It feels good to let the poison out every once in a while, so today's episode of CNET's The 404 Podcast is all about human vices, starting with a story about a controversial secret love scene in Dragon Age: Origins between two gay elves. While conservatives are up in arms about the cut scene, Wilson and Jeff stand by the Mature rating and hold parents responsible for making the final buying decision, but I have to play devil's advocate and ask why it's necessary to have sex scenes in video games in the first place; are there really gamers out there actually getting a kick out of seeing it, or is it just creating more trouble than it's worth?
While we're on the subject of nerds, World of Warcraft players are rejoicing at Blizzard's "ever-expanding line of merchandise" that now includes customized posters featuring your in-game WoW character. It's called Print Warcraft, and it's already so popular that the Web site is apologizing for its overloaded servers. We have a few problems with the idea of the service, so be sure to listen to the whole episode for our breakdown.
The last vice of the day might change the way you party on the weekends: a researcher in Russia has found a way to solidify your favorite liquors into pill form. Evgeny Moskalev of the Saint Petersburg Technological University has figured out how to turn alcohol into powder and pack the concentration into a "dry pill." We seriously doubt party animals in Russia will be able to measure out the exact vodka dosage needed to get blotto, but we'll raise our pill box to it anyway.
(Credit:
Otterbox)
We've also got two new user submitted theme songs thanks to PA Stubbs and David, and DON'T FORGET! It's not to late to enter for a chance to win one of ten Otterbox cases for your iPhone 3G or 3GS. All you have to do is leave a comment on yesterday's episode and wait to see if you win! The contest runs until noon tomorrow, December 4, so don't forget!
EPISODE 479
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An undated photo from the Campus Bio-Medico di Roma shows Pierpaolo Petruzziello's amputated hand linked with electrodes to a robotic hand.
(Credit: Campus Bio-Medico di Roma)European scientists have successfully built a brain-controlled bionic hand that could be used to kill or maim hundreds of humans in the coming robot versus humans' civil war. Or, far more admirably, allow amputees to feel hand sensations and manipulate their limb--via the brain--as if it were still there.
Pierpaolo Petruzziello--who lost his arm under the elbow in a car crash several years ago--has done just that, Italy's University Campus Bio-Medico of Rome announced Wednesday.
(Credit:
Campus Bio-Medico di Roma)
The biometric hand was developed at Pisa's Valdera Polo Sant'Anna School and surgically attached to Petruzziello's nervous system via electrodes implanted into the remaining part of his left arm, meaning the robotic body part was actually like an extension of his body. After the surgery at the University Campus Bio-Medico of Rome in November 2008, it took Petruzziello just days to start using the device.
During the LifeHand trial, which lasted a month, Petruzziello, 26, was able to experience sensations when grasping, making a fist, and apparently flipping the bird. No really. (There's nothing science can't do.)
The responses from the hand to commands sent from the brain were 95 percent correct, Paolo Maria Rossini, head of neurology for the project, said Wednesday. That's more than I can say for some of the people I know.
The next step, which is still at least a couple of years away, is to work out a more long-term experiment that would hopefully lead to cybernetic arms like the LifeHand as a viable option for amputees. The EU has spent $3 million and five years on the project so far, but in the end, if the experiments prove successful, we may be living with people with Luke Skywalker-style arms in just a few short years. I will outfit mine with a place to hide my flask.
Osaka, Japan-based Eager Co. is developing recyclable cardboard robots to work as mannequins that show off clothing in retail display spaces.
Eager showed off the female D+ropop mannequins at the recent 2009 International Robot Exhibition (iRex) here in Tokyo. They're billed as the world's most environmentally friendly robots because they're made of corrugated cardboard.
The mannequin bots only have a few servomotors but can still move their arms and heads gracefully. Each weighs about 13 pounds and is nearly 6 feet tall. They can also be painted and printed with logos for other advertising purposes.
The dummy bots will go on sale this month in Japan, priced at $5,400 and up. They can be rented for about $1,800 per week.
Eager envisions them being used in storefronts, and at events and other venues to attract attention. The company apparently aims to capture 1 percent of the global retail mannequin market, not easy for an obscure start-up in this economy.
But who knows? If Old Navy can cause a stir with its SuperModelquin mannequins, there's hope for the D+ropop gals.
Researchers in Japan are developing robotic roller skates as a new form of personal mobility.
(Credit:
Tim Hornyak)
Toshinobu Takei of Japan's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) demonstrated his "Unit-type Micro-Mobility" device at the 2009 International Robot Exhibition (iRex) in Tokyo this week.
We haven't seen too many gadgets like these, but what with the plethora of prototype personal vehicles like Honda's U3-X unicycle in Japan lately, they aren't surprising.
The prototype skates are actually mechatronic versions of "takeuma," which are old-school bamboo stilts that kids used to play with in Japan before their lives were consumed by cell phones and video games.
The aluminum skates move automatically when the user leans forward, but the attached poles must also be grasped. Users can roll or step forward with them.
Each skate contains a wheel, three accelerometers, and gyroscopes, and weighs about 11 pounds, according to Takei, part of AIST's Field Robotics Research Group.
Top speed is about 2.5 mph.
Takei said the skates are still in development, but added they are less bulky than a Segway.
Could they spark a new roller disco boom? Everyone would dance The Robot, of course.
Add another robot to the list of helping bots for seniors. A robot named Charlie rolled into a New Zealand retirement village on Monday to take residents' vital signs, deliver their medication reminders, and call for assistance if they fall.
Charlie's trial stint at Selwyn Retirement Village in Auckland's Point Chevalier is, in part, a response to a University of Auckland study exploring seniors' attitudes toward robots.
