The other vehicle in a drag race is the 1989 swoopy black cartoon car from the 1989 Tim Burton version of Batman. I would’ve preferred to see Christian Bale’s Batmobile or Tumbler in this race personally. After talking specs for a few minutes, the builder comes on and gives some hard facts about the cars. I will say with the horsepower the guy claims, I seriously doubt the quarter-mile times he quotes. It certainly should take more than 300 hp put down a 10-second quarter-mile run in such large cars.

Doubts about performance aside, racing two legendary superhero cars against one another buys the guy more the little leeway. At about 7:45 mark in the video they decide to just line the cars up and run them. I won’t tell you who wins, but I think the race was rigged given the outcome.

[via GeekTyrant]

This may well be the most awesome foot race in the history of foot races and it is called Course of the Force. It’s like those relay races your coach forced on you back in high school, but instead of small metal batons that you may or may not dream about beating your coach with, you get freaking lightsabers. And you get to keep those limited edition sabers, assuming you don’t fall and break yours in a pothole.

Basically, this is a charity event where geeks purchase quarter-mile slots of time that they will run carrying their lightsaber. The event spans from July 7th through 11th, between Santa Monica and San Diego, leading right up to Comic-Con. Funds collected will benefit the Make A Wish Foundation.

You don’t have to dress up to participate, but it is highly encouraged. I would love to see some guy dressed like Darth Maul panting and sweating profusely as he runs up the Southern California coast wielding a dual-blade lightsaber. This thing should be epic, check out the video and reserve your spot here.

[via Nerdist]

It won’t be long before we have to start throwing bananas at these things, when they make our roads something out of a Mad Max movie produced by Nintendo, but for now it looks like a whole lot of fun. Michael Overstreet and a bunch of fellow makers are having turtle shell races in Kansas City. Many of the parts used to create these bots were printed on a MakerBot 3D printer. We don’t have much info yet, but it looks like they are remote controlled from smartphones and not a Wii-mote.

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According to Michael, there will be more info coming in the next few weeks and a website. Could we be looking at the birth of a new racing fad? Stay tuned. And drive safe.

[via Robots-Dreams]

But more than that, I was really impressed with how much racing games have evolved to more interactive games. For example, the seat moved with each turn I made, and the whole chair would vibrate or lurch forward whenever I crashed into something (which happened pretty often.)

However, the OutRun AR project is totally in a league of its own, because it’s basically a video game that has been brought into the real world. This project of Garnet Hertz’s first made waves in 2009, and after a couple of years, he’s finally done with it.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

Hertz, an informatics researcher from the University of California Irvin, made OutRun IRL a reality by incorporating the classic driving game into an electric golf cart that has been fitted with cameras and custom software that can roughly render what’s actually in front of you in using retro-style arcade graphics.

For the future, Hertz and his fellow researchers hope that their technology could somehow be used to create AR-based wheelchairs to help the disable and maybe even develop some video game-based therapy and remedies for disabled gamers.

[via Nowhere Else (FR) via Engadget]

Yep, it was a real marathon, not a mini-marathon, and definitely not this.  There were five robots running a 330-foot track for the Vstone Robot Marathon [JP]. They had to run this over 400  times to complete a full marathon. The race was a full 26.2 miles long, but the guys over at PlasticPals point out that in robot scale (1/4.5 scale), they would have actually run closer to 118 miles in human scale.

The mini humanoid Robovie-PC stands about 16 inches tall and weighs 53 pounds. It has a total of 20 joints. Robovie-PC beat his closest opponent by just a second. It took him 55 hours to complete the marathon. His average speed was less than 0.5 mph. I guess there’s not danger of robots winning any real marathons soon.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

[via Yahoo!News [JP] via PlasticPals]

The race was as simple as it was hilarious. The robots were to race in a straight line course, the ones that are remote-controlled would be controlled by audience members, and as for positioning, I guess they went with a photographer’s strategy for group portraits – small ones up front, bigger ones behind. So who won? Watch the race to find out:

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

Oh man that was a hoot. We need more videos of robots being silly, especially after Watson’s serious heroics on Jeopardy!.

