Author: Caleb Kraft

1567 Articles

Awesome Robots Love Fanta

October 19, 2009 by 28 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOESSCXGhFo]

What you are seeing above is not a commercial for Fanta, though we think it would have been a good one. It also isn’t being played at an accelerated speed. That is a real time demonstration of the accuracy and speed the ABB robots achieve. We were surprised, even shocked, when we clicked play. We don’t know who came up with this idea, but we want those robots, and we want some Fanta.  We’re a bit curious what industry needs beverage tracing robots though.

The last time we saw such amazing feats of robot awesomeness, they were bouncing balls and catching stuff in mid air.

Mouse Runs Through VR Maze

October 16, 2009 by 34 Comments

vr_mouse_setup

In an effort to determine the brain of animals during movement, scientists have built this contraption. It is a VR pod for a mouse. While we’re pretty sure/hopeful that none of you need a mouse VR system, we think the rig is interesting enough to stand on its own. It appears to be a convex mirror setup, projected in a dome. The controller is interesting in that it looks like a giant trackball hack. They’re using an optical mouse rigged to a ball floating on a cushion of air. This makes it much easier for the mouse to move. There’s a video of the whole thing in action after the break.

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Sphere Bots Get Some New Skills

October 15, 2009 by 34 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWkK-o4Vq-A]

Spherical robots , or in this case RC vehicles are pretty versatile. They travel about the same on most terrains, including water in some cases. That’s not to say that they travel particularly well on those terrains though. The common problem is that they can’t really climb over bumps very well, until now. We’ve seen a few versions of sphere bots, but they all seem to need fairly level smooth surfaces, aside from that one that went in the water. We hadn’t seen any that really had the oomph necessary to climb stairs though. Actually, we still haven’t seen that, but he says it can in the interview you can watch after the break.

Continue reading “Sphere Bots Get Some New Skills” →

NES Guitar

October 15, 2009 by 17 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WUNyImfBPQ]

[Dave] set out to build the ultimate NES guitar. He’s apparently done a pretty good job, this thing is pretty remarkable. Every detail is covered in NES goodness. The body is a console, the head is a cartridge, his knobs are even replaced by goofy little heads of Mario and friends. We think he should do some custom pixel art inlays in the fretboard next. Skip to about 2:00 to hear him play a Nintendo medley on it.

Haptic Halluc 2

October 13, 2009 by 7 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4UKXyPlO8Q]

We can not express the childlike glee that we experienced watching this video. We want so badly to have one of these setups. What you are seeing is a half dome projected cockpit with two haptic controllers in the style of a delta robot. This is controlling the Halluc robot which is a hybrid wheeled octopod. The dome can and has been done at home fairly simply, and we suspect that you guys could come up with some similar delta controllers. So who wants to build one and donate it to hackaday?

[via BotJunkie]

Halloween Props: The Honking Pumpkin

October 12, 2009 by 12 Comments

_honking_pumpkin (Custom)

We see a lot of Halloween projects attempt to scare people. Many of them work with the element of surprise, jumping or flashing lights when triggered. We’ve noticed though, people have come to expect those things. This project is a real sleeper. No one expects a couple car horns to blare in their face  when they push the pumpkin’s nose. We know it would make us jump. You can see it in action as well as get the entire circuit from his site. We doubt his neighbors will find it as amusing as we do.

[via Hacked Gadgets]