Tag: Research

Normally, humanoid robots creep me out a bit, but Ballu doesn’t. I mean it’s hard to be scared of something that reminds me more than a little of those junky balloon toys with feet KFC used…

Growing up I watched a lot of Looney Toons cartoons and I remember one where Bugs plays a wood saw to make some Hawaiian music. I imagine that the WhammyPhone is sort of the modern equivalent…

We have a neighbor that weirds me out when she talks to her dogs. She will randomly scream at them when they do something she doesn’t like as if she were talking to a child. I…

Researchers from the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) have created a very cool and very small exoskeleton that is intended to help kids who suffer from a condition called spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) walk and stave…

It doesn’t matter if you fear a Terminator style robot executioner or an insane “I’ll wear your skull” type of Saturn 3 Hector robot overlord, right now we are safe because robots can’t walk worth a…

These tiny little crumbs look a lot like peppermints you’d use to freshen your breath after lunch, but you don’t want to eat these ones. What you see here are tiny spheres of a sort of…

Custom mounts, docks and other connectors are simple yet impressive demonstrations of 3D printing’s potential. Right now you can either design your own connector or look for existing designs, but a group of researchers have created…

My first glimpse at a hologram came back in the ’80s when I was in a mall in Dallas, Texas. It was a video game with holograms that had lots of mirrors was at the arcade…

Robots are really cool, but before they can start selling robots that will clean our houses and tend to our kids, they have to perfect them and make them safe and robust. Part of keeping an…

DARPA has an awesome program underway to develop the next generation in prosthetics. These technologies will help soldiers and others who have lost a limb to get back to their lives with as much normality as…

NASA is very serious about sending humans to Mars someday. I can only hope that I am around to see that landing, it will be awesome. There are many challenges to putting us on Mars. One…

We all want gadgets that are able to survive the occasional splash or spill without shorting out and turning into useless bricks. A group of researchers at the University of Rochester have created a new metal…

A few years ago we saw a custom fabricated material with embedded actuators and magnets, which enable it to autonomously fold into a predetermined shape when subjected to electricity. MIT’s Self-Assembly Lab is working on creating…

A very strange new study has been published by researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign that tries to link the behavior of gamers in the real world to the avatars they use on gaming…

I’ve mentioned my daughter’s little pup Buttercup before. I’ve long suspected that Buttercup is an asshole for various reasons, not the least of which is the fact that she will only poop when someone is outside…

Being more of a tropical person, I’m not the sort you would catch exploring the Arctic wilds. However, there are a number of researchers out there that do spend time doing sciencey stuff in the Arctic.…