The Swiss Alpine Club built its first shed on this Alpine peak back in 1929 to serve as a refuge for climbers. But Savioz Fabrizzi Architects recently replaced the aging shack to offer more modern comforts—like solar energy. Since the site is 9,768 feet above the ground, each piece of the building was dropped off by helicopter. [ArchDaily]
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At first, it’s kind of charming. Look how well the Swiss treat their cows! A helicopter is dispatched just to carry an injured bovine stuck in the mountains! It’s not an uncommon sight in the Alps, either: in Switzerland, insurance that covers helicopter evacuation for your family also includes your cows.
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Taking flight with a wingsuit is probably the scariest thing I can think of doing. And that’s part of the reason why this interactive video of German crazy person Beni Kälin jumping off a Swiss mountaintop is so cool. It feels like you’re flying—except without the risk of dying part.
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Switzerland’s got a lot going on. There are the mountains, the lakes, the delicious chocolate, the less-delicious cheese. Oh, and the money, the warehouses full of money. No wonder they’re worried about someone crashing through the borders and taking it all. Specifically, a bankrupt France.
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Previously, free rein to explore the labyrinthine laboratory that is CERN has been granted only to the lucky, or those with four degrees and an aptitude for finding theoretical particles. That changes today, however, as anyone can now explore the home of the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerland through Google Street View. All the imagery was captured back in 2011, but it’s finally been stitched together, allowing you to wander freely around the site of the famous particle accelerator and learn a little about its experiments. Hit up Google Views to begin your personal guided tour, and let us know if you spot this Higgs fellow everyone’s so keen on finding.
Filed under: Science, Internet, Alt, Google
Source: Google Views, Google Europe Blog
“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
I’ve been to see ALICE — though there was no looking glass to jump through, just a retina scanner and one very long elevator ride down into the earth. I’ve toured a CMS that has nothing to do with online publishing. I’ve even gently laid my body on the most powerful particle accelerator in the world and raised the ire of surrounding engineers in the interest of a good shot. I did all of this at CERN, the international particle physics laboratory located near Geneva, Switzerland. But you probably know it best as the birthplace of the world wide web and home of the Large Hadron Collider. And, yes, it was all exactly like a walking fever dream.
Gallery: CERN
Gallery: CERN Large Hadron Collider
Gallery: CERN CMS
Gallery: CERN ALICE
Filed under: Science
Building a tower out of Lincoln Logs is one thing. Building a real life, 30-foot high funeral pyre out of actual firewood is a little bit more complicated. With a bit of finesse and a lot of patience, artist Tadashi Kawamata managed to pull off the latter. No smoking in the vicinity, please.
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Ahhh, Switzerland. Not only Europe’s centralized hub for chocolate, cheese, watches, banking, and international apolitical neutrality (so lucky), the nation also boasts two of the finest science and engineering schools on the planet. Naturally, that begets robots, and on Monday, the EPFL begat a cat: the Cheetah-Cub.
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So, the Swiss Have Awesome Robots?
Totally, but for most, when thinking about top robot labs & makers, the mind goes quickly toward DARPA-funded work, MIT, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, Virginia Tech, Honda, Tokyo and/or Osaka Universities, KAIST, etc. So maybe the Swiss just aren’t awesome at marketing, because the country actually is the geographical locus of robotics development in Europe, and its two big tech schools conduct research in no fewer than 6 disciplines each – here, look:
“Yet Another Highly Advanced Robot from Switzerland”
Not an overly common news headline, but probably should be.
Cheetah-Cub from EPFL
The Cheetah-Cub comes from the Biorobotics Laboratory at the French speaking École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in southern Switzerland (that’s the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, for those unable or unwilling to do the linguistic math).
Cheetah-Cub walks with the elastic, hoppity, distinct gait of the common house cat – and it’s fast for a robot of its size. Based on meticulous observation and reverse engineering, it’s legs were designed with springs and actuators to mimic the biomechanics of feline legs (also at comparable size & weight).
It’s a durable, inexpensive, easy to produce research platform that the team hopes will lead to small machines more closely approximating the physical dexterity of meat-based cats. Eventually they might assist with rescue and exploration efforts.
Of course, the shot of the engineer “walking” Cheetah-Cub brings up the question, but so far there’s no word on plans for a pet version. Again, that marketing issue… maybe it just isn’t in the Swiss cultural toolhouse. They should get on that (hire France or Germany, perhaps?), because a project to develop a non-shedding, non meowing, non-excreting pet/toy cat with an off button could make a lot of people happy (and probably get funding).
Alright, that’s a wrap – and not one lame “always lands on its feet” jab in the whole piece. Success!
AIBO Addendum:
In this context, one would be remiss to not mention the super-advanced, inexcusably canceled AIBO. What could more appropriately give Cheetah-Cub a chase? It’s true, the Saddest Robots in Japan Live Among the Sins of Sony.
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Reno J. Tibke is the founder and operator of Anthrobotic.com and a contributor at the non-profit Robohub.org.
VIA: KurzweilAI, EPFL
Images: EPFL
Someone call MIT’s researchers and tell them their terrifying cheetah robot has a long-lost teensy sibling in Switzerland. Developed in the laboratories of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, the “cheetah-cub robot” is a four-legged metallic critter modeled after a house cat. The scientists focused on designing legs that can move like our feline friends’, paying particular attention to their stability while moving on uneven surfaces. While it has a long way to go before it becomes a graceful daredevil, it’s a fast little bugger that can run seven times its body length in one second. The researchers hope their creation gives rise to more robots for exploration and search-and-rescue missions in the future — a far more noble goal than some cat-owners’ dream to have their pets’ pictures land on the front page of Reddit.
Spotify has been getting comfortable with providers to various degrees, whether it’s just carrier billing or direct deals. Today, however, it’s getting extra-cozy. Orange Switzerland has started bundling Spotify Premium with its Orange Young plans: those 27 and younger can pay between 29 to 79 francs ($31 to $85) per month and, on top of the usual service, get a year’s worth of streaming music access that won’t count against their bandwidth caps. Older customers aren’t left out, either, as they can pay 13 francs ($14) a month with the same data exemption. There’s no word of whether or not the Orange pact will spread to other countries, but we hope it does — having unlimited streaming access could easily make up for Spotify’s retreat from downloads.
Filed under: Cellphones, Portable Audio/Video, Internet, Mobile
Via: TechCrunch
Source: Orange (1), (2)
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