Husbands and kids, at least you have something to look forward to in the future – Hauler MAT and his trash grabbing prowess. See more of Ben’s art here.
A few weeks ago, the most excellent company, SparkFun hosted an autonomous vehicle competition at their building in Builder Colorado. The competition was open to all forms of autonomous vehicles and was race around the peremeter of the buildings. Chris Anderson from DIY Drones entered a flying vehicle and won first place.
Below is a most excellent video recap of the event.
Festo, a German engineering company which brought us the stunning AirJelly, has now unveiled their latest project – life-like robo-penginus. Even better, there ‘s a swimming and a flying version. The penguins, which were designed to showcase a new mechanical linkage/control design for robotic arms, are amazingly life-like. Aside from the creepy glowing eyes, the underwater variety could well be mistaken for the real thing. The swimming penguins can move their heads and tails, just like real penguins, and navigate using a 3D sonar developed by EvoLogics. The flying variety use ultrasonic receivers to map out their flying space, with the help of stragegically placed ultrasonic transmitter. Both penguins use fiberglass rods through the length length of their body to provide structure, and when the rods are pushed/pulled, to move their heads and tails.
You can see another video of the Penguins after the jump. (more…)
Robots are cool. Pictures of robots are cool too. But, custom artwork of people as robots … now that’s very cool. If you agree, then Ben Rollman can help you out by creating a custom piece of fine art depecting you (or your favorite photo) as a robot. Case in point, the photo above depecting my sheer joy at marrying the best woman in the world. For a mere $15 Ben will take any photo you send him and robotify it, and send you the finished 5″x7″ copy and a sweet timelapse video of him drawing it. You can see the video of him drawing my picture after the jump. If 5″x7″ isn’t your style, Ben will do a 8″ x 10″ for only $30 USD. He’s very courteous to work with, finishes the portrait quickly, and ships in a nice protective envelope. For $15/$30 I think it’s a steal.
You can also check out Ben’s Flickr gallery of some of his other robot drawings. I’ve been so impressed, we’ll be posting some of his new artwork here on the site each week.
