Group items tagged

"It works by emitting a burst of light from a femtosecond laser that reflects off visible surfaces - such as an opaque wall - onto objects that are hidden from the camera's direct view. The light then bounces off the object before ultimately making its way back to a detector. This process is repeated a number of times with the laser targeted at different areas of the reflecting surface." nice video

The way that Mexican jumping beans move by detecting temperature gradients could be applied to designing robotic beans. Most animals move around by using their appendages, such as legs, wings, or fins. But a few exceptional creatures employ rolling as a mode of locomotion.

Discover the surprising flightmovements in slow-motion

well done ... why your name does not appear there?

The video technique could lead to remote diagnostic methods, like the ability to detect the heart rate of someone on a screen.

Are there potential applications to earth observation etc..?

Robotics scientists at TED unleash co-ordinated drones that mimic bird behavior to play the James Bond theme song At TED2012, the University of Pennsylvania's deputy dean for education Vijay Kuma showed off his latest accomplishment in robotics: a co-ordinated rendition of the James Bond theme song.

Cool - reminds me of the cockroach ARIADNA study see the videos in supplementary material

I think you should do something like this with your Botiful Johannes :)

Seems like drones are quite in this day when studying wildife: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CoApUAZFf8

Very comprehensive thanks to the narrator from EUMETSAT training office (plus aesthetically pleasing)

That's it.. next trip is going to be Lapland (or Svalbard, Annalisa?)

I can recommend spending a winter in North-norway. Was able to see those almost every night.

Going to Lapland in 2 weeks :-D Can't wait!

Why print stuff if you can turn it into an amazing air hockey table! Note, you will probably keep losing...

Among other things reporters say that bathroom facilities are terrible in Sochi. But according to the Deputy Prime Minister guest in hotels are on purpose using shower facilities incorrectly, as surveillance videos show. :-D

throwing empty spacesuits out of the ISS, converted into improvised satellites... now there's something I'd expect to see coming out of an ACT brainstorming session :)

Here's the video of the satellite's "launch": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPx-KNTHGCA

A Hungarian team has created the first drones that can fly as a coordinated flock. The researchers watched as the ten autonomous robots took to the air in a field outside Budapest, zipping through the open sky, flying in formation or even following a leader, all without any central control.

old news, but wow .... Nature is becoming more and more like a magazine and less and less a scientific journal. This stuff is highly irrelevant but to the group that did it.

this is not a nature paper but just an article on their website - the papers they provide as references are all old

Nice application of swarm robotics for building various structures. See the video at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFwk303p0zY Their compilation process of a desired structure into local behavior rules seems of most interest.

RMIT University researchers in Melbourne, Australia, have developed the world's first liquid metal enabled pump, a revolutionary new micro-scale device with no mechanical parts. The unique design will enable micro-fluidics and lab-on-a-chip technology to finally realise their potential, with applications ranging from biomedicine to biofuels.

"I don't have a cell phone. I won't carry a cell phone," says Stallman, founder of the free software movement and creator of the GNU operating system. "It's Stalin's dream. Cell phones are tools of Big Brother. I'm not going to carry a tracking device that records where I go all the time, and I'm not going to carry a surveillance device that can be turned on to eavesdrop." he is right once more ...

I am going to live in the forest! Sadly, while true, there's no way around it these days. On the up-side the information overflow these days exceeds processing speeds. Soon it will become increasingly difficult for NSA or other organizations to find anything in the tons of data they stash away. Like some guy said in a random youtube video I can't find now anymore: "good luck trying to find my personal data when I'm tagged in 5000 pictures of cats!"

"As we start to sweep the potential, we didn't initially observe anything," said lead author Robert Sacci, a postdoctoral research fellow with ORNL's FIRST Energy Frontier Research Center. "Then we started seeing shadows-presumably polymeric SEI-forming into a dendritic pattern. It looks like a snowflake forming from the electrode." nice fractals.. as always