Category Archives: Robot

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Space Invaders Wallpaper

March 3rd, 2013 | Robot, Space

Space Invaders Wallpaper

Space Invaders Wallpaper

Click on the appropriate size below to download:

1280×800  — 1440×900 — 1680×1050 — 1920×1200 — 2560×1440 — iPhone4 — iPhone5 — iPad

In 1978, Space Invaders ushered in the Golden Age of Arcade Games.  Shortly after its release, you could find coin-operated machines pretty much everywhere — grocery stores, restaurants, bars, movie theaters.  But in the smart phone era, there isn’t much room for this type of gaming.
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 You can easily pull up Angry Birds, Temple Run, and even Space Invaders on your phone and play them instantly, for free.

So I guess acting on a bit of nostalgia for gaming of the past, I decided to create this replica of the original Space Invaders Arcade Cabinet.  I attempted to keep the design as close as possible to the 1978 U.S. release.

Here’s a summary of the gameplay in case you’re not familiar:

“Space Invaders is a two-dimensional fixed shooter game in which the player controls a laser cannon by moving it horizontally across the bottom of the screen and firing at descending aliens. The aim is to defeat five rows of eleven aliens—some versions feature different numbers—that move horizontally back and forth across the screen as they advance towards the bottom of the screen.
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The player defeats an alien, and earns points, by shooting it with the laser cannon.
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As more aliens are defeated, the aliens’ movement and the game’s music both speed up. Defeating the aliens brings another wave that is more difficult, a loop which can continue indefinitely.”

Space Invaders was recently chosen by the Museum of Modern Art in New York City as one of 40 that the curators wished to add to the museum’s collection in the future.  This has sparked some debate about whether video games are actually art, and Paola Antonelli, senior curator for the museum’s department of architecture and design, was quoted on the subject:

“Frankly, I am not interested at all in the discussion about video games or even chairs being art. I find design one of the highest form of human creative expression and when something has great design that is more than enough.”

I agree with her.

-RSB

Quadrocopters Play Catch With a Stick

February 23rd, 2013 | Robot

Quadrocopter

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Quadrotor Design

The cross-shaped cut-outs are used for easy attachment to the vehicle.

We’ve seen Quadrocopters swarming like space invaders, playing the James Bond theme music, and now, they’re playing catch with a stick.  This new feat was accomplished by Dario Brescianini, a student at ETH Zurich’s Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control, for his Masters Thesis project. The video starts out with one quadrocopter balancing an inverted pendulum on its platform, and then it proceeds to flip the stick over to its friend, who catches it with ease.  It’s really quite remarkable.

Learning the dynamics of the inverted pendulum is commonplace in introductory Engineering courses, but applying it to a flying robot presents a whole new set of challenges.  To complete this task, the team first constructed a 2-D mathematical model of the system to understand at what angles and speed the robot would need to fly in order to catapult the stick toward its partner.
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 Then, they physically tested their model, made the appropriate adjustments, and restarted the process all over again.  This sort of iterative design can be very effective.  In a sense, it’s a method of fine-tuning the results until you get the perfect outcome.

Quadrotor Shock Absorber

The shock absorber at the end of the pendulum is a balloon filled with flour

Here’s what Markus Hehn (one of Dario’s supervisors) had to say:

“This was a really fun project to work on. We started off with some back-of-the-envelope calculations, wondering whether it would even be physically possible to throw and catch a pendulum.
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This told us that achieving this maneuver would really push the dynamic capabilities of the system.

As it turned out, it is probably the most challenging task we’ve had our quadrocopters do. With significantly less than one second to measure the pendulum flight and get the catching vehicle in place, it’s the combination of mathematical models with real-time trajectory generation, optimal control, and learning from previous iterations that allowed us to implement this.
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Read more at Robohub.

-RSB

Pencil Sculptures from Dalton Ghetti

February 22nd, 2013 | Robot

Pencil Sculptures 1

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Elvis Pencil

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Dalton Ghetti is a Brazilian carpenter who sharpens a lot of pencils in his free time.  He began his quest to sculpt tiny objects back in 1986 a few years after coming to America.
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 His plan was to bring attention to the small things in life.

The pencils are all recycled from the streets and sidewalks of his neighborhood.

