Gizmo Watch

We’ve seen transformer robots, and we have also seen number of pre-assembled bot kits. However, the new MechRC Humanoid Robot from Trossen Robotics is a makeover combination of the two. Measuring 36 x 32 x 15cm, the MechRC kit is designed by a transformer artist. MechRC Robot comes pre-assembled and is ready-to-walk robot, with 13kg-cm torque metal gear servos. The ready to walk kit can be manipulated in any animation film strip for easy customization, which makes programming the bot both simple and fun.

Powered by Li-ion batteries, the MechRC has over a hundred pre-installed motions and sounds, with 180 degree movement, which allows the bot to dance and take up some fighting moves too.

After the British revealed computer-generated imagery of their 1000mph Bloodhound, Supersonic Car, we came across a homemade bio-fuel powered rocket car that does 300mph. And now here is a world’s fastest ambulance that does 205 mph. Speed is a thrilling experience, and certainly at times it can become a messiah, saving lives. Ambulances need to be fast, but not as fast as this one: fitted with a General Electric J-79 turbojet engine from F-4 Phantom, it is an ambulance that was tested to run at 330 km/h. The custom-built truck is an ambulance, but the giant engine occupies all the space and there is no space to fit in the patient.

When we are pushing all limits to build robots for the future, taking robotic technology into a new realm, bots that’ll actually cut costs for us is something we really look for. Surveillance robots with minimum maintenance could be the solution here, and the GroundBot is one robust robotic mobile platform that hosts cameras and sensors with virtually silently maneuverability, and the least maintenance costs. Designed by Swedish physicists, the spherical sentry designed GroundBot, featured in PopSci’s Best of What’s New 2008, is made to explore through other planets.

The lightweight sphere boasts impressive off-road performance, at 6mph through mud, sand, snow and even water. All cameras and sensors are protected inside the sealed sphere while the bot can be remote controlled by hand or programmed to navigate by GPS. Weighing just 25 kg, the built-in cameras have a 360-degree viewing angle to zoom in to the minutest of detailing in the spy mission profile. Powered by lithium-ion batteries, the GroundBot can operate for 8-16 hours, rolling simply through shifts its weight depending on the mass suspension from the pendulum within the sphere.

Via: Rotundus

HP’s line of TouchSmart desktop PCs has been really appreciated. Building further upon the touch innovative technology, the company has revealed the TouchSmart tx2 multitouch notebook for consumers. Touted to be the first consumer-oriented convertible notebook with a multitouch display, the TouchSmart tx2 features a 12.1-inch LED blacklit screen with a 1200×800 resolution display, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi integrated. Guzzled up in a bazel-mounted fingerprint reader, the tx2 works with up to two fingers or a stylus. Preloaded with Windows Vista, the notebook runs on a 2.1GHz AMD Turion X2 dual core processor and 8GB of internal memory. Available for pre-order at $1150, the TouchSmart tx2 also comes with a 500GB hard drive, a SuperMulti DVD burner, built-in web cam, digital pen and an ATI Radeon HD 3200 graphics card.

HP via: BBG

After the Hyperwall came the HIPerSpace, the world’s highest-resolution display until now. However, the title for the most high-res seems to have fallen to the recently revealed world’s highest resolution tiled display deployed by the Texas Advanced Computing Center. Researchers and engineers have been working on and designing massively tiled display walls and high-resolution screens, and the “Stallion” Visualization Cluster by TACC, featuring 75 high-resolution Dell 30-inch displays, arranged in 15 columns of five displays each is a perfectly delivered mechanism. Each built-in display has a resolution of 2560×1600 for a combined total 307 million pixels, enhancing display capabilities significantly, stretching visual data viewing to terascale accuracy in all future discoveries. The display along with 100 processing cores is 34 feet long by 8 feet high and it boasts of 108GB of system memory and more than 36GB of graphics memory. We don’t have much to express over this world’s largest system of its class, but it is evident that researchers can now compute very large data in interactive 3-D modeling with very high-resolution images.

