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Whatever you’re doing for Valentine’s Day, it can’t possibly top this man’s hobby. Joe, a Canadian, is digging out his basement. It’s been taking a while because he’s using only tiny, scale model earthmoving equipment. At the link, you can see a large number of photos and videos that he’s posted over the years.
Link -via Dave Barry
Jordan Correa, a developer on the Microsoft Robotics Team, built a robot to interact with his dog, Darwin, while he was away at work. It’s got a lot of neat features. Geeks that don’t even have dogs would enjoy having one of these around! -via The Daily What Geek
The Tweeting Cat Toy is handy for keeping up with your cat’s activities while you’re gone, but wouldn’t it be nice to pet your cat or even groom him from a remote location? Taylor Veltrop hooked together a Nao robot, a Kinect sensor bar, two Wii remotes, a head-mounted display, and a treadmill for the purpose of brushing his cat. Rube Goldberg himself would have been proud! And all this technology only worked because the cat is extremely tolerant. But Veltrop shows that it can be done, even though it took a year to perfect the procedure. Link
This ball rolls around, light up, and acts like it has a mind of its own, which makes it the perfect cat toy. It does not have a mind of its own -it’s you, controlling it by Bluetooth! You can even control it and take video of its antics at the same time. $130 is kinda pricy for a cat toy, though, and it’s not even on the market yet. What it does to a cat’s pupils is priceless! Link -via Buzzfeed
Matt Richardson has developed a deep loathing for certain celebrities and hates to hear them speak in any context. So he’s hacked his TV remote to automatically mute the volume whenever certain words appear in the closed captioning system:
Richardson combined a couple of Arduino circuit boards with an infrared LED light — that little red bubble on the front of your TV remote — and programmed the whole thing to interact with a TV’s closed-captioning system.
The DIY gadget reads the closed-captioning transcript as it’s aired and then automatically mutes the television for 30 seconds when it picks up certain words.[...]
As long as that person’s name keeps coming up, the remote keeps muting the TV. The first time he got it to work, Richardson said he “was in silent bliss for that 30 seconds I didn’t have to hear about Kim Kardashian.”
Link -via Dave Barry | Photo by Flickr user university_unions used under Creative Commons license
Television
has controlled our mind for long enough! The engineers at Haier have turned
the table on the boob tube.
Behold, the "Brain Wave" remote control that lets you change the channels .... with your mind!
Brian Heater of Engadget gave it a spin: Link
Wildlife photographers (and brothers) Will & Matt Burrard-Lucas created the BeetlCam. It’s a remote-control 4-wheel-drive miniature vehicle (toy) with a remote-control camera mounted on top, designed to take pictures of dangerous wild animals. Here we see the gadget in action in Tanzania. It appears to work very well! -via Laughing Squid
Comments Off
The Great Pyramid of Giza contains narrow passageways and chambers that have never been explored. A small robot was sent into an 8-inch wide chute in 1993 and 2002, but both expeditions ran into something impassable. Now a new robot called Djedi with the ability to take pictures around corners is making headway and sending back pictures of previously unseen hieroglyphs and architecture.
The winning robot, designed by Leeds University, has indeed gone further than anyone has ever been before in the pyramid.
The project began with the exploration of the southern shaft, which ends at the so called “Gantenbrink’s door.”
The robot was able to climb inside the walls of the shaft while carrying a “micro snake” camera that can see around corners.
Unlike previous expeditions, in which camera images were only taken looking straight ahead, the bendy camera was small enough to fit through a small hole in a stone “door,” giving researchers a clear view into the chamber beyond. It was at that time that the camera sent back images of 4,500-year-old markings.
“There are many unanswered questions that these images raise,” Richardson told Discovery News. “Why is there writing in this space? What does the writing say? There appears to be a masonry cutting mark next to the figures: why was it not cut along this line?” Roberston wondered.
Read more about the Djedi project at Discovery News. Link -via the Presurfer
(Image credit: Djedi Team)
We take TV remote control for granted, but did you know that the first TV with remote control was made 50 years ago? Here’s an ad for RCA Victor’s wireless wizard remote control (billed as the greatest advance in television since color television itself / the ultimate in performance and convenience).
Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] – via Bits and Pieces
Vimeo user aaron_gx flew through the spinning blades of a wind farm. With a remote-control plane, of course.
This kind of stunt is typically frowned upon in the industry, to the point that the person(s) responsible for aiding him were probably fired, if they were caught. I would never allow such a thing to happen on my watch, but… it’s fun to watch.
Link (embedded vimeo clip)
Because laser-totin’ killer military dolphins need that pesky thing called water, researchers are forced to make to with the next best thing on land: remotely guided super dog!
Trained dogs are smart enough to find bombs, drugs, people, and the safest way to cross the street — but only with a capable handler nearby. Now a new system developed at Auburn University could turn canines into remotely guided "super dogs" that can take on risky tasks.
"With our system you don’t have to be in eyesight, versus human guides that do have to be within sight," said David M. Bevly, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Auburn University who worked on the research.
