A small robotics company called Robugtix is about to give everyone something special whether they want it or not…arachnophobia.
One of the company’s newest bots is named, simply and innocently, the T8. All of that simpleness and innocence evaporates quickly when you actually get to see the T8 in action.
3D-printed and housing 26 motors to move its creepy little self around, the T8 doesn’t just have the fact that it’s made to look like a spider going against it. When you see the T8’s movements is when you get to see just how amazingly and eerily realistic it looks.
For about the price of one month’s rent in a metro apartment, you can grab your very own robotic nightmare from Robugtix which can either be controlled by you like your very own spidery, robotic minion or you can program the T8 to step through a sequence you create.
Robugtix mentions how great the T8 is for someone to learn advanced robotics.
About 10 or 15 years from now, super-villains will be sitting around talking about their formative years where they all owned a small, slightly menacing-looking robotic spider they had to send away for.
Seagulls are about the very last animal you’d think of when someone ask you to name something that might kill a full-size whale.
But that would just mean that weren’t keeping up on the events taking place out in the waters off the coast of Argentina.
Because trash isn’t covered or really being recycled on nearby land, the gull population has exploded in recent years. No one’s really sure when it started but with dead whales turning up on shore, researchers began noticing something a little unsettling…peck marks.
Seagulls are opportunists like vultures when it comes to an easy meal. At some point a gull realized that whales are pretty easy targets when they come up for air. Now that behavior has become the norm for thousands of these birds. During the calving season when babies whales are born the problem is exacerbated because baby whales need to stay up longer to feed off their mothers. Routines are changing because of the gulls and their relentless attacks…the calves feeding time is shortened. Calves bodies are washing up on shore suffering obvious effects of malnutrition.
Local government is allowing a cull of the birds within the month and targeting the birds who’ve developed this behavior. It’s been done before with no real change in the birds’ behavior.
Let’s all hope this gets sorted out…because once, and we’re just tossing this out there because we like to get hypothetical this way, we run out of whales…
Google has a new program where they’re asking hikers who’re willing to strap a on 40lb Google Street View backpack version of the device that’s usually strapped to the roof of a car. They’re asking that, should you be heading off to explore some interesting part of the world, if you wouldn’t mind ‘street-mapping’ it for the rest of us to lazy to get up and do it for ourselves.
Recently a team of willing urban explorers went to Hashima Island (also known as ‘Battleship Island’) with the blessings of the Nagasaki government. While tourists have been visiting the island since 2009 their exploration area is very limited because of dangerous conditions. Google’s team, fortunately for the rest of us, was allowed to explore much more of the island so that all of us can now visit this hauntingly unique place.
Buttercup is an adorable little duck who was born with one of his feet turned backwards.
Born at a high school as part of a biology program, Buttercup was given to a sanctuary specializing in dealing with ducks.
Software engineer for the sanctuary, Mike Garey, took Buttercup under his wing and began looking for ways to give this little duck a much-less painful method of mobility.
Using photos of Buttercup’s sister Minnie’s foot, NovaCopy, a 3D printing company that Garey had gone to, created and then printed a copy of the foot.
Just last night, Buttercup was given the new foot to test out and the result is something that’ll make even hard-nosed haters of cute stuff smirk a little bit at.
The video above is Buttercup before the new foot. The video below is Buttercup with the new foot.
It’s tree-trimming…with a 12-bladed chainsaw…being flown from a helicopter. Not really a whole lot else to talk about…except how we all want to have a helicopter and a 12-bladed chainsaw to tidy up the yard.
Since mice aren’t really a nuisance to anyone…600 copies of a single mouse have been created from a single drop of the donor mouse’s blood.
Taking the blood from the tail of a donor mouse, a team of scientists in Japan isolated the white blood cells and used the nuclei for the cloning process.
The process, known as somatic cell nuclear transfer, involves transferring the nucleus from an adult body cell – such as a blood or skin cell – into an unfertilized egg that has had its nucleus removed.
The point of the experiments was to see if circulating blood cells could be used to create an easily available source of donor cells to create valuable strains of lab mice.
After 25 rounds and 600 clones? We’re pretty sure they can stop wondering if it would work.
Instead of just plopping yourself down on the couch with a bag of Doritos, a couple of beers and and living vicariously through a couple of sword and sandal flicks like Troy and Gladiator, you could get yourself up off the couch and enroll in a gladiator school and show people you mean business.
This bike would’ve been pretty awesome…had they NOT MADE THE FREAKIN’ SEAT A TOILET!
No. Seriously. This bike looks like it could’ve rolled into an oil-punk gathering and been something to gawk about because of what it uses for fuel. But instead…someone decided that it would look better with a bar-joke of a seat mounted on it…Wait. Why stop there? Why not make a mini toilet and mount THAT right on the front of the bike as well?
If you can get past the fact that there are two toilets mounted on this trike, you’ll learn that this 250cc machine runs on gas produced from livestock waste even though if anyone ever saw you on this thing (like the young lady in the photo) they’re going to assume you’re ‘dropping’ the kids off at the pool’ while you’re on it…because IT HAS A TOILET FOR A SEAT.
