RUTH

Ford's RUTH robot arm extends hand to North America

If you're driving around in a 2013 Ford Fusion and think to yourself, "My, but this seat is comfortable," there's a good chance you have RUTH the robot to thank.

Ford's Robotized Unit for Tactility and Haptics -- a modified consumer packaging arm that tests interiors for quality and comfort -- has crossed the Atlantic from Europe to bring her touchy-feely testing skills to North America.

The robot simulates human motor skills to measure parameters like roughness, hardness, and temperature on points such as the steering wheel, knobs, and armrests. RUTH has already been used for several years at the automaker's European Research Center in Aachen, Germany, to poke and prod European versions of the Focus and Fiesta.

RUTH 2.0, located at Ford's Product Development Center in Dearborn, Mich., measures seat comfort too. She has extended her six-jointed arm all over the seats of the 2013 Fusion, the first North American car headed to production that she's had a major hand (or arm, we should say) in testing. … Read more

At long last, a visit to Cooperstown

COOPERSTOWN, N.Y.--For a lifelong baseball fan like me, visiting this little town on the edge of Otsego Lake in upstate New York for the first time is like a political junkie's first-ever trip to Washington, D.C.

It turns out, of course, that my Road Trip 2010 project has afforded me both of those opportunities, and where my initial journey to D.C. earlier in the journey was a chance to finally see, firsthand, places like the White House and the U.S. Capitol, my first-ever passage through the doors of the Baseball Hall of Fame here … Read more

Should Ruth Madoff have her MacBook taken away?

I was browsing through the latest issue of Vanity Fair, in which Mark Seal has a profile of Ruth Madoff titled "Ruth's World," and noticed that Madoff, wife of jailed Ponzi-schemer Bernie Madoff, is apparently an Apple user.

The article talks about how she had to give up many of her pricier belongings, including a fur coat (or probably several), when U.S. marshals took possession of her Park Avenue apartment on July 2.

Personally, I wasn't too concerned about the fur she wanted to keep, but sick tech blogger that I am, all I could … Read more