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Photo

via Ptooh! http://bit.ly/KoxfU6

Kickstarter

via xkcd.com http://bit.ly/JB0R1t

Project Octopus

You know who thinks building a robotic octopus is an awesome idea? EVERYONE. Apparently the idea is a solid enough idea that the European Commision has funded this project. The goal is to mimic the capabilities of the squishiest of the cephalopods in order to advance soft robotics. Or possibly to take over the world.  They are hoping to have a fully capable robot octopus with no rigid structures at all.

You may be thinking that making a squirming tentacle is easy business. What they are attempting however, is the actual movement of an octopus including extension/contraction as well as grasping. This requires a complex system of control wires as well as “artificial muscular hydrostats” to allow it to do all these movements. A flexible skin covered in sensors will be added to the final design.

Vaudeville: a 12 Foot Tall Rideable Kinect Controlled Mech

Vaudeville is a massive 12 foot tall rideable robot made by Suidobashi Heavy Industry (which appears to just be a small group of robot builders).  Vaudeville comes complete with a cockpit that one person can strap into and the beast is controlled with a combination of handlebars, a Microsoft Kinect, and a smartphone.  The group plans to have the mech fully functional by the end of this year.

Check out more details, and some videos of it in action over at Plastic Pals.

Pebble was prototyped using Arduino!

In the Maker’s own words:

Migicovsky also shared a photo of the first Pebble prototype, below, using an Arduino and some similarly cobbled-together hardware. That was four years ago, he says; now the Pebble team consists of ten people and, currently at $9,737,000 at time of writing and with nine days yet to run, the Kickstarter is well on track to comfortably exceed $10m and maybe even hit closer to $12m before it closes.

The kickstarter campaign grossed a record breaking amount of $10,162,522 with 8 more days to go. For those of you who missed the buzz, the product demo video is here :

Indeed it is every geek’s fantasy watch come alive!

Via:[Slashgear]

(via Photos / Juggling rifles, late 19th c.)

(via Photos / Juggling rifles, late 19th c.)