Engineers from National Chiao-Tung University of Taiwan have built a robotic arm dressed in furry seal outfit for throwing a ball into a basket. The percentage of successful ball-throwing was found to be approximately 99%. “A stereo vision system is used to measure the position of the target in 3D space.The ball-throwing transformation between the input command of the robot system and the... 

Waterskiing is so passé. This summer, you’ll be able to fly with Raymond Li’s water-powered jetpack, which is going on sale in March. It’s only $99,500! The JetLev jetpack consists of a lightweight fiberglass backpack connected to a hose that sucks up water. By separating the engine and its fuel from the backpack, Li was able to drastically reduce the backpack’s weight and therefore the... 

Our love of tech, gadgets, and anything, really, with blinking lights means that while we certainly value usability and quality in our consumer electronics, there will always be a place in our hearts for the utterly useless. And we’re definitely not alone here, as the popularity of the annual Bacarobo (stupid robot) contest will tell you. This year’s event was held in Budapest, Hungary, and featured... 

Researchers at Toshiba’s Akimu Robotic Research Institute were thrilled ten months ago when they successfully programmed Kenji, a third generation humanoid robot, to convincingly emulate certain human emotions. At the time, they even claimed that Kenji was capable of the robot equivalent of love. Now, however, they fear that his programming has taken an extreme turn for the worst. “Initially,... 

A new robot has been made of ultralight carbon-fiber that can stand or slowly walk on water. The principle it uses is borrowed from insects, which is: surface tension tends to prevent the water’s surface from breaking, and the robot’s legs from sinking in. Carnegie Mellon University mechanical engineer Metin Sitti (inspired by nature) wanted to create a robot that can walk walk on the surface... 

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