Hasta La Gadget!

Another incredibly creepy robot has turned up, this time from the University of Zürich’s Artificial Intelligence Lab. The creepy robot has a gigantic smooth head and exposed Terminator components. The bot is called Roboy and was built with help from both engineers and scientists.

The team hopes that Roboy might become a blueprint for service robots that are able to work with humans and provide services such as support for elderly people. The robot stands 1.2 m tall and is driven by a series of mechanical tendons giving it the ability to move around. The tendon functionality in the robot is said to closely mimic the function of human tendons allowing Roboy to move like a human does.

For now, the robot is still in the construction phase. Development has involved the completion of the torso, leg development, and computer-assisted drafting of the entire robot along with assembly and teaching the robot to move. The team announced in the middle of December that the robot was “getting a new face and can already moved his arms.”

While the robot has exposed components right now, it would eventually be covered with a soft skin to make the robot more comfortable for humans to touch. The design team is trying to raise money to help complete the construction of the robot by selling logo space on the robot body where names or company logos can be engraved. Check out the video below to see the robot in action.

[via Phys.org]

University of Zürich Artificial Intelligence Lab shows off Roboy robot is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

NASA’s Curiosity rover may be getting us close-up to Mars, but the European Space Agency’s Mars Express probe has a far more macro perspective as it beams back the first shots to be received at the new Malargüe space tracking station. Powered up earlier this month, the ultra-sensitive radio antenna funneled back shots from the Mars Express’ Visual Monitoring Camera showing the red planet from over 6,000 miles away.

Mars Express was launched back in 2003, and was intended to deliver the Beagle 2 rover to the surface of the planet. That part of the mission failed; however, the orbiter section has continued to take high-resolution shots of Mars and has seen its operation extended until 2014.

The ESA Malargüe station stands forty meters tall, with the antenna section along weighing in at 610 tonnes and able to track ongoing missions at both Mars and Venus. It will also be used for radio science experiments, such as trying to identify the different types of matter transmissions pass through.

It is located 1500m high in Argentinia, and features a 20 kW amplifier to send instructions all the way to Jupiter and beyond. In contrast, a typical cellphone has a 125 milliwatt amplifier. The dish was able to receive the Mars Express’ photos sent from 327 million kilometres away in just over 18 minutes.

Routine service of the antenna will begin early in 2013.

[via NBC News]

Mars Express christens new space antenna with red planet pics is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

The hunt for ancient life under the Antarctic ice has ended for one British team, after technical problems forced drills offline over the holidays. “On Christmas Eve we took the decision to cease our efforts to directly measure and sample Subglacial Lake Ellsworth” professor Martin Siegert of the British Antarctic Survey confirmed, with experts still uncertain as to what prevented two 300m boreholes from converging as planned, and allowing scientists to search for subglacial life and evidence of climate change.

“Sixteen years ago, we hypothesised that deep-water subglacial lakes are viable habitats for life, and contain important records of ice and climate history” Siegert explained. “For now, these hypotheses remain untested. Once back in the UK I will gather our consortium to seek ways in which our research efforts may continue. I remain confident that we will unlock the secrets of Lake Ellsworth in coming seasons.”

The BAS project is one of several that have been undertaken to explore the potential for life in the inhospitable environs under the Antarctic. Previous drilling sessions have revealed evidence of a rainforest 52m years ago, as well as discovering the world’s oldest super-clean water system, but the BAS team hoped to go further again and identify simple lifeforms managing to survive roughly two miles under the ice.

While the exact issue that scuppered the British team’s search has not been identified, in the end it was a lack of fuel that forced a halt. An initial 300m borehole was drilled and then left for twelve hours to form a hot water cavity; however, the second 300m borehole – used for recirculation – failed to connect, and in the 20hr process of trying to link the two, the generators ran out of fuel.

“This is of course, hugely frustrating for us, but we have learned a lot this year” Siegert concluded. “By the end the equipment was working well, and much of it has now been fully field tested. A full report on the field season will be compiled when the engineers and programme manager return to UK.”

Dismantling the equipment, bringing it back to the UK, figuring out what went wrong and then restaging a mission could take 5-6 years, Siegert told the BBC, assuming funding is found. In the meantime, US and Russian teams will continue their own schemes to explore the underground water.

[via Reuters]

Hunt for life in Antarctic underground lake foiled is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Quickly stabilizing a wounded soldier and getting them off the battlefield is vital to their survival. But with internal injuries prepping a patient for safe transport is extremely complicated. So Darpa’s Wound Stasis System program has funded the development of an injectable foam that stops internal bleeding and stabilizes organs so a soldier can be safely moved. More »

US Air Force robo-space plane X-37B will begin its third mission on Tuesday,it’s been confirmed, finally taking a classified payload into Earth orbit after having been delayed by launch rocket safety testing. The flight of the mysterious plane – also known as the Orbital Test Vehicle, or OTV-3 – was intended to take place earlier this year, but plans were frozen after a Delta 4 rocket fault back in October. Exactly what the X-36B is carrying, and how long it will be in orbit for, are unclear.

In fact, the only real purpose of the OTV-3 mission that the Air Force has publicly shared is its demonstration of reusability. The OTV-3 vehicle is actually the same unit as was used as OTV-1, refurbished and redeployed ”to demonstrate a reliable, reusable, unmanned space test platform for the United States Air Force.” OTV-1 returned to Earth in December 2010.

The Boeing Government Space Systems made X-37B is 8.8m long and 4.5m wide, with a 2.1 x 1.2m payload system that has been the cause of some controversy. While the Air Force has generally been vague as to its intentions, there has been speculation that the X-37B is intended as a spy platform or even as a space weapons deployment system.

Whatever the payload, the OTV-3 has been grounded for some months now, after a Delta 4 upper-stage engine underperformed during an October GPS satellite launch. Despite the fact that OTV-3 will use Atlas 5 rockets – with different engines – all launches were postponed while the cause of the flaw was hunted down.

“The ULA investigation has concluded that a fuel leak occurred in a specific area of the interior of the thrust chamber” the United Launch Alliance, manufacturer of the Delta 4 and Atlas 5 rockets, said in a statement, “and that this leak started during the first engine start sequence.” Both OTV-1 and OTV-2 were launched using Atlas 5 rockets.

OTV-1 spent 224 days in space, while OTV-2 returned to Earth in June this year after having spent 469 days in orbit. The second mission saw accusations that the autonomous craft was being used to spy on the Chinese Tiangong 1 unmanned spacelab.

[via Space]

X-37B Air Force space plane set for mysterious Dec 11 blast-off is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.