If you happen to be around Bay Area in Cali, then check out the biggest robot Olympics in existence: RoboGames 2008. With over 70 mind-shattering events at the RoboGames, you won’t find any friendly robots cooking or committing to hair transplant surgery here. Battle robots, walking humanoids, soccer bots, sumo bots, and even androids that do kung-fu are put to ...

This DIY project from Matt Denton is a six-legged robot that’s able to crawl onto a malleable surface and begin cutting images into it. Though the original design called for a basic pen for drawing, the robot’s now equipped with a cutting tool able to mill three-dimensional surfaces into high density foam.� It takes nearly 30 minutes to complete the ...

Why get all of our information through computers via sight and sound when we have a sense of touch? Korean and US researchers have developed a flexible tactile display small enough to wrap around your fingers, similar to a Band-Aid. Overcoming the bulkiness that plagues current devices of the same nature, this soft, flexible alternative could possibly aid communication for ...

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Microsoft Surface, it’s an iPhone-like touch interface for tables. You can play games, read menus and order food and beverages by interacting with a table. It’s been in prototype mode for awhile now but finally, Microsoft has launched Surface-enabled tables in Las Vegas. Harrah’s is offering the sleek new tables at the ...

Usually free weights aren’t the first thing you’d think of when design is mentioned. However, this is not the case for designer Sang-Hoon Lee. This digital barbell concept, dubbed the Revolution Dumbbell, really could be useful if put into production. You set the display to the appropriate weight and inside, balls start to spin. When they spin fast enough, the ...

Are you an impatient mother who can’t hold onto her diaphragm without worrying if the fetus in her womb will develop sickle-cell anemia? Well no worries, tubby, because Royal Philips Electronics wants to turn those awkward and impersonal ultrasounds into something “much more playful,” says Frank Rettenbacher, a product designer for Philips. Now, that’s just fucking creepy.� Philips researchers were ...

Almost like the movie “Sunshine,” we’ll soon be probing the Sun, except we wont be using a suicide squad of top scientists and astronauts. NASA has decided to finally go to the sun after 400 years of studying the star from afar. The mission is being called Solar Probe+ (pronounced ‘Solar Prove Plus’). We’ll be using a heat-resistant spacecraft made ...

If you thought the government was holding out the cure for cancer, you’re one sick puppy. Scientists at Boston University and Princeton have discovered that with a silicon wafer, they’re able to separate cancer cells from healthy cells.? Like a crossing guard, the wafer sends the cells in different directions. Unfortunately this approach against cancer is new and far from ...

In yesteryear, we’d be playing Rad Racer with those chunky black glasses with the blue and red lenses thinking all along, “Wow this is real 3-D! The cars just jump out at me, man!” However, this is not the case. The company Holografika has created “HoloVizio” technology which provides multiple viewers with a three-dimensional display that changes as people shift ...

We’ve seen robots of every variety. Chances are, if something is badass, there’s a robot-form of it. The Nonlinear Dynamics and Control Lab of the University of Washington have turned a dissociated group of robot fish into a communicative school of robot fish. Using low power, low frequency sonar, the fish are able to transfer information between one another while ...