Hasta La Gadget!

It’s now just over a month before Sony’s E3 press event and already the rumor mill is aflutter with what the comapny’s planning to debut on stage. We’ve already heard about PSP’s apparent makeover, and now comes word from Variety that the PlayStation 3’s oft-rumored motion sensing controller, closer in the vein of the Wii remote than of its relative-positioning Sixaxis pad, will be getting some time on stage. A source from Kombo late last month suggested key third-party develoeprs have already been brought up to speed and asked to implement the functionality into their upcoming titles. Like we said, this isn’t the first time we’ve been down this road, and it’s not happened infinitely more times than has, so… take that as you will. Brace yourself, this is only the beginning of the of a flurry of game-related murmurs and speculation in the leadup to next month’s conference.

Read – Variety
Read – Kombo

Filed under: Gaming

PlayStation 3 motion-sensing controller to be shown off at E3? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 01 May 2009 01:37:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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No, this isn’t one of the editors at Engadget, although — judging by the way he conducts himself in this hands on video — we’ll probably drop him a line by the time CES 2010 rolls around. This DIY remote control consists of a USB number pad that’s been rehoused in a toddler-safe enclosure and outfitted with some rather large buttons. It looks like it’s just the thing for letting your little guy take control of Teletubbies, or Baby Einstein, or whatever it is the kids are into these days. Have a young one of your own? Hit the read link for the step-by-step instructions and thrilling in-progress photos. Video after the break.

[Via Hack A Day]

Continue reading Video: toddler-safe DIY remote control

Filed under: Peripherals

Video: toddler-safe DIY remote control originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 07 Apr 2009 11:26:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Long before Predator drones and PackBots patrolled Iraq and Afghanistan, unmanned systems were used in combat—as far back as WWI and WWII, in fact. Here’s a quick look at the coolest of the old-timey warbots:

While reading PW Singer’s Wired for War, I was surprised by the ingenuity on both sides in coming up with unmanned—and even radio-controlled—machines that were occasionally actually used during the two biggies. I’ve highlighted six, plus an exceptional example of early computer intelligence, that are all covered at some length in the book.

(If you’re skimming this, just be sure to watch the second YouTube video below.)

WORLD WAR I

FL-7 remote-controlled boat (1916) – Sadly unpictured – These German “sprengbootes” carried 300lbs. of explosives and were tethered by 50-mile wire to a dude on shore, sitting in a tower 50 feet up. The controller was too vulnerable perhaps, because they soon moved him into an airplane buzzing overhead, still trailing that long-ass cable.

Ultimately, they decided to do like Nikolai Tesla did in 1898 at Madison Square Garden with his little motorboat (seen at right), and go R/C. More info on the World War II version of the FL.

Sopwith AT “Aerial Torpedo” (1917) – Maker of Snoopy’s famous Sopwith Camel biplane decided that it was possible to do the same thing, only radio controlled and full of explosives, call it the “Aerial Torpedo” and steer it into German Zeppelins. Trouble was, on its test flight, it tried to dive bomb a gathering of generals instead. Whoopsie. More info on the Sopwith AT, and another remote controlled plane of the era, the Queen Bee Tiger Moth.

Wickersham Land Torpedo (1917) – Another ill-fated warbot, this one was startlingly close in looks to the PackBots of today, with its two tank treads. But instead of a sophisticated computer brain, this one packed 1,000 pounds of explosive and a rudimentary remote control. Unfortunately for people who like big booms, it never went into production. More information on that and more “unknown” tanks here, sketch here and photo here.

WORLD WAR II

OQ-2 Radioplane aka “Dennymite” (1935) – Actor and World War I hero Reginald Denny opened a hobby shop in the 1930s, and when the specter of World War II loomed, he introduced army personnel to their first target drone, the RP-1. They were impressed, and after several modifications and name changes, Denny was making them by the thousands at an airport in Van Nuys. (As fate would have it, it was at Denny’s factory in 1944 that an army photographer spotted a super hot Rosie the Riveter named Norma Jeane, who soon went platinum blonde and changed her name to Marilyn Monroe.) More information on the OQ-2 and Marilyn Monroe’s discovery.

Fritz X guided bomb (1939) – Another specialty from Germany—the people who brought you the better known “buzzbombs,” this one was pretty much a straight-up bomb, but it had radio-controlled fins, so it wasn’t exactly smart, but it weren’t dumb neither. More info on Fritz here and here.

Goliath remote-controlled tank buster (1940) – If the Germans had time to work on their tank skills between the wars, they also had a little time to hone the tank-killing ‘bot. The Goliath has the same classic look as the American Land Torpedo, but managed to be far more effective. This startlingly vivid clip shows actual footage of Germans—sometime during the last gasps of the Nazi regime—steering one into a tank to blow it up.

Norden bomb sight (1932) – If the unmanned vehicles above represent prototypes in the body designs we see in today’s land, air and sea robots, the Norden bomb sight was the precursor to their cold, calculating brains.

A telescope would pick out a single spot on the ground, a series of gyroscopes and motors would hold that spot in sight, an analog computer would figure out the trajectory of the bombs needed to hit the target, and the whole thing would engage the plane’s autopilot to make sure the bombing went down as planned. You don’t have to read Catch-22 to know that, on bombing runs, nothing ever really went as planned, but the Norden was the closest they had to AI back in WWII, and there’s a reason it was said to “put a bomb in a pickle barrel from 20,000 feet” (even if that’s not going to do the bomb or the pickle barrel any good). More info here and here.

War nerds, please fill in the comments with your own knowledge of the above unmanned metal-and-gear beasts, or any other favorite ones I might have skipped, and so help me the first commenter to say “These are not robots” gets banned for stating the obvious, and being kind of a wiener about it.

If you haven’t yet read through our interview with Wired For War‘s PW Singer, have a look. And stay tuned for more exciting nuggets of info from the book, a trove of robot trivia not to mention a chilling portrayal of how robots have already infiltrated our military.

For some reason, whenever gadgetry and smiling cross paths, things tend to get a little creepy. Where the smile trainer was mostly a curiosity, the Orwellian implications of the Okao Catch technology were a bit much — even for the hardened tech blogger. Sure, the Mimi Switch is quite clever: instead of relying on your fingers, this remote control uses an earbud containing infrared sensors that measure the inner ear movements resulting from various facial expressions. “An iPod can start or stop music when the wearer sticks his tongue out,” says the inventor, Kazuhiro Taniguchi of Osaka University. Sounds innocent? Not so fast. The device can also be used to monitor your facial expressions for the appropriate levels of cheerfulness. “If it judges that you aren’t smiling enough,” the inventor goes on to say, “it may play a cheerful song.” Or if you’re smiling too much, the thing can be programmed to play some latter-day Depeche Mode. That always bums us out.

Filed under: Wearables

Mimi Switch remote control relies on facial expression, not phalanges originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 08 Mar 2009 20:47:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Well, here’s a novel concept. Rather than bothering with turning up the volume on your ancient television, just crank up the volume on this here remote. Asahi Electric’s block-shaped remote is about as unergonomic as it gets, and it sure won’t bring along any advanced functionality, but we suppose that’s sort of the point. The 30mm speaker connects to a wireless transceiver in order to blast out the audio, and while most everything else is lost in translation, do you really need to understand any more?

[Via OhGizmo]

Filed under: Home Entertainment

Curious ELPA remote sports built-in speaker originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 28 Feb 2009 18:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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