[via Robots Dreams]

Devised by Malte Jehmlich and Matthes Mikysec of sputnic.tv, RACER is an analog variant of video game racers, using an old arcade cabinet, an R/C car, a wireless camera and a racetrack created entirely out of cardboard. The driver sits in the cockpit and controls the remote car as it makes its way through the treacherous track. Make sense?

Perhaps this video clip will set you straight:

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

According to the guys who made RACER, the track measures in at about 23 feet by 29 feet, which definitely won’t fit inside of my PS3 no matter how hard I try.

[via Metafilter]

You’ll spend $191,000 (USD) on this device, which is more than quite a few supercars. It’s called the Cruden Hexatech simulator and it kind of reminds me of those Battletech simulators that were all of the rage years ago. I always wanted to play in them, but never did.

This thing is completely suspended on a hydraulic tripod and allows you to simulate F1, NASCAR, WRC, as well as various 24-hour races like Le Mans. The rig allows you to receive feedback from the chassis, track, tire and suspension settings, drive trains, aero load, aero draft, steering, brakes, and various driver aids.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

It comes with three 42-inch screens, but you can go bonkers and project images onto the walls of a specially built room. Sounds completely insane to me. If I had $191,000 to spare, I’d rather buy a real race car!

[via DVice, photo credit: Benimoto]

In his words: “As soon as White Wanda appears, the camera moves. Black Desi gets in there…oh nope! No facial recognition there.”

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Desi and Wanda were right to post this on YouTube – maybe it’ll get HP to respond and fix the problem. But I think the two should have tested the software on other people too. Who knows, maybe Desi has something on him – aside from his skin color of course – that borks the software. What do you humans – regardless of gender, race, religion, or preference of computer – think?

[via CrunchGear]

The contest was initially employees-only, but SparkFun realized it would be much more fun to have their customers join so that was what they did. Sixteen robots in all shapes and sizes – some ground, some aerial – participated in the race. How many of them finished? Two.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

Blurr they ain’t, and judging from the results we still have a long way to go before we see transforming vehicles. Watch the video and you’ll see that the teams already had their hands full just trying to stop their creations from killing themselves. The teams mostly failed on that account, but they still had a lot of fun anyway.

WIRED’s Editor-in-Chief Chris Anderson’s team DIY Drones (pictured above) bagged first place. Their UAV clocked in at 36 seconds, while second-placed Deathpod 3000 (below) took nearly three times as long at 1 minute and 32 seconds. Which is kind of unfair really, because it’s a ground vehicle going up against a Decepticon plane.

Awesome. I wish we had more robot contests, like ASIMO versus a Roomba or something. These demonstrations are really comforting; at least we know we’re not going to be enslaved by robots anytime soon.

[via BotJunkie]

This 2GB USB memory stick is based (loosely) on on the body of a Formula One race car. Of course a real F1 car isn’t all shiny and silver like this one (but wouldn’t it be cool if they were?) Just pop the rear end off the car to reveal a USB connector.

At this point, you’ll have to admire this little car from afar. It’s currently only available in Japan. If you care to brush up on your Katakana, head on over to Green House to find out more.

[via Akihabara News]

I especially dig the shot with the car jumping between the train cars. If that’s in the game, I can’t imagine what sort of mayhem we crash-loving fools will be able to dream up this time.

Keep in mind that EA is notorious for showing “target renders,” but the Criterion team is known for really eeking every last drop out of a console, so I wouldn’t be surprised if these were pretty close to what the game actually looks like. I’d assume that the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions will be pretty close, but in a recent interview, Alex Ward mentioned that they’re building Burnout 5 on the PS3, then porting it to the 360, so who knows.

The game is still listed as having a release date of March 26th on both platforms according to EB Games, so here’s hoping we’ll get our hands on this one real soon!

[UPDATE: You can now view a full copy of the original PSM article in PDF format here.]

Designed by famous German model maker Faller, this case is filled with a tiny little slot car track, complete with 1/87th scale racers and two remotes for controlling your cars. The track is approximately 2 meters long, and comes appointed with details such as trees, grass and billboards. Completely portable, the track runs for up to 5 hours on a single 9V battery.

If you want one of these sweet gadgets, you’ll have to move quick. The case is being sold in a limited edition of only 1000 pieces, and sells for