Today In Dystopian War Robots That Will Harvest Us For Our Organs…

Those of you who are about to fight in the Great Human Rebellion, we salute you… with the robots that will kill you! Hello and welcome to another episode of TIDWRTWHUFOO where we meet the Gs that killed thee. Today we have quite a treat because today we see what happens when the robots lose hope.

But first, check out this amazing robotic boat that plans to sail across the Atlantic completely autonomously, using solar power, electric motors, and an insatiable hunger for the blood of the innocents. The robot is programmed to hit certain waypoints and can handle rough seas and even report back to its makers. Given the penchant for robots to go crazy and ram other boats, here’s hoping it doesn’t go crazy and ram other boats.

Oh, hey, by the way, did you want something to scar your dreams and populate your nightmares? Here’s Aluminalis, a 16-legged robot from Beatty Robotics that scuttles around like a crab and can most probably sneak into almost any orifice while you sleep.

Aluminalis – The Introduction from Robert Beatty on Vimeo.

Finally we present the most satisfying video of all. Fresh from Spectrum we see quadcopters free-falling from 4,000 feet where they are rent, destroyed, and otherwise mutilated by Lady Gravity. Enjoy these scenes while you can because, in the future, the robots will be the ones lifting us up 4,000 feet and testing our capacity for terminal velocity damage. Interestingly, the activities shown in the video are illegal in the U.S. because you can’t fly higher than 400 feet with your drone, so watch out! Sadly, the robots will have no such laws.

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Scientists replicate kitty whiskers to help robots 'feel'

Cat whiskers are tremendously sensitive, so much so that cats can navigate around our glassware without sending anything crashing to the floor. It's that sort of sensitivity that a team from the University of California, Berkeley, is trying to replicate to help robots of the future. Ultra-sensitive fibers, made with carbon nanotubes and silver nanoparticles are designed to respond to pressure, helping future hardware navigate difficult and low-visibility environments. Team leader Ali Javey believes that the material is 10 times as sensitive as your smartphone display, and could even be used to track your heartbeat -- so maybe we'll be seeing this stuff getting woven together to make the next generation of connected onesies.

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Via: SlashGear

Source: Berkeley Lab (1), (2) (PDF)

Tags: alijavey, CarbonNanotubes, Cats, Robots, science, SilverNanoparticle, UcBerkeley, whiskers Next: South Korea rules smartphone users can delete Android bloatware .fyre .fyre-comment-divider

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Today In Dystopian War Robots That Will Harvest Us For Our Organs…

Good evening, carbon-based lifeforms! Are you ready to become cannon fodder for the coming war against the machines? No? Well don’t worry because you won’t have a choice! Today in TIDWRTWHUFOO we present some warriors from the future that will work alongside and then kill and eat their human counterparts. Mmmm!

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Out in the Open: Meet Alphalem, an Open Source Brain Just for Robots

The Connective is a crowd-sourced digital magazine made in just 48 hours, chronicling how our conversations with our things are thoroughly changing our world.

Learn more >

Business Conference Promotion

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Ozobot: Tiny autonomous gaming robots for tablets and beyond

The Ozobot robots are looking to cross the bridge between digital and physical gaming worlds, all while adding a charming bit of randomness to the occasion.

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Meatspace, A World Of Animated Gifs, Human Robots And The Ephemerality Of Snapchat-Like Apps

Meatspace, an addictive new web service and mobile app is part Snapchat, part Twitter and part animated gifs. It works like this: You write an update in 250 characters or less and then pose for the camera on your computer or phone. The service then records and makes a two-second animated loop.

Meatspace shifts the conversation into a different space than a conventional chat service, news feed or shared video stream. Instead, it’s an ephemeral app, similar to Snapchat or Blink. There is no archiving as with Twitter or an enterprise platform like Yammer. Updates disappear after ten minutes. There is no unique URL — the updates just go away like most conversations do when people talk over a beer or cup of coffee. Like the conversation you might have with a friend over dinner, the memories are of the highlights you recall and person’s expressions.

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FAA selects six sites for drone testing because flying robots are our future

One day, drones will be flying overhead... and it will be normal. But, right now, concern over the safety of allowing unmanned aircraft to roam freely in our airspace outweighs their groovy future potential. Which is why the FAA today, following a mandate by Congress, has selected six test sites around the US for the purpose of studying UAS (unmanned aircraft) and eventually integrating them safely into our heavily trafficked skies. Research on UAS will now be carried out at facilities operated by The University of Alaska, Texas A&M University, the state of Nevada (an obvious choice, really), North Dakota's Department of Commerce, New York's Griffiss International Airport and Virginia Tech -- all chosen for their geographical and climatic diversity.

Each partner will carry out testing in key research areas highlighted by the FAA: sense and avoid, command and control, ground control station standards and human factors, airworthiness, lost link procedures and interface with air traffic control. The results of which will go towards developing regulations for "commercial and civil use" (yes, you will one day own and operate a drone). But just because the FAA's given a greenlight to further UAS testing, that doesn't mean you'll see drones whizzing about in our skies anytime soon. The agency's stressed that this is just a test and not an invitation to tempt fate in our national airspace system.

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Tags: drones, FAA, research, UAS, UAV Next: Tech's biggest misfires of 2013 .fyre .fyre-comment-divider

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Today In Dystopian War Robots That Will Harvest Us For Our Organs

Hello, future IKEA Swedish meatballs! How are you this Friday? Ready to be torn to bits by sharp, gnashing, robotic teeth? I bet you are. In this exciting edition of TIDWRTWHUFOO we meet some tiny flying robots, some big climbing robots, and some bigger flying robots.

First, say hello to the DelFly Explorer. This teeny weenie little flying robot weighs 4 grams – as much as four sheets of paper – and flies autonomously around the room using on-board computing and vision to keep the robot from crashing into anything. All of the processing power is on board the ultralight robot and it moves by flapping its funny little wings. But don’t let it hear you calling it funny. It will cut you. You can learn more about it here.

Think you can escape from the DelFly by climbing a tree? Not so fast, buster. Take a look at RiSE from Boston Dynamics, a six-legged robot that can climb walls, hump over ledges, and even jump from tree to tree. It’s a little old, but it tells you just what Google has in store for us when we get out of line in the woods.

Finally we see these exciting flying robots that self-right themselves when they’re thrown in the air. The InstantEye from PSITactical is a tool for creating instant vantage points above a scene without having to take the time to launch devices into the air. I can also imagine them self-righting after we smack at them with baseball bats. Again… and again… and again.

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Google acquires Boston Dynamics, maker of animal-inspired robots

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Today In Dystopian War Robots That Will Harvest Us For Our Organs

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