The joy of scaring people with a fake spider is one of those pleasures of life which never seem to grow old. However, you can put away your cheap plastic spider now; a new robotic arachnid is in town and it looks pretty mean. We might as well start with the bad news. This spider will set you back $1,350, which is a little over 900 pounds. That’s a lot of money for a robotic spider so what does the invention from the people at Robugtix have to offer? Well, it is called the T8 and the outer shell has been produced using a 3D printer. Under...
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So, you like listening to music and you hate your phone’s battery dying on you? Hey, we might have come across the perfect little gadget for you. A designer from Glasgow has come up with the idea for a pair of headphones which can be used to allow your phone to get charged up using solar energy. The man with the plan is called Andrew Anderson and his headphones are called OnBeat. They are on the crowdfunding site Kickstarter and the hope is that they will be on sale by the start of 2014. A Battery in Each Ear They work by using a solar...
As exciting new uses for robots appear all over the world one which catches the eye more than most involves a spherical device designed to help farmers. It is called the Rosphere and one of the interesting things about it is that it gets moving just like a hamster in an exercise ball. The sphere uses the same shifting movement which hamster use in order to propel itself forwards. The invention is the work of a team of 4 scientists at the Technical University of Madrid, who have been working on different ways to design a robot which can...
From time to time we see a story about scientists trying to make a flying car, but we never seem to hear as much about flying bikes. Now why is that? Could it be because it is a frankly ludicrous idea which will never become reality? Ah, if you think like that then some Czechs could be about to give you a big surprise. It is true that we have heard little about flying bikes since that big-headed alien and his little buddy peddled up into the sky in ET, although a Brit called John Carvers made the news with his contraption called the Flyke...
If you are the type of air passenger who looks nervously out of the window to see that the pilot is a trustworthy, sober type then you might be able to sit back and forget about it before too very long. This is because tests have been carried out on unmanned flights in UK airspace in the last month. That’s right; a plan with no pilot at all. Actually, a pilot who was on board the Jetstream craft took off near Preston and landed in Inverness but for the 500 miles in between a pilot on the ground had control of the plane, taking instructions...
It seems that everything is getting smarter these days, doesn’t it? The next thing we can expect to get the smart treatment is the humble old sheet of paper. It seems that researchers from North Dakota State University in the US have worked out how to slip a radio frequency identification chip into a sheet of paper in a way which is going to open up a lot new uses for it. For example, the use of these chips could help cut down on fraud if they are used in bank notes or legal documents. Other possibilities could include the use of these...
Any new technology to help locate and help people who have been trapped in collapsed buildings has got to be a good thing. If the technology comes in the form of a cool snake then so much the better. Investigators in the US have working on a robot which is built like a snake and which could come in very useful in future search and rescue missions. Dogs and Snakes Working in Harmony The most recent trial they have carried out was done with the help of rescue dogs. The canine workers carried the snake robot into a mock up of a collapsed...
There are some smartphone apps which make you wonder how we lived all those years without having them available. Beer Mapper promises to be one of them. If the drinking of hops and barley based beverages is something you enjoy them this up and coming new app could help you do it in even more style than before. The man behind Beer Mapper is called Kevin Jamieson. He is an engineering student and promises that the app will let you find the best pints near you which most suit your taste. This fancy new app has a clever feature which will...
Light pollution, eh? You just gotta hate it. Actually, it might be something which causes fewer problems in the future is the work of a team of scientists in Japan and Mexico bears fruit. The researchers are working on a new sort of street lighting design which could stop so much light being wasted. If you live in a big city you are probably used to not being able to see the stars and having to screw up your eyes at time due to strong lights. These factors are, in part, due to conventional street lighting, which can also waste a lot of...
We all need a hobby and if collecting stamps or spotting trains doesn’t sound like your kind of thing then what about building a giant mantis robot with hydraulic legs? Eh? That’s exactly what Matt Denton from Hampshire decided to do with his spare time and it took him four years to design the machine, which was three years more than he had expected to spend on it. Denton said that it is a “very expensive toy” which has ended up costing hundreds of thousands of pounds to design and build. However, he also stated both a marine research...