Via: UniversityofTexas/Statesman

Metals recycled for superlative sculptures are the result of an artist or a designer’s inventive imagination. It’s beyond us to imagine mechanical designs to be buried beneath dreary metal façades, but somehow, the creative ones dig down deep and manage to churn startling figurines out of scrap metal. These metal elephants by Andrew Chase are a paradigm of true detailed conception thereby. Made out of automobile transmission parts, electrical conduit, pipe, rod and sheet steel in about three and a half months’ time, they measure at 36″ X 36″ X 18″ and weigh in at about 85 lbs. The mechanical elephants are more than sculptures, given their maneuverability – all the joints are movable and they lock in place; the ears can move back and forth, while the trunk can be lowered or raised.

Paraplegics and the elderly often face problems with their joints and muscle movements. When stuck to bed owing to their illness, patients tend to develop contraction of muscles that could be irreversible, and regular range of motion exercises through physiotherapy is the only alternative left. There are a few muscle and joint extractors available to assist, but Tail-wrist-II seems to be a novel makeover in the category. Developed by Hideyuki Tsukakoshi, assistant professor of Mechanical Control Systems at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, the Tail-wrist-II is designed to prevent contraction of muscles and joints.

The wearable robotic arm has four actuators located in the forearm area, which are controlled with a joystick used by the unaffected hand. With the joystick air pressure is created inside an attached flat helical tube to induce movement of joints via the actuator, the movement created in the affected area is flexible and does not place undue stress on the wrist.

Adding gaming accessibility to all gadgets has become a fad lately, nothing is spared because gaming is the only industry digging strong in the global credit crunch. Therefore, here is an iPod touch nano concept stuffed with a removable game controller. Apple’s next generation of iPods has been in the pipeline, patents have been filled but nothing has come out on the other side. While iPod touch nano is only a dream for Apple and nothing more than image disclosers have really come about – seeing this iPod touch nano concept, we can take the liberty to state that when touch nano is actually delivered, it could bear a resemblance to this… we don’t mean brains in the Apple refinery are taking a lead from this one.

In the midst of ever growing public acceptance of touchscreen technology, no maker wants to skip a step. If ruggedness is an addition to sensitivity, there isn’t anything better to call for. The VIA VIPRO VP7710 touchscreen panel PC from VIA Technologies is a mixture of the two aforementioned – it is a fanless panel system for intelligent display applications in all kinds of demanding environs.
The VIPRO VP7710 is rugged, stable and flexible, housing plenty of ports in itself. The 10.4-inch touchscreen is packed in a solid chassis that provides ample shock and vibration protection, yet delivering a wide viewing angle. Highly suited for a human-machine interface, the VIPRO VP7710 has IP65 touch panel that is water and dust resistant. The 1GB of DDR2 memory PC includes S-ATA 2.5″ hard drives, HD audio and is powered by either a 1.6GHz VIA Eden or 1.0GHz C7 processor.

Via: TweakTown

We have high performance driven to an entirely new high. Concepts have been out there to lure the eye, but this is perhaps the one of its kind that challenges the power and durance. It’s a concept supercomputer designed on the Intel’s atom processor, called the new SGI Molecule. It touts of 10,000 cores, which is about 40 times more than a 1U x86 cluster system, packed into a single computer. The Silicon Graphics Molecule concept supercomputer designed around an Intel Atom N330 chip and Kelvin cooling technology, houses memory bandwidth of more than 750 high-end PCs, with 15TB/sec of memory bandwidth per rack, in a size of a normal PC.

The Intel atom processor is a low-cost, low power alternative for the microchips today, and there it isn’t an exaggeration to say that the concept would consume less than half the power and less than 1.4% of physical space compared to the modern day computers – howz that for a powerhouse with sustainability gearing the future?

Wired :Via: Gizmodo