Called the NEO, this thing took three years to develop. Three years of development ruined by someone’s idea to make the area where you sit a toilet.
According to an engineer:
“The waste and household water are converted to methane gas by fermenting, and the methane gas is converted to bio-gas by purifying.”
SO…while there’s no actual manure in the bike, once you tell people what it runs on they’re simply going to assume that YOU are the one providing the fuel…and that you might possibly be providing it while you’re out driving around on it.
Age-Related Macular Degeneration (AMD) is one of the many joys associated with getting older. New generations of AMD sufferers won’t have to worry about that in the rapidly approaching future.
DARPA has funded the development of contact lens that operates like a millimeter-thick telescope. Using something along the lines of magic, the wearer of the contact will be able to switch between normal vision and magnified vision with the help of liquid crystals and ridiculously small, precisely engineered mirrors.
Basically you’ll be wearing the mechanical focusing rings of a standard still-photo camera that’s been flattened incredibly thin while retaining its functionality.
It’ll still be a while before these things trickle down to the average consumer but if you were to ask some of the future consumers if it was worth the wait? Pretty sure the answer would be a “Yes”.
Musicians are usually willing to jam with anyone that has some ability at playing an instrument. As we begin walking hand-in-hand with our quickly-becoming-commonplace robotic friends, it only seems natural that musicians and robots would start creating the modern equivalent of their own Wyld Stallyns.
Other bands, like Compressorheads, have tread this road long before Z Machine. It just seems that right now we’re all a little more comfortable with our new metal friends and Z Machine has hit the stage at the right moment because of the reaction that the band’s had overseas.
Z Machine performs a lot like an emo band who’s feet have been nailed to the floor in the video we’ve posted here. That looming alien thing in the background on the left seems to be on a union break.
Despite the feeling that this performance is like we’re watching the result of something that’s been a weekend project between the glee and choir clubs, this is a simple, innocent example of how welcoming a new generation is of their new robotic buddies.
The San Antonio Zoo in Texas has become the home to a tiny and oddly adorable two-headed turtle.
According to the zoo the little critter is doing really well, totally healthy and following its mother around just like its other little turtle siblings without any difficulty.
In fact the only complication that this mini-Godzilla-like turtle design seems to have is that some genius at the zoo named it Thelma and Louise.
Watch as this door opens up and something spills straight out of this closet and into your nightmares.
This is Julius and yes…this thing DID learn to open even round doorknobs. So you’re really not safe anywhere.
Julius passed away in 2012 from an infection that her vet could not diagnose. While we’re saddened about that…we’re glad that Julius didn’t get the chance to visit Florida and teach the rampant pythons here this trick.
That would’ve finally dumped the Sunshine State into the hellmouth it currently sits on.
Something weird is going on concerning a 10-inch statue of Neb-Sanu that is on display at the Manchester Museum.
This small statue is turning around…by itself.
During the course of the day Neb-Sanu’s little statue decides it’s done being stared at by museum guests so quietly and very, very slowly it turns itself around to face the other way.
While many are saying that vibrations from museum guests are causing vibrations in the glass shelves that the statue sits on causing it to turn around, the museum staff is disagreeing with the idea.
“But it has been on those surfaces since we have had it and it has never moved before. And why would it go around in a perfect circle?”
Egyptologist Campbell Price who works at the museum has even weighed in with his somewhat eerie thoughts:
“I noticed one day that it had turned around. I thought it was strange because it is in a case and I am the only one who has a key. I put it back but then the next day it had moved again. We set up a time-lapse video and, although the naked eye can’t see it, you can clearly see it rotate on the film. The statuette is something that used to go in the tomb along with the mummy. Mourners would lay offerings at its feet. In Ancient Egypt they believed that if the mummy is destroyed then the statuette can act as an alternative vessel for the spirit. Maybe that is what is causing the movement.”
Pigeon racing is quickly becoming a hot place for a new generation of wealthy people in China to drop some cash. In fact it’s attracting drops of cash worth millions. One race can net the winning team’s owner upwards of $80,000. There’s even a black market for racing pigeons being fed by pigeon pirates. Who knew?
We were just informed that Mike Tyson apparently knew this’d be hot before all of us.
Because the daily commute in Russia isn’t already the equivalent of driving through a demolition derby on the way to work, several Czech scientists have come together with a Czech bicycle manufacturer to create the next hellish level of obstacles to just getting to the grocery store safely.
For obvious inner-child reasons, this team has created the crudest, loudest version of a flying bike they could piece together.
Ales Kobylik, an engineer involved on the project, stated: “Our main motivation in working on the project was neither profit nor commercial interest, but the fulfillment of our boyish dreams.”
Akhibara, Japan is the place to go to get just about anything you want in life…even if that anything includes wanting a creepy doll-like clone of yourself.
Recently a company called “Clone Factory” opened which now allows you to not only have a 3D-printed doll-head of your own mug but your pets as well.
Using several DSLR cameras, