New extinction of robotic pets – Pleo the dinosaur euthanized

By Rob Aid
3 Comments16 May 2009

thepleo.jpgIt is a trend around the world to cancel the production of projects which bring the joy to our children or the child within us all. Sony stopped producing the lovable doggy AIBO and the development of their very agile dancing robot QRIO in the beginning of the year 2006. Ugobe, the Idaho-based consumer robotics… »

WowWee’s robotic toy – RS Wrex the Dawg

By Damir Beciri
15 May 2009

wowwee-wrex2.jpgWowWee was founded in 1988 as an independent research, development and manufacturing company, focused on cutting-edge technologies. Although they produced many different robotic toys since 2004, we are going to focus on one of their most humoristic creations – RS Wrex the Dawg. RS Wrex the Dawg is a mid-priced toy robot which can bring… »

World’s smallest light bulb created at UCLA

By Damir Beciri
14 May 2009

light-bulb.jpgIt’s actually so small that even the researchers had to publish an artist rendering of the light bulb instead of a real photo. Besides other usages it will help in an effort to explore the boundary between thermodynamics and quantum mechanics – two fundamental yet seemingly incompatible theories of physics. The world’s smallest glowing bulb… »

“Borg” insects – mini spies of the future?

By Rob Aid
12 May 2009

mems08_bti2.jpgInsects’ agility in flight is unmatched. It’s been an inspiration to many inventors as in inventing helicopters or other flying machines. Instead creating robots which resemble insects, a few groups of engineers decided to develop technology which controls insects. An unquestioned fact is that nature developed the insects far better than humans are trying to… »

Data storage – 10 terabits on one coin-size surface

By Damir Beciri
One Comment11 May 2009

cobalt_x220.jpgImagine all the data which could be stored on 250 DVDs. A team from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the University of California Berkeley said they had found a faster, more efficient way of making a thin semiconductor film that, by their claims, could dramatically improve data storage. Many teams have tried to use… »

Two methods to produce graphene nanoribbons

By Damir Beciri
11 May 2009

nanoribbon.jpgYou remember we wrote about carbon nanotubes (CNTs) in one of our previous articles? Two groups of researchers have found ways to unfold CNTs in order to make nanoribbons of graphene. The experts claim that the development could point the way towards a new generation of electronics, including computer chips that are faster and tinier… »

Robot El-E assists to people with motor impairments

By Damir Beciri
9 May 2009

el-e-robot-butler.jpgMost of us take our interaction with the world around us for granted. Manipulating objects play an especially important role in people’s lives. El-E is an assistive robot that is explicitly designed to take advantage of this common structure in order to retrieve unmodeled, everyday objects for people with motor impairments. Georgia Tech’s Healthcare Robotics… »

BigDog – a rough-terrain robot

By Damir Beciri
One Comment8 May 2009

bigdog.jpgBigDog is a legged robot under development of BostonDynamics, with funding from DARPA. Their goal is to build unmanned legged vehicles with rough-terrain mobility superior to existing wheeled and tracked vehicles. The idea system would travel anywhere a person or animal could go using their legs, run for many hours at a time, and carry… »