Hasta La Gadget!

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Toronto-based Aesthetec Studio has recently launched a Kickstarter campaign guaranteed to put a smile on your face. See that little guy above? He’s what the company calls a Little Robot Friend, a tiny interactive companion with an 8-bit 32K microcontroller brain that can help even the newest of newbs learn the basics of hardware programming. These customizable pocket-sized robots can perform a number of actions (like blinking their RGB LED eyes) triggered by varied stimuli, including touch, sound and changes in light. Each Arduino-compatible Little Robot Friend can also be reprogrammed with the developer’s kit that Aesthetec hopes to roll out if the campaign hits its CAD$55,000 goal. To see these dudes in action, check out the Kickstarter link below or watch the video after the break.

Filed under: Robots

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Source: Kickstarter, Aesthetec Studio

Manual labor is hard work, no doubt about it. However, technology could very well help us humans out when it comes to heavy lifting, and here we are with a conceptual exoskeleton that is being developed so that humans need not hurt their fragile backs any more by accident whenever they handle heavy weights. These efforts to turn concept into reality for an exoskeleton in the workplace are currently undergoing, with the EU propping up the project with the relevant funds.

So far, a dozen research institutions from a total of seven European countries happen to be involved in the Robo-mate project. The team members hope to eventually test a robotic suit which is simple enough to be worn by factory employees, and they have given themselves a time span of three years to get the job done. Should the Robo-mate exoskeleton actually take off successfully, it might help lower the number of work-related injuries eventually, although an expert did fire a warning to employers that they are the ones who would need convincing that such equipment will not eventually come up with pose safety issues of its own. So far, we do know that the EU has committed 4 million Euros to the scheme.

Robo-mate Exoskeleton Being Developed In Europe original content from Ubergizmo.

What you see above might not be the most artistically inclined font that you have set your sights on, but it sure as heck is special. Why do we say so? Well, robots are not exactly the kind of “brain” that you would have expected to come up with something artistic, would you? After all, they are nothing but pre-programmed automatons, and whatever you “feed” it would result in a corresponding output. Having said that, the typeface above is known as Robosans, and it was so named because it is an effort to pay homage to the robot that created it.

Egyptian designer Mostafa El Abasiry decided to run an experiment that saw Robosans created by a robot. This particular robot actually gripped a brush, before it continued to sweep out its curves and create the relevant letters or alphabet as we know. It was not perfection right from the get go, but rather, a journey that involved a fair amount of trial and error. Still, at the end of it all, the results are definitely worthy of a report. I wonder if the Transformers or droids like C3-PO and R2-D2 would “approve” of such a font, or do they figure out that Robosans could have been much, much more?

Robosans Is A Robot-Created Font original content from Ubergizmo.

Now here is a LEGO robot that you would definitely look upon in awe – it happens to be able to strip DRM right off Kindle books, now how about that? The way it does so is rather magical, although no pixie dust was, and will be, involved. Not only that, this unique LEGO robot goes around things without breaking any of the law, so theoretically speaking, it is completely legal as it clicks through the pages of a Kindle book manually, signalling a computer to snap a photo of the E Ink display, perform some OCR move, which results in a DRM-free copy of the text.

This is the brainchild of a certain Peter Purgathofer of Vienna University of Technology, where this particular project is not meant to irk the folks over at Amazon and the e-book author, but rather, to deliver an art piece. According to Purgathofer, he has faith that Amazon’s original promises concerning the loaning and reselling books have been broken, and that the publishing industry themselves are in cahoots with Amazon who have bolstered copyright law. Purgathofer continued, “The DIY kindle scanner is an art installation reflecting this loss of rights Jeff Bezos first defended for us, but then chose to remove. It also is a statement about the futility of DRM. Please note that this is a project i did in my private time, as a private person, and it reflects my private views. I do not consider it part of my work at the Vienna University of Technology.”

LEGO Robot Strips DRM Off Kindle Books original content from Ubergizmo.

We reckoned IFA would be an exceptionally busy show, and now that we’ve combed through all of our coverage and condensed it here, it’s clear the event lived up to our expectations. Sure, the venerable CES may have topped IFA in show floor square feet, but the announcements in Berlin generated perhaps even more excitement than those that came out of Las Vegas in January. A pair of high-profile smartwatches, two titanic smartphones, a duo of lens cameras, 4K displays and a bevy of hands-ons await you in a neat, yet massive, roundup after the break.%Gallery-slideshow83286%

Filed under: Cellphones, Desktops, Cameras, Displays, GPS, Handhelds, Home Entertainment, Household, Laptops, Peripherals, Portable Audio/Video, Robots, Tablets, Transportation, Wearables, Samsung, Sony, HTC, ASUS, LG, HP, Acer, Lenovo

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