crawlers

A little salt won't hurt the Slug Crawler Vehicle

Researchers developed a slug-like robotic vehicle wrapped with a flexible, waterproof "skin" to keep it dry and dust-free in search and rescue missions.

The Slug Crawler Vehicle was developed at the Chiba Institute of Technology in Japan, which presented the vehicle at the IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems in San Francisco in September.

Enveloping the Slug Crawler Vehicle (SCV) with a retractable exterior skin layer protects the machine from the elements--particularly dust and water--that can corrode or damage the system in wet environments. Internal pulleys swivel from side to side to manipulate the tread-like skin and steer the SCV. … Read more

DIY Weekend: Mutant four-wheeler for road, rail

DIY Weekend, a new Crave series spotlighting readers' do-it-yourself creations, kicks off with the Hennepin Crawler. Members of Krank-Boom-Clank, a three-person kinetic industrial arts collective in Santa Rosa, Calif., spent one night a week for six months building the quirky contraption, one of their "mutant ride-able sculptures of delight (aka 'freak bikes')."

Built for four riders, the Crawler can handle both street and limited railroad-track cruising at The Great Handcar Regatta (and, of course, the playa at the annual Burning Man countercultural arts festival).

The creators of the Crawler (Clifford Hill, Skye Barnett, David Farish, and former Krank-Boom-Clank … Read more

Remote computer access and 2D car racing: iPhone apps of the week

The big news of the day is the announcement of when Apple's latest creation, the iPad, will be available. According to Apple, the "magical and revolutionary" product will be in stores April 3 starting at $499, but you can preorder the device as early as March 12. Only the Wi-Fi model will be available at first, with the Wi-Fi/3G capable iPad to come later in April.

There is already plenty of analysis all over the Web about who will buy the iPad and whether it's truly a viable alternative to laptops and Netbooks. Most reviewers … Read more

Defend the dungeon against greedy adventurers!

Dungeon Defense is a promising game with ample swords-and-sorcery ambiance and an innovative take on the traditional tower-defense format. You have to protect a dangerous dungeon, commanding an evil army of skeletons as it fights off heroic (or maybe just greedy?) adventurer types. But the "towers" in this tower-defense game are your skeleton warriors, and the skeletons--being skeletons--they move.

The interface mimics many other tower-defense games: you pick from three skeleton types (light, heavy, and archer), you choose where you want to place them on certain locations on the map, and then you can sell, upgrade, and heal … Read more

AT&T debuts video search site

AT&T isn't the brand that comes to mind when you think of online video search, but let's get past that point: the telecommunications company has announced a beta version of a site called VideoCrawler, which can search more than 1,600 online video outlets. AT&T hasn't released a full list of compatible video sites, but Google's YouTube is one of them.

VideoCrawler was developed in conjunction with start-up Divvio, a search company that constructed the VideoCrawler platform.

VideoCrawler doesn't host any videos, but members can still compile playlists and share them … Read more

Yahoo moving to new Web-crawler software

Yahoo has begun indexing the World Wide Web with its third-generation software, Slurp 3.0, the company said Monday.

"With everything now in place, the rollout has officially begun," Sharad Verma and Yoram Arnon said in a posting to Yahoo's search blog on Monday.

Unlike top search rival Google, which on Friday revealed its indexing software now is trying to uncover previously hidden pages by filling in Web pages' forms, Yahoo didn't detail what's new with its indexing software.

The company did advise those who watch for indexing software (sometimes called bots, crawlers, and spiders) … Read more