Hasta La Gadget!

I’m taking a break from getting my ass handed to me playing Titanfall, and I just had to post this. This mech is the best possible way to display your smartphone.

It was made by MechWorld, using a variety of random metal bits and bobs, many of which look like the leftover parts from an IKEA cabinet I once put together. When there’s no cellphone docked as its pilot, I wonder if it has an auto-pilot follow mode where it fires RPGs at other phone stands it doesn’t like.

Want it? Drop whatever you’re doing, gather up 97 bucks and call for a dropship to kick you out over Etsy now.

[via ThisIsWhyI’mBroke]

Robots wielding dangerous weapons never seems like a good idea, but that doesn’t stop engineers from continuing to create them. Case in point, this ”Pruning Robot With a Power-Saving Chainsaw Drive.”

It was developed by roboticists Yasuhiko Ishigure, Katsuyuki Hirai, and Haruhisa Kawasaki, and is capable of not only climbing up trees, but dismembering them without human intervention. The robot can spiral its way up tree trunks ranging from 2.3 to 9.8 inches in diameter, and easily lops of limbs up to about two inches in diameter.

It doesn’t matter how much smooth jazz you play as it tears up the tree, slicing off branches. It’s still a deadly machine. While the machine could definitely reduce the need for human labor, the fact that it can climb and slice limbs seems like a horror movie waiting to happen. Imagine what this thing could do if it latched onto your leg. Eesh.

[via IEEE Spectrum]

If you find yourself near the Berlin Central Station today, you may have noticed a gigantic robot there before you decided to run for your life and hide in some corner. Nothing to fear. It’s just Betty the Titan, and this is just one stop on a four stop tour around Germany to promote Respawn Entertainment’s Titanfall in a big way.

Believe it or not Respawn and EA have been moving this and one other Titanfall prop all around the world. So far Betty has made appearances at Gamescom, GDC, E3, and a couple of other venues. Both Titans were created to represent the true scale of the mech compared to puny humans and they do that well. They would be amazing to see in person.

The Titans were created by Daniel’s Wood Land, based out of Paso Robles, CA. They are made almost completely out of foam, which is carved using 3D carving machines, then painted and sealed. So they aren’t as hard to move around as you would think. One day soon maybe we have have real mechs this size to crush us and kill us.

[via Geek]

Sure, Babar was a pretty cool elephant, but what happens when he becomes a cyborg bent on the destruction of the mustache man who stole his crown in Babar Loses His Crown? He goes out and gets one of these robotic trunks and starts tearing stuff up around Paris. Pure insanity. Festo, a German robotics company, is making sure that Babar will be able to bring the hurt down on all of us with this… Read More

The Boston Dynamics Big Dog is only the latest in a long line of semi-autonomous cargo carriers developed for the US military. Back in the late 1960’s, GE unveiled the Big Dog’s spiritual predecessor: a mammoth mechanical pack mule strong enough to push Jeeps around like Matchbox cars.

Read more…