germany on technabob...

Martin Buss and his team at the Technical University of Munich created a robot that relies on help from humans to get to its destination. The robot is called Autonomous City Explorer or ACE, and while it looks really ugly, it’s one of the first robots that’s proven successful in a real world setting, as opposed to lab tests or…

Mehli Bilgil, a student at the University of Applied Sciences in Mainz, Germany, created an animated documentary about the history of the Internet.

Unlike other documentaries, Mehli Bilgil’s documentary contains no interviews, real world footage or image, not even a single shot of a PC or server. The clean and simple animation was made possible through the use of PICOL…

Batteries schmatteries. Electricity shmelectricity. Who needs modern energy sources when you can have scalding hot steam to power your gadgets? This unique robot from Germany gets its juice from good old H2O.

Strenco’s ST-2 Steambot lumbers along thanks to a tiny copper Wilesco steam engine that’s been implanted in his chest cavity.

Now don’t expect to just flip a switch…

I had my fair share of toy weapons as a kid: laser rifles that spark and pop when you pull the trigger, swords of all shapes and sizes, a slingshot. Apparently kids these days have much higher standards. Mark – 1 Tanks recently unleashed a 1/4 scale of the Germans’ WW II beast, the King Tiger Tank. This…man-toy is 6′…

Do you think that there are a lot of people who are just dying to sit inside a speaker? The makers of the Sonic Chair think so. It has 2-way speakers, a subwoofer, and the chair itself is a “sound membrane”. To entice even more people to part with their money, what with the wonderful state of the economy today, the…

It’s amazing what a difference a couple of decades makes. Back in the 1970s, fiber optic lamps were some of the ugliest, tackiest things you could possibly bring into your home. And as this photo proves, fiber optics can truly be used for evil. Thankfully, tastes have changed, and the dynamic illumination medium has found new life in this modern…

I don’t know if I should really be sharing this dorky tidbit, but back when I was just a pup, I was a serious bad-ass on the miniature golf course. I actually won a couple of shiny plastic trophies, and even an official gold-plated Jack Nicklaus putter from the neighborhood Putt-Putt.

Over the years, my time on the course diminished,…

Apple’s iPhone Bluetooth wireless headset revels in its minimal design. But what’s to say that it couldn’t handle a little extra sophistication and elan?

German jewelry designer Andi Monn took the opportunity to dress up the iPhone’s earpiece with these striking metal covers. Just slip the form-fitting metal sleeve over the body of your headset, and these instantly transform into…

Now I’m sympathetic to those who have fallen on hard times, many of us still find people who beg for money to be irritating. So why someone would go through the trouble of building a robot that begs for spare change is anyone’s guess.

Alexander Gurko’s “Bettelbot” (that’s “BeggingBot” in English) has just one mission in mind – to get…

Oktoberfest may be months away, but that doesn’t mean you can’t start preparing now, does it? If only we could get our grubby little paws on one of these super special Super Mario Brothers 1up ’shroom beer mugs, we’d be ready to belly up to the bar right now.

These old-world Bavarian beer mugs were hand-formed from clay and relief-printed with…

This interactive art display takes data it collects on passing traffic and displays moving images which react to vehicles as they drive by.

Designed by artist Markus Lerner for lighting company OSRAM, the installation samples traffic patterns and maps them onto seven colorful light towers side of the road, each containing over 110,000 individual LEDs.

The waves at the bottom…

This might look like a curtain of randomly assorted lighting fixtures. But it’s actually an interactive video display that can detect movements of passersby and mimic them using light.

Entitled Space Invaders 2008, the light installation uses a grid of 176 unique lighting fixtures to work its magic. When a person passes in front of a video camera connected to…

This chunky metal watch displays the time on a pair of side-by-side LCD screens.

The German-designed MF dual LCD watch displays the hours and minutes on the left side, as the seconds scroll by on the right one. The watch has a heavy duty steel case and adjustable band as well as a scratch-resistant mineral glass face. It’s also water…

I’m not sure how I missed this amazing interactive display concept when it first surfaced, but it’s cool enough that I thought it deserved a mention, even if it is but a distant memory.

The system used an array of thousands of individual mechanical irises, each designed to react to the amount of light in front of it. The darker…

Do you ever find yourself sitting at your computer, toiling away in your e-mail box when those late afternoon hunger pangs hit you? This laptop out of Germany might help you get your blood sugar going.

Nope, the Chocolap isn’t a functional computer, rather, it’s a fake laptop made from cardboard, and loaded with a delicious edible chocolate keyboard in…