Check out this really cool robot that will even apologize to you if he/she bumps into you!

This cleaning robot from Japan can scoot around on its own, cleaning up, and features WiFi and a video camera to keep it connected to home base. It can even apologize when it detects that it’s bumped into a person. Yes, that’s good; train the robots young to fear and revere their human masters. We’ve got to watch our backs, after all.

via scifi

Check out some of these really cool Terminator-like technological breakthrough sculptures. Although none of them are really functional, it’s a really great artwork… (I’d want one in my livingroom…) Actually, the bug robots seem like they can do stuff…

via microbotic

Click Here to View in Full Screen Mode

This is very old but cool!

Check out these funny lookin’ Humanoid Robot Platforms from Hubo Lab at Kaist(Korean Advanced Institute of Science & Technology, kinda like MIT of Korea).

HUBO-FX1 is the human-riding robot having 12 DOF. The development concept is that the robot can walk naturally with carrying a person or a load of 100kg, so the lower body takes after legs of human and the upper body takes after a chair. A person who sits on the upper body can control the robot naturally using the built-on joystick installed. It has many kinds of sensors. Each ankle has the 3-axis force/torque sensor which measures a normal force and 2 moments. Each foot has the inclination sensor which measures angle of the slope. Also the rate gyro and the inclination sensor of the body can do a stabilization of itself.

Wow, check out this cool gizmo that will turn your laptop into a touchscreen! (if it ain’t touchscreen already)

NAVIsis(www.navisis.com) presented its ‘Laptop Tablet’ that supports tablet functionality to a general laptop. Just attaching it on LCD monitor frame and connecting it to USB port, you can enjoy tablet on your laptop monitor. Suggested price is 130(USD).

via ministryoftech

Now, you can use the iPod to stop bullets!

Kevin Garrad (3rd Infantry Division) was on a street patrol in Iraq (Tikrit I believe) and as he rounded the corner of a building an armed (AK-47) insurgent came from the other side. The two of them were within just a few feet of each other when they opened fire. The insurgent was killed and Kevin was hit in the left chest where his IPod was in his jacket pocket. It slowed the bullet down enough that it did not completely penetrate his body armor. Fortunately, Kevin suffered no wound.

via HardOCP

Check out some of the cool Antartic autonomous solar robots being developed here. Above is a picture of a guy (yes holding a laptop), snow-surfing at about 5mph…

Not too bad on solar power, we give thumbs up for that.

One morning, while taking walking behind the robot and dragging a sled of equipment for quantitatively measuring the strength and cohesion of the snow underfoot, we realized what fools we were to man-haul the equipment ourselves. And, for that matter, how silly even to walk. So, we hooked the sled to the robot and went for a ride. The robot, it turns out, can haul its own weight (nearly 200 lbs.) on a sled and hardly notice it.

This image was another born out of spontaneity, and yet has become of the most popular images from the whole project. Snow surfing behind the robot is not very exciting however; it only travels at a slow walking pace.

Check out this cool 200X USB Magnifier you can use to magnify stuff…

Cool…

via AVING

Check out this howto on doubling your battery life by replacing a linear voltage regulator (the thing that converts DC voltage, e.g. from 12V to 5V) to a switching regulator. Switching regulators are way more efficient than your typical off-the-shelve crappy regulators such as 7805 which get too hot too fast. Get the Dimension Engineering regulators here. This howto could easily be applied to any other device, not just radio stuff…

I first got the idea for this over on the thread for the DX6/7 on RCGRoups.com forums. I run nitro cars, so I bought a DX3. I used the radio for a while, and my battery life was on the better side of most radios–but the DX7 owners were getting like 5-6 hours of runtime after the mod. Now that’s what I’m talking about! I figured that the DX3 and the DX6/7 might be using the same regulator chip, due to the fact that the chip design and internal circuitry shoulden’t have changed that much. Less PCB tooling and all that.

via