This was made in honor of Thomas Edison’s 165th b-day… Would’ve been awesome to meet him in person.
From Popular Science – New Technology, Science News, The Future Now: Video: Robotic Lego Forearm Can Wave Hello and Pour You a Drink
Lego Hand Max Shepherd via YouTube
A robotic hand made entirely of Legos is one of the most realistic robo-hands we have seen, matching the entire range of motion of a real one. It moves pretty slowly, but that’s OK – slow and steady wins the race, and pours the drink without splashing.
Builder Max Shepherd used Lego motors and pneumatics to move the arm, which he says can only lift a couple of pounds. The goal was to mimic the full range of motion of a human hand, not to lift tons of weight. It’s an impressive show of what can be done with some mad Lego skills.
The softest grippy hands we have seen don’t look human at all, so this is quite a feat. Watch the fingers curl softly around a water bottle or other object.
[Tinkernology via Engadget]
from Popular Science – New Technology, Science News, The Future Now
From Gizmodo: I Just Fell In Love With iCade’s New Retro NES-Style Gamepad for iPhone and iPad [Gaming]
If you loved the latest iCade controllers for iPhone and iPad, you are going to want to have sex with their new iCade 8-Bitty, a Nintendo-style gamepad controller with eight buttons. More »
from Gizmodo
From Ars Technica: NMR imaging used to catch performance-killing flaws inside batteries
Batteries based on lithium now power everything from our watches to our cars, and we’ve made major strides towards stuffing more energy into them more quickly over the last several years. But there are limits to how quickly a battery can charge, and pushing past them can cause the lithium to form metallic microstructures within the battery. These can do ugly things like creating a short between the electrodes or puncturing the membranes that contain the battery’s electrolyte.
Most techniques that could image these miscrostructures involved taking the battery apart, meaning that we could only take static images of the impact of charge/discharge cycles on the battery. One of the best techniques for non-invasive imaging, NMR, relies on radiofrequency signals that simply don’t penetrate beyond the surface of a battery. Now, some researchers have figured out that there are conditions that enable the use of NMR to peek inside a battery—and they happen to be the formation of the microstructures we care about.
from Ars Technica
From Kotaku: Star Wars: The Old Republic Has Invaded Lego Land
We saw a lot of Lego sets at the New York Toy Fair on Sunday. Sadly, Minecraft Legos did not make an appearance, but we did get to play around with figures from Star Wars: The Old Republic, The Lord of the Rings, and a whole bunch of superhero franchises. More »
from Kotaku
From Droid Life: Video: Use Your Galaxy Nexus As A Desktop Computer
These are the types of tips and tricks we love to see. In this video, a gentleman has taken his Galaxy Nexus and turned it into a fully functional desktop computer. By using a few items that any consumer could purchase or likely already has, this guy just gave all Android nerds an idea to gobble up their entire weekend.
Using a Magic Trackpad and keyboard (both Bluetooth), he was able to easily emulate a computer experience through his phone. Gestures on the trackpad work, shortcuts on the keyboard work, and since it’s Android you can multi-task. This is seriously one of the cooler 8 minute videos around.
Via: Clove UK
from Droid Life
From Gizmodo: A 787 Dreamliner Drew the Boeing Logo Across the United States
What you’re looking at is the real-time geographic tracking information of flight ZA236 as it was coming back to its home base in Washington state. It flew across the United States, drawing this gigantic Boeing logo. More »
from Gizmodo