Hasta La Gadget!

I’ve heard of having a monkey on your back, but a dragon? Get ready for some fiery breath over your shoulder with this epic Dragon Backpack. It will make you look badass and carry all of your stuff at the same time.

It’s like having a special friend that you carry around. A friend that can kill with fire and claw if anyone messes with you.

Unfortunately, this was a one-of-a-kind piece that leather artist Bob Basset made a few years back, and he doesn’t plan on making any more. There goes your plan to become King (or Mother) of dragons.

[via This Is Why I’m Broke]

3D printing can help you create prototypes or mockups quickly. Or should I say relatively quickly – it can take a 3D printer hours to print even moderately-sized objects. To speed things up, students from the Human-Computer Interaction Group at the Hasso Plattner Institute tested adding LEGO to their workflow.

Researchers Stefanie Mueller, Tobias Mohr, Kerstin Guenther, Johannes Frohnhofen and Patrick Baudisch call their project faBrickation. The idea is to print just the crucial parts of a prototype, then build the rest out of LEGO. To do that, they wrote a program called faBrickator, where they can open 3D models…

…and “Legofy” it at the press of a button.

Then they just mark the parts of the model that will be printed…

…and build the rest with LEGO using instructions generated by faBrickator.

They can also use faBrickator to go back to a 3D model, modify it and then print only the parts that were changed, once again saving time.

The group claims that on average, faBrickation lets them make prototypes nearly two and a half times faster than using 3D printing alone. I wonder if they can make a reverse faBrickation scanner, so laypeople can start making a “3d model” out of LEGO instead of a modeling software, scan that LEGO model then run the resulting model through faBrickation.

[via Hasso Plattner Institute via PSFK]

Technology has made it easier for prospective parents to see what their child looks like, even before he or she is born. There’s ultrasound (to get a rough outline), 3D imaging, and even 4D ultrasound so you can clearly see your unborn baby’s face and physical features in real time.

Now there are 3D printed figures of your unborn baby.

A company called 3D Babies is offering parents-to-be a chance to see and touch a replica of their unborn child by using data from 3D and 4D ultrasounds. The result is an accurate albeit somewhat creepy 3D model of the developing child.

Three sizes are available: lifesize, which is priced at $600(USD), half-size, which is priced at $400, and mini, which is priced at $200. Clearly, it’s not cheap, and probably only the most excited of parents will choose to spend money on this (although it would probably be smarter if they spent that money on baby supplies instead.)

3D Babies may even offer people a chance to 3D print babies that aren’t their own. For a time, they were even offering 3D prints of North West (Kim Kardashian and Kanye West’s baby). Now that’s wrong on so many levels.

[FastCo Design via Buzzfeed via Incredible Things]

We’ve seen a hexacopter with six legs, but this quadcopter takes after birds instead of spiders. This particular quadcopter is Vishwa Robotics’ test unit. New Scientist reports that the company is developing leg add-ons for “small US air force drones.” The legs will allow drones to perch on branches, wires and other objects in order to survey and conserve energy.

Vishwa Robotics founder Bhargav Gajjar modeled the legs after those of the American kestrel. A computer controls the drone’s landing based on footage from a camera mounted on the drone: “Just like a real bird, the drone has to brake sharply just above its landing site and perform a controlled stall in order to touch down.” The legs’ strong claws allow a drone to stay upright without using any power. In addition, drones can also use the legs to walk short distances.

Vishwa Robotics is also testing its legs on fixed-wing drones, bringing us that much closer to seeing tiny Valkyries.

[via New Scientist via Gigaom]

Jimmy aka 6kyubi6 made a working Star Wars-themed pinball machine using LEGO. Aside from its moving parts and different colored lights, the machine also has various minifigs and figures of Star Wars characters, including Luke, Darth Vader, Chewie, Artoo and even Jabba the Hutt.

Jimmy made the machine for a Brickpirate contest. Here’s a shot of the machine all lit up:

There’s a short video of the machine in action below, as well as more images of the pinball machine on his Flickr page.

[via The Brothers Brick]