Hasta La Gadget!

The spring-loaded technology behind the Steadicam has just found another use — the x-Ar exoskeleton arm, which attaches to your wrists to reduce or eliminate the feeling of weight. Just unveiled at the Applied Ergonomics Conference in Florida this week, the mechanism mounts to a chair or other stable object and loosely cuffs your arms, allowing for a fairly extraordinary range of motion while bearing “the weight of your arm and small objects.” (Sledgehammer-wielding workers will probably be better served by one of these.) While manufacturer Equipois suggests that the arm will likely see use in factories, assembly lines and the like where workers are subject to repetitive stress, we can also think of a few bloggers who wouldn’t mind taking a little strain off their wrists. PR after the break.

Continue reading x-Ar exoskeleton arm keeps repetitive tasks from doing you harm (video)

x-Ar exoskeleton arm keeps repetitive tasks from doing you harm (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 23 Mar 2011 12:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Candy crane, teddy picker, claw machine, whatever you call it, this arcade mainstay was robbing children of their golden tokens long before we slid into our first pair of Hammer pants, but despite the changing face of the plush offerings within, the crane game’s remained mostly the same. Now a team of students at the Bartlett School of Architecture have produced a Kinect hack that could change the way you drop that claw. The rather temperamental delta robot enlists the ever-hackable peripheral in combination with Processing and Arduino to mimic the movements of a user’s arm. As you can tell by the video below, the delta hasn’t quite figured out the subtleties of human gestures, but the robot’s creators say they intend to implement “several autonomous behaviors” once all the kinks are worked out. Frankly, we’d pay our weight in tokens to see the crane game bite back at an unsuspecting whippersnapper. Video after the break.

Continue reading Kinect hack turns Arduino-controlled delta robot into aggressive claw crane (video)

Kinect hack turns Arduino-controlled delta robot into aggressive claw crane (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 07 Mar 2011 23:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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What might Android gaming look like on a Samsung Galaxy S II? You’re staring it in the face right now. We spotted Samsung’s Orion / Exynos 4210 at GDC 2011, showing off the power of its dual-core 1GHz ARM Cortex A9 CPU and Mali-400 graphics on a nice big 1080p television screen — with a completely playable asteroid obstacle course that ran at a butter-smooth 60 frames per second in stereoscopic 3D. ARM representatives told us the chip actually has even more headroom, but was actually constrained by its HDMI 1.3 port, and could push stereoscopic content at up to 70fps if their reference board had HDMI 1.4. When we asked if there were any plans to publish the TrueForce space shooter demo, ARM said it might indeed be done; the company’s thinking of releasing it on the Android Market as a benchmark of sorts.

Samsung’s Exynos 4210 flexes 3D gaming muscle at GDC 2011 (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 03 Mar 2011 19:10:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Robot hands have been grabbing, crushing, drawing and otherwise actuating for years, but have you ever seen one properly type? That’s the primary purpose of a new Virginia Tech design. Engineers built this Dexterous Anthropomorphic Robotic Typing (DART) hand to mimic the real deal as best they could, down to individually-actuating three-segment digits and 110 degrees of wrist rotation in a package the size of a real human arm. Using a total of 19 servo motors and high tensile strength wire for the tendons, they managed to create a single mechanical paw that can achieve an estimated 20 words per minute while typing. Next, they plan to cover it in silicone skin and add piezoelectric sensors to provide tactile feedback. Imagine that: the next time a secret family member severs your arm with a focused plasma beam, you’ll know where to go for replacement. Find a quick video and the full scientific paper at the links below.

Robot hand hits 20WPM, nearly ready to embrace infinite monkey theorem originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 20 Feb 2011 22:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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What is a Webby? It is, according to its manufacturer Avantis, “a revolutionary new gadget which is like nothing your customers have seen before.” That, of course, assumes they’ve never seen a Chumby, because that’s basically what this is — running Android, though. It features a suite of widgets and little apps that will let you stream internet radio, check your e-mails, cruise RSS feeds, and even wake up to an alarm. Yeah, familiar stuff, but the apparent lack of social networkability is a bit of a bummer. (There doesn’t even seem to be a Twitter client!) It’s powered by a 600MHz ARM CPU with 256MB of RAM, 2GB of internal flash paired with SD and USB expansion. The 3.5-inch touchscreen has a resolution of 320 x 240 and it’ll connect over 802.11b/g/n WiFi. It even has a DMB tuner if you happen to be living in a land that’s similarly equipped. All that controlled by the wonder that is Android 2.1, but for an undisclosed price.

[Thanks, TIll]

Webby is the Android-powered Chumby thing that hasn’t won any awards — yet originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 13 Feb 2011 03:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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