Apr 15
We all know that Edward Snowden insists on secure email
Mar 21
Easter is just around the corner, so if you’re into doing more than hiding eggs and eating Peeps for the holiday, here’s something fun to add to your festive decor.
The Bunny Light is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a porcelain white bunny rabbit, but its fluffy white tail lights up. It’s made by our friends over at SuckUK, and will look cute sitting on a table or shelf long after the holiday has passed. This bunny has a cool LED light source in its tail, and is powered by USB. Though you might not want to buy two of them, as they do have a tendency to multiply quickly.
Rabbit fans can hop on over to SuckUK and grab a Bunny Light for £60 (~$91 USD). Keep in mind that it comes with a UK USB/AC adaptor in the box, so you’ll need to provide your own, or plug it into your computer.
[via Incredible Things]
Dec 03
In the old days, people can tell what someone is feeling by their facial expressions or by using special mouth sounds like “I’m sad. I don’t have anyone to talk to, which makes it sadder that I’m talking right now.” But apparently people these days are lying cowards who don’t want to express what they really feel. So now we have this.
The device is called the Tailly. It was invented by Shota Ishiwatari, the same man who came up with the brain-controlled cat ears and tails. The Tailly on the other hand looks at the wearer’s heart rate.
It’s a testament to how long I’ve been writing for Technabob that it’s the boring outfits of the people in the video that I find to be really weird and not the fake tails they’re wearing. Pledge at least £60 (~$96 USD) Kickstarter page to reserve your own Tailly. I’ll jump on the bandwagon when they come up with something that lets me run as fast as a cheetah.
Sep 24
We can thank the Japanese for another wacky gadget that has just been unveiled. The device is called the Shippo, and is a concept right now. It’s a white, fuzzy cat tail that reacts based on the wearer’s mood.
It looks like the perfect complement to Neurowear’s mind controlled robotic cat ears we talked about a while back. The idea is that the wearer would have some sort of sensor on their head that would detect their mood and wag the tail in relation to how they felt. When excited, the tail would wag rapidly.
When relaxed, the tail would wag slowly, and when scared apparently the tail wouldn’t wag at all. The tail works in conjunction with a smartphone app that allows the user to search out places where other users of the Shippo where relaxed. You can even list where wearers found someone else they like wearing the tail, in case they want to meet up. Check out the video above for a glimpse at all the cat tail weirdness.
[via io9]
Aug 01
The tiny Tailbot robot relies on a tail to control its balance. Now, the creators of the Tailbot and the RHex hexapod robot have teamed up to make the X-RHex Lite. The difference between this robot and the original Tailbot is that the XRL is about 60 times bigger, weighing 8.1 kilograms compared to the tiny Tailbot which only weighed 177 grams.
The tail works just like it would on a cat. It lets the robot right itself when falling and flying through the air. Thus, it recovers easily from crashes that turn it over. Even when it’s dropped, the legs are springy and act like shock absorbers. All of this means that it would take quite a lot to not land upright.
And that is important because robots aren’t useful on their backs. Great for search and rescue ‘bots or any robot that does alot of jumping.
[via IEEE Spectrum via Geek]
Jul 30
By far the greatest challenge for robots with legs is staying upright when the going gets rough. A team at the University of Pennsylvania’s Kod*lab has a hunch that we don’t need extra smarts to make that happen — just an extra appendage. The upgraded X-RHex Lite (XRL) carries a tail that will swing in the right direction to keep the robot upright if it’s caught out by a fall, much like a cat. That’s impressive for a nearly 18-pound robot (the previous Tailbot was 0.4 pounds), but we’re pretty sure no feline has six springy legs; the XRL can crash to the ground and still get back up like it ain’t no thing, which gives it a fudge factor others don’t have. We don’t know if the hexapod critter will lead to more than further experiments. If there are fewer stuck rovers on future exploration missions, though, we’ll know who to thank.
Continue reading X-RHex Lite robot grows a tail, always lands on its feet (video)
X-RHex Lite robot grows a tail, always lands on its feet (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 30 Jul 2012 22:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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