http://www.robaid.com Who said robots aren't fun? Thu, 11 Mar 2010 20:09:50 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en A team of materials scientists and chemists from The University of Manchester and The University of Leeds have taken inspiration from sea shells found on the beach to create a composite material from dissimilar 'ingredients'. They have successfully reinforced calcium carbonate, or chalk, with polystyrene particles that are used to ... http://www.robaid.com/bionics/sea-shells-inspired-a-new-material-made-of-chalk-and-polystyrene.htm PQ Labs demonstrated their G3 touchscreen technology at this year's CeBIT by installing it into a coffee table called the iTable. They have essentially taken the idea behind the Microsoft Surface and made it less bulky and cheaper (at least the folks from PQ Labs claim it will be). There ... http://www.robaid.com/gadgets/pq-labs-multi-touch-g3-touchscreen-and-a-table-form-an-itable.htm In our previous article we wrote about a new material which gives the sense of touch, and here is an invention with a different twist. Since devices with increasingly larger computational power and various capabilities are becoming much smaller, they can be easily carried on our bodies. However, their small ... http://www.robaid.com/gadgets/skinput-uses-sound-to-turn-your-body-into-an-input-device.htm As robotic devices continue to make inroads to our daily life, their ability to understand the presence and interaction with humans and other objects within a space becomes critically important. Peratech Limited, a company devoted to the development of new materials designed for touch technology, has announced that they have ... http://www.robaid.com/robotics/peratech-limited-qtc-new-generation-of-tactile-robotic-skin.htm Kojiro is an advanced musculoskeletal humanoid robot under development at the University of Tokyo's JSK Robotics Laboratory. Kojiro's creators designed its body to mimic the way our skeleton, muscles, and tendons work to generate motion. The goal is to build robots that are light and agile, capable of moving ... http://www.robaid.com/robotics/kojiro-light-and-agile-musculoskeletal-humanoid-robot.htm We may like to eat mussels steamed in white wine, but we also like to find mussels at the beach. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces and collaborators at the University of California at Santa Barbara and the University of Chicago believe they have uncovered the ... http://www.robaid.com/bionics/mussel-biomimicry-could-lead-to-new-super-strong-polymers.htm Flyfire, a project initiated by the SENSEable City Laboratory (the same folks that came up with AIDA) in collaboration with ARES Lab (Aerospace Robotics and Embedded Systems Laboratory) aims to transform any ordinary space into a highly immersive and interactive display environment. Imagine that pixels could fly out of your ... http://www.robaid.com/robotics/mits-flyfire-swarms-of-micro-helicopters-form-3d-images.htm CyberPad A4 from Adesso is able to convert your handwritten notes and graphics into usable digital information. Through the use of the bundled software (Adobe Photoshop Elements 7.0 for Windows and 6.0 for Mac OS X), Adesso says it is the only solution that links handwriting and graphics to the ... http://www.robaid.com/gadgets/adesso-cyberpad-a4-offers-features-most-tablets-miss.htm Although we already mentioned the potential of such technology in 3D photography, the researchers at Missouri University of Science and Technology and the University of Missouri-Columbia partner developed a remote-controlled robot that is equipped with an infrared camera and LIDAR technology capable of providing detailed images of room interiors even ... http://www.robaid.com/robotics/robot-equipped-with-lidar-and-ir-camera-takes-3-d-images.htm Although we already wrote about lotus biomimicry for water-repelling surfaces, in this article we're going to write about a surface with similar properties. Engineering researchers have created what they say is a “nearly perfect hydrophobic interface” by mimicking spiders. By using plastic to reproduce the shape and patterns of the ... http://www.robaid.com/bionics/spider-hairs-biomimicry-for-hydrophobic-surfaces.htm