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.
60 Minutes took a look at New Hampshire Inventor Dean Kamen’s latest invention, a prosthetic arm developed by his company, DEKA Research & Development, with a four-fingered hand with an opposable thumb.
MHT first wrote about the arm in 2007. DEKA created the prosthetic with help from Holliston-based Liberating Technologies Inc., and funding from DARPA’s $100 million Revolutionizing Prosthetics project.
The robotic arm is powered by a lithium battery and equipped with multiple microprocessors, sensors and haptics technology. The prosthetic is designed to move and function similar to a real arm and hand that can grasp bottles and lighter objects.
Users control the arm — which is designed to be able to curl weights of up to 20 pounds — with sensors in their shoes and a joystick they can either move with their shoulder muscles or remaining portions of their natural arm.
Last month, MIT researcher Hugh Herr — who lost both of his legs below the knee to frostbite at age 17 — landed $20 million for from General Catalyst and WFD Ventures for his startup iWalk, which is developing robotic ankle and foot prosthetics.
The Waltham-based company is working under a DARPA-funded grant from the Sandia National Laboratories., which developed the robot. The Hopper platform is designed to navigate autonomously on its four wheels and use its one leg to jump up to 25 feet in the air, according to Sandia.
As flying robots start to pop up with increasing frequency, Sandia says hopping is a more fuel-efficient means of getting over obstacles up to about 33 feet high.
The Natick Soldier Systems Center has developed a self-contained, electric kitchen that can be set up by two soldiers in half an hour without any special equipment. Natick Labs integrated off-the-shelf components for the kitchen, which can feed 300 soldiers three meals a day. Eighty-eight of the kitchens are being used in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to Natick Labs.
The kitchens seem like a considerable upgrade from the previous method soldiers had been looking to cook — charcoal on wooden pallets. The soldiers had some recommendations after initial field tests, which Natick Labs says were implemented: the designers added a convection oven, black-out curtains and — just like grandma’s kitchen, storage space for weapons.
The University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory just releasedhigh-resolution images of the surface of Mars taken from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
Tufts chemistry professor Sam Kounaves is in Tucson, at the University of Arizona, doing close-up research on the soil that makes up that surface from NASA’s Phoenix lander mission last year. Kounaves wet-chemical analysis found the soil on the Red Planet shared many characteristics with soil on earth.
The Wall Street Journal talks to Hugh Herr, founder of Cambridge-based iWalk, which makes the PowerFoot One, a robotic, prosthetic ankle and foot device. Herr is also director of the MIT Media Lab’s Biomechatronics Group.
In the video above, Herr presents his research at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January.
Last week, iWalk received $20 million of a $21 million Series B round to fund development of the prosthetic from General Catalyst and New York-based WFD Ventures.
Herr, who MHT first interviewed in 2005, was trapped in a snowstorm while climbing New Hampshire’s Mount Washington in 1982 at age 17. He was rescued, but suffered frostbite, and subsequently had both legs amputated just below the knee. The ordeal led him to take up engineering to develop better prosthetics.
Breyer is Accel’s representative at BBN, but invested his own money in Marvel. Raytheon isn’t releasing financial details from the BBN acquisition, but PEHub reports Breyer made out well from the Marvel deal:
As the third largest direct shareholder in Marvel Entertainment, Breyer stands to make nearly $5 million once Disney’s acquisition of the superhero company closes.
Disney said this morning that it plans to pay $4 billion in cash and stock for Marvel. Marvel shareholders — Breyer has 165,700, according to regulatory filings — will get $30 a share plus around 3/4 of a Disney share, a 29 percent premium over Marvel’s closing price on Friday.
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