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The Bristol Robotics Laboratory at the University of Bristol, UK has built a robot that senses obstacles not with cameras, but sensitive whiskers at the front end:

Researchers at the University of Bristol in England hope to deploy the poodle-size ‘bot in search-and-rescue missions where vision is impaired, like in mines or smoky rooms. Its 18 whiskers move back and forth five times per second. When a whisker bends, a sensor on its shaft signals software to orient the ’bot toward the object. Whiskers close to an object move less, while those farther away make wide, sweeping motions to establish the object’s exact edges.

http://www.popsci.com/bown/2009/product/scratchbot | Bristol Robotics Laboratory

Scottish brewery BrewDog has released its newest beer, named Tactical Nuclear Penguin. At 32% alcohol content, it's the world's strongest beer:

A warning on the label states: "This is an extremely strong beer; it should be enjoyed in small servings and with an air of aristocratic nonchalance. In exactly the same manner that you would enjoy a fine whisky, a Frank Zappa album or a visit from a friendly yet anxious ghost."

However Jack Law, of Alcohol Focus Scotland, described it was a "cynical marketing ploy" and said: "We want to know why a brewer would produce a beer almost as strong as whisky."

The beer has been launched on the day alcohol was at the top of the political agenda with the unveiling of the Scottish government's Alcohol Bill including proposals for minimum pricing on drink.

Link via Geekologie | Image: BBC News

Photo: Qiao Chang

Qiao Chang of SmugMug is a commercial photographer who creates origami figures as a hobby. One of her works takes the form of a mathematical puzzle called a Soma cube:

A solid dissection puzzle invented by Piet Hein during a lecture on Quantum Mechanics by Werner Heisenberg. There are seven soma pieces composed of all the irregular face-joined cubes (polycubes) with *=4 cubes. The object is to assemble the pieces into a cube. There are 240 essentially distinct ways of doing so (Beeler 1972, Berlekamp et al. 1982), as first enumerated one rainy afternoon in 1961 by J. H. Conway and Mike Guy.

http://qiaochang.smugmug.com/Other/My-Origami-Collection/8551061_krjgW#563203570_dFKUD-O-LB via GearFuse | Soma Cube Explanation

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Trevor Boyd and Steve Ilett remade the slow-moving bullet-dodging scene from The Matrix. Their official website goes into detail about how they executed the project:

By "frame accurate" we mean that we took all of the video frames from that part of the movie (that's nearly 900 frames for just 44 seconds of footage) and reproduced them all in Lego.

This was time-consuming to say the least, taking us something like 440 hours to make the completed movie. At that ratio of 10 hours per second we figured we could do the whole film in about 9 years, so long we didn't need to eat or sleep. As a full-time job then, we're probably looking at 25 years or so. No thanks.

Early in the piece we decided we wanted to do everything "in camera". No wire-removal, no special effects, no crazy Photoshop tricks. We pretty much regret this now, but I guess it gives us bragging rights of some sort. We did do some colour correction and image stabilising, and at one point we edited a very small number of frames in one scene so that some minor background shake was taken out, but that's it.

Official Website via io9

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Yesterday, Neatorama featured a Muppet version of Queen's iconic song "Bohemian Rhapsody." Lindsey Weber of Urlesque has compiled fifteen unusual and creative cover version of that song, including this ukulele version by Ukulele Bartt. Others include a typographical version, an orchestral version, and one in which the musician uses only his hands.

Link | Ukulele Bartt

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Jonathan Wolfe makes delicate puzzle boxes out of acorns. Each one opens only when a particular area is tapped or a wire is pulled. One in the video takes the form of a Matryoshka doll with a smaller acorn puzzle box inside.

Link

Image:Fox

Bart's Blackboard is an archive of every sentence that Bart Simpson has been forced to write on the blackboard in the opening sequence to The Simpsons. So far, there are six seasons loaded in this ongoing project.

Link via J-Walk Blog

Photo: Erin Papacki

Creating a robot capable of grasping a variety of door nobs but is light enough to fit onto a wheelchair is quite an engineering challenge. But Erin Rapacki of the University of Massachusetts at Lowell was up to the task, and built one from only $2,000:

A door-opening robot must be able to grasp a variety of designs of door knobs and handles. It also needs to calculate "how much force is needed to open the door, the twisting angles to unlatch the door, and how much force is needed to unlatch it", says Erin Rapacki, now at Anybots in Mountain View, California [...]

To keep her device simple, Rapacki used a single motor and avoided the expense of cameras and elaborate sensors. Instead, a motor-driven set of gears extends the gripper towards the handle with its three fingers spread apart (see diagram).

Rapacki first tried flexible neoprene fingers, thinking that they could bend to grasp the knob, but these proved too thick and soft. Stiff plastic fingers with plates to constrain their sideways motion proved much more effective.

She also added a slip clutch to the drive system, to allow the device to hold and turn the knob at the same time as pushing or pulling.

Link via Popular Science

Image:Alexandre Suannes

From the cartography blog Strange Maps comes this Portuguese-language chart of per capita wine consumption around the world, shaped like a bundle of grapes. It was created by Brazilian graphic designer Alexandre Suannes. Luxembourg appears to be the largest consumer, with 5.91 liters per person. You can view a larger image at the link.

Link

Image: willito, screenshot by SciFiWire

YouTube user willito has a video of Battlestar Galactica cake that has a shifting, glowing red eye.

YouTube Link via DVICE

Photo: Andrew Byrom

Designer Andrew Byrom has developed a font derived from Venetian blinds opened and closed at various angles and lengths. Byrom, a native of Liverpool, UK, studied design at the Cumbria Institute of Art and Design and now teaches at California State University in Los Angeles. He has won numerous awards for his typographical work in the past few years.

http://www.ignant.de/2009/11/24/venetian-von-andrew-byrom/ via DudeCraft | Artist's Website

Image: Olly Moss

Artist Olly Moss, previously featured on Neatorama for his parody of Shepard Fairey, has created a poster summarizing the weaknesses of foes that you regularly encounter. Whether you're fighting Pokémon, vampires, AT-ATs, or Achilles, this poster will keep you focused on a quick victory.

Link via Geekologie | Artist's Website

Photo: Prudence Staite

Food artist Prudence Staite, previously featured on Neatorama, recently recreated scenes from the movie Snow White using fourteen different types of apples to express different colors, shapes, and textures. The works were commissioned by Disney to promote the film. You can view three more at the link.

Link via Urlesque | Artist's Website

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It's probably not strong enough to support a human user, but Liddy Scheffknecht and Armin B. Wagner's pop-up cardboard office sure is nifty-looking. The entire structure folds into a portable flat panel.

Via Gizmodo | Armin B. Wagner | Liddy Scheffknecht | Previously on Neatorama: Cardboard Office

Image: Kalimedia

Cartography blog Strange Maps has a map of the British Isles showing current place names translated into modern English. It's one from a collection known as The Atlas of True Names. You can view a larger image at the link.

Link | Other Maps of Translated Place Names | News Story