Hasta La Gadget!

Does it fly? Check? Does it have beer as a payload? Check. Does this robot deploy that beer via parachute to a thirsty human below? Check. I think I have just found man’s best robot friend.

You just order a beer via your iPhone app then the robot drops a parachuted beer to your location.

Sadly, folks on my continent won’t see it dropping beer overhead any time soon. This SteadiDrone octocopter has been specially modified to deliver beers to attendees at the upcoming Oppikoppi music festival in South Africa.

Hopefully they have worked out all the kinks. I’d hate to see a parachute fail to deploy and hit some poor guy on the head. Someone will probably hack this thing and fly some free beer to their place. That would be awesome.

[via Gizmag and DVICE via Geekologie]

The US Navy’s quieter way to spy, the Ion Tiger, just bested its own 2009 flight record with a key assist from liquid hydrogen. The unmanned aerial vehicle had previously relied on 5000-psi compressed hydrogen for fuel, but for its latest flight test the Naval Research team swapped that out for a new cryogenic tank and delivery system that relies on the liquid stuff; a choice made for the element’s increased density. With that one significant change in place, the craft was able to outperform its last endurance run of 26 hours and two minutes by almost double, lasting 48 hours and one minute in a flight made mid-April. Spying: it’s not only good for the government, it’s good for the environment, too.

Filed under: Robots

Comments

Source: US Naval Research Laboratory

A long beer line? That is not an issue, especially when you consider how folks tend to bond over a couple of drinks (or more) at the local watering hole, and the time spent waiting in line could definitely be used to socialize more with one another, asking basic questions and over time, forge closer bonds. Well, a team of self-described “lazy hackers” have come up with what they call the RoboKeg, where it makes the action of obtaining an ice cold beer at a crowded concert or bar a snap – all it takes is a single wave of the hand. The RoboKeg, in essence, is an automated beer dispenser which is capable of keeping track of who has ordered what as well as the copious amount of the nectar of the gods, and best of all is, unlike modern day smart apps, there is no need for you to carry a smartphone around – where you run the risk of losing it in a drunken stupor to boot.

The RoboKeg would be equipped with a tiny near-field communication (NFC) chip in wristbands which can automate the purchasing and pouring, which might eventually kiss goodbye to those long beer lines, but traditionalists might balk at this idea since it eliminates the conversations that you can have with your regular barman. Would you prefer to be served by a human or a robot?

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: XRL Robot Leaps High Enough To Make Spiderman Proud, Robot Used To Find Sturgeon Fish,

A team of researchers in Switzerland have been working on a new robot that’s able to climb vertical surfaces of all sorts using unique sticky feet. The robot can climb all sorts of surfaces including walls, rock, aluminum, and others. The developers behind the robot believe it could be used to help with mountain rescues, construction crews, or painting walls and ceilings.

The wall climbing ‘bot was developed by Liyu Wang, Lina Graber and Fumiya Iida at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich.

The robot is able to cling to vertical surfaces using special plastic footpads that heat rapidly causing them to melt. When the plastic melts, the compound slimes into the nooks and crannies on the surface it’s climbing allowing it to stick. The robot then uses thermoelectric effect to cool the plastic allowing the foot to release so a step can be taken. The adhesives in the plastic feet melt at about 70°C.

While sticky feet made of melting plastic may not sound particularly strong, the researchers claim that the robot can carry five times its own mass up a vertical wall.

[via New Scientist]

Robots – this is a subject that many would be interested in and fascinated with, especially when you consider how robots are capable of helping humans live out an easier life. Well, there is an upward trend when it comes to robots, and this time around, we have an autonomous glider robot which is assisting University of Delaware scientists in order to locate endangered Atlantic sturgeon fish in Delaware waterways – and of course, beyond that.

The University of Delaware reports, “More than a century ago, an estimated 180,000 female Atlantic sturgeon arrived from the coast in the spring to spawn in the Delaware River and fishermen sought their caviar as a lucrative export to Europe. Overfishing contributed to steep population declines, however, and today numbers have dwindled to fewer than 300 adults.” Relying on satellite information and historical records of ocean conditions, it allows one to to pinpoint migrating species which has been previously tracked in order to predict just where they are on any given day.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: XRL Robot Leaps High Enough To Make Spiderman Proud, Self-Assembling Printed Robot, Transformers A Reality Soon?,