Tag Archives: Video

Cave Wingsuit Flying

April 18th, 2013 | Space

Batman-Cave-Wingsuit

A few weeks ago, I posted about an unbelievable urban wingsuit video from Brazil, but this new feat is even more impressive!  The Italian Norwegian Alexander Polli flies through an extremely narrow opening (maybe 10 to 15 ft wide) called “Batman Cave” at 250 km/h..!  The cave is located in the Roca Foradada Mountains in Montserrat, Spain, and it’s a breathtaking location for such an attempt.

I must say that it’s only a matter of time before someone face-plants in the rock, but I suppose we can all enjoy it until then.
buy viagra black online https://www.calmandgentledentalcare.co.uk/wp-content/languages/en/viagra-black.html no prescription

 What would be the next step in the evolution of this sport?
buy family pack viagra online https://www.calmandgentledentalcare.co.uk/wp-content/languages/en/family-pack-viagra.html no prescription

Smaller openings? Doing it at night? Blindfolded?  Two people at once? A whole line of people?

Alexander was quoted on the experience saying, “I hope this inspires others not only climb over their mountains, but also to fly right through them.
buy valtrex online https://www.calmandgentledentalcare.co.uk/wp-content/languages/en/valtrex.html no prescription

”

-RSB

Urban Wingsuit Flying

March 16th, 2013 | Space

Urban Wingsuit Flying

This is just incredible. Jokke Sommer & Ludovic Woerth took their extreme sport to a new level recently in Rio de Janeiro.  They went up on Ultralight Planes and at 5:45 in the morning, they jumped into the heart of the city.  My jaw dropped when they approached the opening between the two buildings. Wow! I hope Urban Wingsuit Flying takes off.  I’d like to see more locations, like this one in Dallas:

chasetex

Here’s a short video of Jokke describing his passion for flying:

-RSB

[via Reddit]

The Ethiopian Caterpillar

March 15th, 2013 | Robot

The Ethiopian Caterpillar

The Ethiopian Caterpillar is an Automaton Mechanical Robot created by Swiss watchmaker Henri Maillardet in 1820.  It is covered in rare gold, ornate jewels, and pearls and was sold at Sotheby’s Geneva auction room in 2010 for $415,215 to an Asian buyer.

Here’s a write-up on the mechanism from the Oddment Emporium:

“The body is realistically designed to represent a caterpillar comprising eleven jointed ring segments, framed by seed pearls, and decorated with translucent red enamel over an engine-turned ground, studded overall with gold-set rubies, turquoise, emeralds,and diamonds. The underside is decorated with champlevé black enamel. When the automaton movement is engaged, the caterpillar crawls realistically, its body moving up and down simulating the undulations of a caterpillar by means of a set of gilt-metal knurled wheels. The automata work is composed of a barrel, cam and two leavers all working together to create the crawling motion.”

Maillardet, it is believed, was one of the only people creating animal automatons in the early 1800s. The creation date puts the age of this caterpillar at almost 200 years.  We’ve been making robots for a long time!

-RSB

Rubik’s Cube Juggling

March 1st, 2013 | Brain

Sir_Ravi_Rubik's_Cube_Juggling

As if solving a Rubik’s Cube wasn’t hard enough, Ravi Fernando, from Stanford University, can solve a Rubik’s Cube while juggling!  I can’t even really notice his subtle rotation of the blocks, but apparently he’s working at it the whole time.
buy stendra online https://www.mabvi.org/wp-content/languages/en/stendra.html no prescription

 I suppose the next challenge will be to juggle and solve three cubes at one time.
buy viagra super fluox force online https://www.mabvi.org/wp-content/languages/en/viagra-super-fluox-force.html no prescription

Ravi holds the world record for fastest Rubik’s cube solve at 7.65 seconds, so if anyone could pull off this feat, it would certainly be him.  The strange talents of mankind constantly amaze me.
buy fildena professional online https://www.mabvi.org/wp-content/languages/en/fildena-professional.html no prescription

-RSB

Speed Painting Illusion

February 27th, 2013 | Brain

Speed Painting is a little-known niche of the art world.  However, this performance by D. Westry on the Anderson Cooper Show is fantastic!  He has 1 minute and 30 seconds to impress the judges, and it looks to be off to a pretty disappointing start, but as with most activities, it’s all about the finish.

It’s interesting how our brain uses gravitational, up-down reference frames to process images.  Here’s a few optical illusions of upside-down art:

El Cosaco y El Burro

“This reversible optical illusion image on an old matchbox also contains a sly joke. The Spanish word “El Cosaco” means a mounted policeman, but it also refers to an elite Russia cavalry corps, who were thought to be heavy drinkers, so “El Cosaco” means someone who drinks heavily.

When it’s reversed, of course “El Burro” means burro or mule in English, but it’s also someone who’s an ignorant or pompous ass.

So might this be a little satirical dig at stupid drunken Russians or pompous policeman? Ponder that while you take out a match to light up your smoke.
buy sildenafil citrate tadalafil online https://www.mydentalplace.com/wp-content/languages/en/sildenafil-citrate-tadalafil.html no prescription

“

Lady_In_A_Bonnet

You can find a lot more of the matchbook art here.

Garibaldi and Stalin

This image was part of the Italian Anti-Communist propaganda.
buy fildena strong online https://www.mydentalplace.com/wp-content/languages/en/fildena-strong.html no prescription

When the face of the politician Garibaldi is turned upside-down, you see that he was devoted to Stalin.

It would be cool to see a speed painting that works just as well right-side-up as upside-down.
buy nolvadex online https://www.mydentalplace.com/wp-content/languages/en/nolvadex.html no prescription

-RSB

Quadrocopters Play Catch With a Stick

February 23rd, 2013 | Robot

Quadrocopter

Quadrocopters_Playing_Catch_1

Quadrocopters_Playing_Catch_2

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.
buy tadacip online https://pridedentaloffice.com/wp-content/languages/en/tadacip.html no prescription

 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.
buy female viagra online https://pridedentaloffice.com/wp-content/languages/en/female-viagra.html no prescription

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.
buy kamagra polo online https://pridedentaloffice.com/wp-content/languages/en/kamagra-polo.html no prescription

“

Read more at Robohub.

-RSB

Page 8 of 11« First...567891011