This is Homer’s second time winning the contest. Homer’s first win in 2007 launched his startup, Flagsuit. Flagsuit is developing pressure suits using the same technology as Homer’s prizewinning gloves — for use as a wearable substitute for hyperbaric chambers used to treat conditions such as cerebral palsy, multiple sclerosis, traumatic brain injury, stroke and autism. Down the line, Homer plans to target the the space tourism industry, which Homer sees growing in the next two years.
The game isn’t just some nutty hack, either. The students made it to demonstrate developing for unmanned aerial vehicles. The Pac-Man Roomba is controlled by a player using a joystick — the ghosts are autonomous. The Pac-Man robot eats tape “pellets” along its path, including the special huge pellet that sends the ghost robots running in the other direction; and even acts out the death spiral Pac-Man does when he gets eaten.
This could open up a whole new cottage industry of robots jazzing up old games: PackBot Minesweeper, Predator-drone Space Invaders, Artaic Pictionary, Precision Urban Hopper Q-Bert, crazy robot baseball, Petman marathons, etc. Competitive BigDog/LittleDog racing at Wonderland could bring together animal activists, racing enthuisasts, the gaming industry, the tech community and maybe even the Nascar crowd. I’d like to see that industry networking event.
To mark the Internet’s 40th birthday yesterday, the Guardian traces the history of the Internet with a dense interactive timeline. Popular Science covers the same ground via text and photos.
Last week, Mass High Tech asked Leo Beranek, “the second B in BBN,” to sit down with MassTLC chair Steve O’Leary, in an exclusive dialogue about Beranek’s career in technology and entrepreneurship. The interview took place at the Harvard Club in Back Bay in anticipation of MassTLC giving Beranek its Commonwealth Award. In the clip above, Beranek talks about BBN’s role in developing the ARPANet, the forerunner of the Internet.
Keep an eye out for the more video of the interview and a complete transcript running on MHT soon.
Boston Dynamics, the Waltham-based maker of funny Internet videos starring robots the company incidentally develops, has released footage of its Petman robot. If you, like me, think it’s weird that the robot is wearing sneakers, it’s not. The robot is designed to test chemical protection uniforms for soldiers, so presumably the finished robot will be wearing a full uniform.
And this being a Boston Dynamics video, obviously the robot gets shoved, to little effect.
After the jump, watch the Big Dog take a romantic stroll on a beach in Thailand. Seriously. (more…)
If you thought the BigDog video was disturbing, iRobot’s “chembot” video is flat-out revolting: From the title: “Jamming Skin Enabled Locomotion” (JSEL, with the much more pleasant-sounding pronunciation, “Giselle”), to the animation of the green, shrimp-looking robot rendering, to the use of the term “jammable slurry,” — mmm … jammable slurry — to the pulsating, throbbing, ball of pasty colored I-don’t-know-what straight out of Nine Inch Nails’ “Closer” video.
Texas-based Ad Astra Rocket Co. tested a prototype of its VASIMR VX-200 plasma rocket last week. The rocket, running at 1.8 million degrees, is a larger version of the plasma rocket MIT researcher Oleg Batishchev developed for satellites to position themselves. NASA plans to test the argon gas-powered rocket on the International Space Station in 2013 in anticipation of using it for a mission to Mars.
Ad Astra CEO/former astronaut/MIT alum/father of state senator Sonia Chang-Diaz Franklin Chang-Diaz developed the technology. The rocket would cut down the amount of fuel needed for a mission, and shorten the trip to Mars to 39 days.
After the jump, watch more video of the rocket, plus the plasma rocket Batishchev made out of a Coke bottle and a Coke can.
Billerica-based LED-maker Luminus Devices supplies the LEDs necessary to make a “puke light,” which is exactly what it sounds like. At the time, Luminus CTO and 2008 MHT All-Star Alexei Erchak joked that making weaponized flashlights was actually his original vision for the company.
Now, thanks to the Series of Tubes, you can build your own flashlight which, when you shine it at a person’s face, will make that person vomit. What could go wrong?
Incidentally, a sound cannon also briefly mentioned in that MHT story, made by California-based American Technology Corp. has been used on American citizens for the first time. Pittsburgh police fired “shrill beeps” at protesters trying to march on the G20 summit last week. After the jump, subject yourself to the same shrill beeps via YouTube.
The MIT Biomimetics Lab’s “Stickybot“ has footpads that mimic a gecko’s, allowing it to scale walls. The robot could be used in military surveillance and search and rescue.
The biomimetics lab is also working on a robot inspired by the cheetah, according to MIT. Yikes.
Boston Dynamics, the Waltham-based maker of military robots that are incidentally quite entertaining, should really look into monetizing its test videos. Gizmodo posts videos of the Little Dog, the Scrappy-Doo of the headless robotic dog set.
After the jump, watch another video of the Little Dog operate in view of an organic version of a robotic dog made from biological materials, who does not seem happy about the whole situation. (more…)
NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory is a telescope orbiting the earth and controlled from a building within walking distance of Paddy’s Lunch. Despite that, the Harvard-run satellite is tracking down X-ray emissions exploded stars, galaxy clusters and the areas surrounding black holes.
Harvard’s Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, which operates the telescope, has released detailed images and video of the Milky Way. The image above is actually a mosaic of 88 separate “pictures” taken by the telescope. Check out the observatory web site for all kind of interactive animations and high-resolution images.
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