tokyo University of Technology has created the Swumanoid, a swimming robot that’s based on the physique of a human swimmer and can swim a variety of strokes. But why should a swimming robot have to look like a person? Most fish swim much faster, more gracefully and more efficiently than humans. That’s why scientists from the University of Virginia are developing the Mantabot, a robot that looks and swims like a ray.
Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, Robots, Science
Inhabitat’s Week in Green: 30-foot ‘Buckyball’, Olympic stadium Lego replica and the ‘Mantabot’ originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 05 Aug 2012 10:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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It looks like the usual tennis superstars are going to walk away with all the medals at this year’s Olympic games—yawn. So to make it more interesting and unpredictable four years from now, perhaps the organizers of the Rio games should consider adding flaming tennis balls into the mix, and filming everything in super slow motion. More »
It seems that sports fans and journalists aren’t the only ones utilizing social media in the Olympics. The L2012 Pool Camera is an underwater camera that is based at the bottom of the pool, and yes it uses Twitter to tweet photos of Olympic swimmers in action. The L2012 Pool Camera’s description reads: “I match the world’s best swimmers, stroke for stroke. They speed along on top. I race along the bottom, always looking up – and always wet.”
The camera was first used in July 27 and its first tweet (with its first photo seen above) says,”In position under Lane 4. Join me underwater for a different perspective on #Swimming at #London2012.” So far, the L2012 Pool Camera has tweeted 17 times since the games started. However, the L2012 Pool Camera isn’t alone. There’s also the L2012 Stadium Cam, a camera that can tweet photos of track and field athletes.
By Ubergizmo. Related articles: No tweets in London Olympics if you want to watch TV, Tweet sends Greek Olympian home,
Every time the Olympics invades a city, its topography is transformed by an influx of impressive new buildings erected for the event. In the case of London, most will eventually be torn down. It’s an incredible feat of design and engineering to build structures that can be both quickly built and disassembled. In this video the architects behind the Olympic Stadium, 377-foot Orbit observation tower, and the Coca-Cola-sponsored Beatbox installation describe their concepts. [Crane.tv via Selectism] More »
The Olympics are full of beefy men and women throwing heavy things long distances. That’s just good television. But which event takes the most power to compete in? MinutePhysics broke down the numbers for the world records in the shot put, javelin, discus, and hammer throw. (Spoiler: It’s called the hammer throw. What did you think was going to win?) [YouTube] More »
The iPhone 4S’ camera is regarded as being one of the better smartphone cameras currently available in the market, and we’ve seen photos and videos taken with it that could have fooled us into thinking that more professional equipment was used instead. However it seems that the iPhone 4S’ camera was good enough that a journalist for The Guardian, Dan Chung, has decided to use it in place of a DSLR to cover the London 2012 Olympic games!
Taking a pair of binoculars to double up as a zoom lens, Chung uses his iPhone to snap photos of the event, after which he edits them using the Snapseed photograph editing app before sharing them online. One of the perks of the iPhone is that since it is already connected to the internet (assuming there is sufficient coverage), sharing photos is only a matter of taps away. Granted some of these photos could have been sharper/less noisy/etc. when captured with a DSLR camera, they certainly are impressive nonetheless and goes on to prove that sometimes it’s not the equipment that makes the photo, but it is the photographer. You can check out the rest of Chung’s photos at The Guardian’s website.
[Image credit – Dan Chung/The Guardian]
By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Underwater camera that can tweet photos of swimmers used in London Olympics, London Olympics committee deploys Wi-Fi Police to hunt unauthorized Wi-Fi hotspots,
The Guardian’s Dan Chung is photographing the entire Olympics using just an iPhone 4S and processing app Snapseed. Though it seems to have taken him a while to find his feet, the results are becoming sensationally good—and with his updates continuing until the end of the games, there’s far more to come. Go take a look at his work. [Guardian via Verge] More »
The 2012 Olympics might best be remembered for being some of the most over-sponsored games ever. But even product placement can occasionally be awesome, like these 1/4-scale RC Mini Coopers that will be used to retrieve hammers, shots, discuses, and javelins when the track & field events finally get under way. More »
We already know that wireless hotspots have been banned at the London Olympics. But it seems that the practical aspect of the rule has been tested as sports fans are secretly turning on their mobile hotspots to access the Internet. To ensure that the “no portable wireless hotspot” rule gets implemented, the Olympic committee has deployed the Wi-Fi police, similar to the one pictured above.
Yes, that photo was taken by Sadao Turner, the director of New Media for Ryan Seacrest’s productions. Turner tweeted with the photo saying, “Something you won’t see on TV, this is the Olympics Wi-Fi Police. They seek unauthorized wifi signals & shut them down.” So if you’re in London right now for the Olympics and are planning to use that portable hotspot functionality on your device, you might want to watch out for these guys. Law abiding citizens can also utilize BT Group’s more than 1,500 hotpots in the event for a price.
By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Zelda medley at the Olympics did not result in gold, No tweets in London Olympics if you want to watch TV,
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