Here’s how he does it:

 “To create his sculpture, he holds the pencil in his hand under a strong light source (table lamp or sunlight) and carves it mostly with a sewing needle and a very sharp, triangular, small, metal blade. He works at very small intervals: 1 to 2 hours maximum per day whenever he gets inspired. He works very slowly by removing specks of graphite at a time.
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It therefore takes months or sometimes years to complete a sculpture.
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You can find more of his work and buy prints from his website.

-RSB

[via Juxtapoz]

Rise of the Drones

January 26th, 2013 | Robot

Rise of the Drones

Missy Cummings recently appeared on The Daily Show with John Stewart to discuss the Rise of the Drones. She is a former fighter pilot and current professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT and has some of the best insight on Drone technology in the world.
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Drones like the MQ-1 Predator Drone pictured above have been operational for about 10 years and their Hellfire missiles have killed thousands of insurgents in Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Pakistan, and Iraq. Obviously, this technology brings fear into the hearts of the general public, and I think Missy Cummings delivers some salient points on the topic. Drones will only become more and more prevalent both at home and abroad.  They’re cheaper and more reliable than any manned aircraft and they don’t risk the pilot’s life to fly.  The U.S. military now trains more remote pilots than fighter and bomber pilots combined.  The training takes about half as much time and anyone who can play video games can control them reliably.

But drones are not perfect, and 23 civilians were mistakenly killed in Afghanistan back in 2010 in one of the biggest military blunders in quite some time.

And this technology is no secret.  If you’re looking to build your own drone, here are the instructions from DIY Drones.  Please don’t arm yours with a hellfire missile.
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“Rise of the Drones” is a NOVA program which aired on January 23rd.  You can watch the whole episode here.

-RSB

“The Land of Giants” – Power Line Design

January 25th, 2013 | Robot, Space

The Land of Giants 1

I recommend you listen to Sigur Rós while reading this post.  Ok, please continue.

“The Land of Giants” is a concept from architecture & design firm Choi+Shine. It was proposed back in 2008 to grace the pristine Icelandic countryside, but unfortunately, the structures were never built.  Iceland is on the top of my list for future eco-travel destinations.  It’s an untouched land of hot springs, spurting geysers, glaciers and waterfalls, and these giant structures would be the perfect complement to the ghostly landscape which has been featured in movies such as Prometheus.

From the architects:

“Like the statues of Easter Island, it is envisioned that these one hundred and fifty foot tall, modern caryatids will take on a quiet authority, belonging to their landscape yet serving the people, silently transporting electricity across all terrain, day and night, sunshine or snow.”

I was amazed to find out that this design didn’t even win the competition… My only guess is that the judges were not ready for such a bold concept.  But the time is now!

The Land of Giants 2

Power Line Design

Power Line Design

The Land of Giants 5

The Land of Giants 6

Please write your local politician and request we replace all power lines with these Giant Alien Robot Sculptures.  Thank you.

-RSB

[via inthralld]

Miniature Synthesizers from Dan McPharlin

January 8th, 2013 | Robot

Miniature Synthesizers

Miniature Synthesizer for Esquire Magazine

Hexatron

Miniature Synthesizers

Analogue Miniature Synthesizer
Miniature Synthesizers
Miniature Synthesizers

The Australian artist Dan McPharlin is responsible for these incredible miniature synthesizers.  Dan certainly has an eye for science-fiction art.  He’s created album covers, logos, and illustrations for magazines, but these tiny keyboards are my personal favorite.

Unfortunately, the synthesizers are not playable, but maybe that’s asking a bit much.
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When asked about his interest in Synthesizers and Music in an interview, Dan responded:

Music is very important. I feel a bit like I’m losing my soul if I’m not creating music regularly. The things I’m drawn to in music are similar to those I’m drawn to in visual art; form, space, atmosphere. I love music that evokes strange worlds, sound environments that seem more like natural phenomena than anything created by human or machine. I’m always listening to something while I work on my art; there are a handful of artists that tend to inspire the right mood while I’m creating; Gyorgy Ligeti, Arvo Part, Klaus Schulze, Jeff Mills, Basic Channel, Toru Takemitsu are a few names that come to mind.
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Also impressive is the sheer number of the miniature synthesizers he’s created.  Check them all out at his Flickr page.

-RSB

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