Over a year ago we reported about a smart lower-limb prosthetic developed by researchers at the Vanderbilt University, and they recently presented a powered exoskeleton that enables people with severe spinal cord injuries to perform tasks such as standing, walking, sitting and climbing stairs. Although these exoskeletons haven’t yet been approved for home use, their… »

Development of small flying machines able to patrol recon or search and rescue missions has been around for a while now. While small flying machines which use GPS in order to find their way to their destination are already common, there is a need for development of other systems which enable maneuvering around obstacles in… »

The Williams-York family lived in their ranch style home for 28 years before they decided to build their modern dream home with both passive and active solutions to increase its sustainability. The new Williams-York Residence in Leawood, Kansas has recently been awarded with LEED Platinum certification, the highest certification level from LEED for Homes by… »

Attempts to replace chromate coatings with non-toxic coatings have been underway since the 1980s. The awareness on effects of chromates was brought to the forefront in 1993 by the real-life incident involving Erin Brokovich and depicted in the movie released in 2000 of the same name. A research team at the University of Nevada, Reno… »

A collaboration between U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) resulted with a project named Programming a Robot (PaR-PaR) – a simple high-level, biology-friendly, robot-programming language that allows easier robot training. PaR-PaR could provide the researchers with ways to train the liquid-handling robots with greater ease… »

Back in June 13th 2009, during their 5th Anniversary, Kondo Kagaku released the KHR-3HV humanoid kit robot. Although it’s been a while since they released the robot, its abilities and price make it ideal for hobbyists as well for use in advanced educational purposes. Hence, we decided to publish an article about this great humanoid… »

Japanese robotics researcher Masahiko Yamaguchi, who represents himself as Dr. Guero in other robotics projects, modified a Kondo KHR-3HV hobby kit robot and created a robot dubbed PRIMER V4. This two-legged hobby-kit robot was modified in a way that allows it to balance and cross over a 4-mm (0.16-inch) thick and 1 meter (3 feet)… »

Although it represents an office building whose sustainability in general is sometimes questionable, the 25 York Street (Telus House Toronto) still serves as an example how office buildings can be improved in order to conserve resources and provide healthier working environment. Located on the northeast corner of York Street and Bremner Boulevard in downtown Toronto,… »