The study--part of a three-year "HealthBots" collaboration by the University of Auckland and Korea's Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute--collated the opinions of Selwyn Retirement Village residents, their families, and staff on what tasks health care robots could perform and what the mechanical helpers should look like.
Results showed respondents felt most comfortable with robots taking vital signs such as blood pressure, calling for help, lifting heavy objects, cleaning, and making phone calls to a doctor or nurse. They did not identify personal care, medical advice, and assessing emotions as tasks they'd like to see taken over by robots.
Posing with Charlie the robot are HealthBots team members (from left) Rebecca Stafford, Bruce MacDonald, and Elizabeth Broadbent.
(Credit: University of Auckland)As far as physical appearance, residents and staff indicated they preferred a "middle-age robot" with a clear voice, though they didn't have a preference for male or female features. The robot shouldn't be too human-like, they suggested, with some residents explicitly saying they'd rather be tended to by a robot without a face. The preferred design was silver and around 4 feet tall, so the robot was not too imposing, with wheels and a screen.
Enter Charlie, which pretty much fits that description. ... Read more
Data Robotics eSATA-enabled Drobo S
(Credit: Data Robotics)Finally, it looks like the Drobo storage system I've been waiting for has arrived.
I've been struggling with the right way to deal with data as I move from a desktop machine with abundant internal storage to a laptop that can't fit my burgeoning photo library. Earlier four-drive Drobo models, with FireWire and USB ports, looked better at backup than storing live files I'd be using constantly.
But Monday, Data Robotics announced the Drobo S, a five-bay, $799 storage system that adds an eSATA connection to the mix.
Drobo systems use technology called BeyondRAID that stores data across a mixture of different drives. It offers redundancy and automatically rebuilds your files when you replace an older drive or add a new one that's more capacious. Drobos don't come cheap, but they offer longevity, and right now Amazon is selling 1.5-terabyte drives for $99.
So why should the prospect of dropping $1,000 on a storage system excite me? Because of eSATA. ... Read more
The autonomous Audi TTS makes test runs on salt flats.
(Credit: Volksagen)The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) conducted its autonomous vehicle races, the Grand Challenge and the Urban Challenge, in 2005 and 2007, but Volkswagen is still researching the technology. A combined effort with Volkswagen's Electronics Research Laboratory (ERL), Stanford University's Dynamics Design Lab (SDDL), and Sun Microsystem's resulted in the autonomous Audi TTS. The group working on the car is considering a run up the 12.4-mile Pikes Peak Hill Climb course in 2010 to demonstrate the capabilities of its driverless technology.
This new robot car is based on a 2009 Audi TTS, the sport version of the TT coupe. This car has Quattro all-wheel-drive and is motivated by a turbocharged, direct injection, 2-liter, four-cylinder engine producing 265 horsepower and 258 pound-feet of torque. ERL fitted this car with the sensors, servos, and drive-by-wire equipment necessary for computer control, while SDDL developed the programming so the car can respond appropriately to sensor data. Sun built the computer platform to run the car.
Past autonomous cars from Volkswagen, developed by Stanford, have been a Touareg SUV and a Passat wagon. A video promoting the new Audi TTS shows the technology has progressed so that it can handle drifting and cross-turning the wheels, maneuvers necessary for any speedy run up Pike's Peak.
While this technology could lead to commutes and long freeway trips where you could sit back and let the car do the driving, the point of the current research is developing new safety technologies.
(Credit:
Video screenshot by Tim Hornyak/CNET)
Say salam wa aleikum to an Arabic-speaking android developed at United Arab Emirates University and billed as the first of its kind in the world. It could enter mass production to help people at shopping malls.
The Ibn Sina robot, named after an 11th century philosopher, can recognize faces, converse with people by speaking in classical Arabic, connect to the Internet, and retrieve information. As seen in the video below, it can also exchange kisses with people.
Software for Ibn Sina was developed by a team led by computer science assistant professor Nikolaos Mavridis, with the mechanics by Hanson Robotics. Mavridis says some companies have approached his lab and asked about using the turban-wearing, bearded bot in shopping malls or as a receptionist.
Doubtless Ibn Sina, known as Avicenna in English, would have been pleased.
(Credit:
Michigan State University)
Michigan State University researchers are spawning robot fish to monitor the quality of lake water and the effect of harmful algae.
The prototype fish resemble other robot fish, such as those being developed at MIT to check for pollutants in water.
An electric charge in the 9-inch MSU prototype causes its polymer fins to bend so the robotic perch can maneuver. Designs call for onboard sensors to record temperature, oxygen, pollutant, and algae data, which would be relayed to a docking station when the fish surfaces. GPS systems and infrared sensors could be developed to aid navigation.
The fish are designed to be low-cost for applications such as monitoring aquafarms and water reservoirs. Compared with water sampling by humans, the robo-fish would provide a more regular data feed by communicating with each other and their docking station.
The MSU researchers hope to make the robot more robust so it can swim through currents. Currently it can only move through calm water.
(Credit:
Robo-Garage)
Japanese robot wunderkind Tomotaka Takahashi has created a new humanoid robot that can jump 3 inches off the floor, an impressive feat for a small bipedal machine.
Known for his anime-inspired robotic creations used for product promotion, Takahashi's latest bipedal walker is called Ropid (from "robot" and "rapid").
The cute carbon fiber and plastic droid weighs 3.5 pounds and has 30 degrees of mechanical freedom.
Seen in the video below, Ropid can get up, walk, run, and even jump 3 inches into the air.
It does all that while maintaining its balance thanks to its four onboard gyro sensors and four accelerometers.
Takahashi's stylish robots, such as Chroino, are often featured in magazines and on TV in Japan.
It took Takahashi two and a half years to develop Ropid at his Kyoto University-based start-up Robo-Garage. The robot is based on patented technology developed in 2007.
(Via Robot Watch)
