Wired talks to Sangbae Kim, of MIT’s Biomimetic Robotics Lab, about his biomimetic robots: The iSprawl, SpinyBot, the StickyBot, and his latest project, the terrifying robotic cheetah pictured above. By mimicking a cheetah, Kim is looking to increase the speed of robots, the fastest of which aren’t that quick on their feet/wheels/paws.
So far, the biomimetic robots pumped out by local researchers have been as fun as anti-landmine technology can be — the Ghost Swimmer, Robofish, RoboLobster, RoboLamprey, RoboClam, even Kim’s StickyBot. I’m still waiting on someone to develop a robot monkey, and we jump all the way to this?
Seriously, this isn’t funny any more, guys. I’m picturing the heavily armed MBTA cops at South Station getting these things to replace their bomb/drug/turnstyle jumper-sniffing dogs. I don’t want that malevolent-looking, 70-mph-running, lightweight carbon-fiber-foam composite piece of death following me down the street at night. Or at noon, either.
TechCrunch reports StudentBusinesses.com, a social network for student entrepreneurs, has been bought by the Kauffman Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to helping entrepreneurs.
MHT talked to StudentBusinesses in March 2008, when it was using its platform to host the Harvard College Innovation Challenge and other college business plan competitions.
The startup-focused startup was founded by Harvard alumni Vivek Ramaswamy and Travis May. Financial details haven’t been reported; we’re waiting on a reply to an email for details.
Nick Roy and the Robust Robotics Group at MIT CSAIL has developed a helicopter robot called the RANGE (Robust, Aerial, Navigation in GPS-denied Environments) that models its surroundings as it flies, using 3-D cameras and laser scanners.
In what can only be taken as a direct challenge to its landlocked cousin, Boston Dynamics’ kick-resistant Big Dog, the video includes a scene where the robot corrects itself after being poked by a two-by-four.
Good news for lab animals who have had heart attacks: Harvard researchers have grown a strip of beating mouse heart muscle from embryonic stem cells, according to the Globe’s White Coat Notes blog. The breakthrough will be detailed tomorrow in the journal Science.
Sure, it’s no human ear growing out of a mouse’s back, but it gets stem cell research that much closer to making replaceable parts for humans, or making a heart like a carburator.
Not to be outdone by the unnerving motion of a robot made from “jammable slurry,” one of the researchers compares the heart-muscle strip to a “fruit roll-up.” Delicious.
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.
BUToday notes the arrival of BigBelly Solar’s fancy garbage can today, with an animated feature explaining how they work. The school is adding 20 of the solar-powered trash compactors to the three already on its campus.
In August, Bao sold his first startup, Avecora, and launched a new company called AtomPlan, which makes a business contact management application. He has also co-founded Ramamia, a photo-sharing service for families.
Bao told MHT about his goals in May: A personal net worth of more than $5 billion, to help people who can’t help him, to enjoy life without boundaries and to change the world. For more proof he’s not messing around, check out his enjoyably profane Twitter stream. From the Startup Bootcamp @ MIT:
Chatting with a speaker afterwards? Keep your f______ chat to < 3 min and < 3 questions. G__ damn. #sb
On the Daily Show, William Kamkwamba talked about building an electricity-generating windmill for his family’s farm in Malawi, using a library book as a guide, at the age of 14. He’s since presented at TEDGlobal 2007 in Tanzania, and wrote a book, “The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind.”
Toward the end of the interview, Kamkwamba explains how he found out about Google, at the TED conference: “I was like, ‘Where was this Google all this time?’”
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.
Click the medals, and then the questions on the multimedia feature above to hear audio of the winners.
I dropped by Harvard last night before the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony — a Nobel Prize takeoff that honors research that makes people laugh, then think. Most of the ten prizewinners were assembled in the Sanders Theater prior to the show, which I was told would include a “Bernie Madoff-themed cabaret” — it’s not on YouTube yet, but you’ll be the first to know when it is. The show also featured a performance from the Boston Squeezebox Ensemble, and I cannot begin to imagine what that could possibly be.
Among the winners, Javier Morales and Miguel Apátiga, researchers at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, were honored for developing a process that makes diamond from tequila. Apátiga said one experiment used 25 million liters of booze.
Donald Unger cracked the knuckles of his left hand for more than 60 years to test his mother’s theory on arthritis, and picked up the Ig Nobel medicine prize for his efforts. Winning the award amazed him — Unger said he’s done great work in his time, but this wasn’t it. (more…)
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