In the past, remote guidance research focused on other animals or relied on invasive implanted electrodes to give commands. Instead, Bevly and his team created an external, real-time navigation system for trained dogs.
They designed a custom harness equipped with GPS, sensors, a processor and a radio modem that connects wirelessly to a computer system. The pack vibrates slightly on the left or right side and emits different tones to direct the dog.
Link (Photo: Samuel Ginn/Auburn University College of Engineering) – via Holy Kaw
What will a flock of penguins do when a fake penguin comes around? The Japanese TV show Shimura Zoo finds out. Link -via Everlasting Blort
Remote
Control Zombie - $23.95
This is like me every morning: this Remote Control Zombie walks and moans on your command. All you have to do is push a button on the brain-shaped remote control and set the zombie plodding in search of braaaaaiinnnnss. Link
More Zombie items from the NeatoShop:
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Comments Off YouTube user andrewid1976 was flying his remote controlled airplane when it was attacked by a bird. After several attempts, the bird, which Andrew identifies as a raven, was able to take down its prey.
via The Presurfer
Skål is a rather playful remote control designed by Jørn Knutsen, Einar Sneve Martinussen and Timo Arnall. It looks like a block of wood, but it has a RFID reader inside. When an equipped object is placed inside, such as a wooden block or a toy, it plays a video related to that object. For example, when a child places a Sleeping Beauty toy inside, it plays the Sleeping Beauty movie.
There’s an annual remote control submarine regatta in Canberra, Australia. Here’s a 2008 video of a RC surface warship in a pool dropping exploding depth charges on a RC submarine cruising beneath it. Below you’ll see a video showing a subsurface perspective of what I think is the same incident.
via Urlesque, where there are more examples of RC vehicles with deadly firepower
Anyone with a remote car lock has wondered at one time or another whether the signal is really one-of-a-kind. What are the chances that your keyless entry could unlock someone else’s car? It turns out the odds are pretty slim.
Modern remote keyless entry systems are pretty secure, but there is a slight chance Jason could open another Camry if he wants to walk up to one and press the unlock button on his remote (assuming it uses a 40-bit code) one trillion, ninety-nine billion, five hundred eleven million, six hundred twenty-seven thousand, seven hundred and seventy-six times, running through all the possible codes his remote could transmit until one works (assuming he can hit the button once every second without taking any breaks, he’ll need just shy of 34,842 years to do so).
Mental_floss explains how the coded radio signals work on a keyless entry and why the odds of unlocking another car are so small. Link
With the help of a remote control car and a cat. I wish losing my baby teeth had been this fun! -via reddit
At one time or another, everyone wishes they could control a bowling ball after it leaves his/her hand. The RC900 remote-control bowling ball makes that dream come true! A weight in a threaded shaft inside the ball determines its direction, and the user controls the weight. The purpose of the ball is to give young children a bit of success as they learn to bowl, and to help disabled people paticipate in the sport. Don’t even think of sneaking the RC900 into a competition! Link (with video) -via Gizmodo
Look at the picture. When the man moves his joystick to the left, the helmet on the girl’s head pulls her left ear, signally that she should go left. When he moves his joystick to the right, the opposite occurs.
Thomas Ricker of Engadget speculates about the most obvious application for this device from Kajimoto Laboratory: a navigation aid for the blind. With a GPS system added, it could be used to give the visually impaired greater independence.
Four years ago, Alex wrote about a similar gadget.
Link (Google Translator version) via Engadget
If you could create your perfect TV show, what would it be? Apparently, whoever greenlighted this show understands that there is a huge untapped market of people like me.
Here it comes, Weaponizers, the flaming hellspawn of BattleBots and Junkyard Wars. I…am…so…happy…
Please God – I dont ask for much – don’t let the pilot be a hoax.
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by dauker.
Engineers at the University of California at Berkeley have developed remote-control beetles that can be used as spies! They aren’t just robots, either. These are cyborgs, real beetles that have implanted electrodes that control their flight muscles.
With the mind of a machine and the nimble body of an insect, this bug-bot may be the perfect scout: inexpensive, expendable, and capable of surreptitious reconnaissance. The Berkeley researchers, led by Michael Maharbiz, note that beetles are strong enough to carry useful payloads, such as a miniature camera.
(image credit: Hirotaka Sato and Michel M. Maharbiz, U. C. Berkeley)
Was it a case of drug smuggling or not? First, closed circuit cameras picked up the image of a tiny helicopter flying into the compound at Elmley Prison in Sheerness, Kent, England. The next night, guards saw the flying object.
However, staff could not find any trace of either the helicopter or the package which it appeared to be carrying underneath it when they searched the Category C jail.
‘Using a mini-helicopter to get contraband into jails is unprecedented. When officers spotted it they nearly fell off their chairs’, a prison source told the Sun.
‘It could have been drugs or a mobile phone in the package. It is possible it was a dummy run.’
Maybe the helicopter flew out as well. Link -via Unique Daily
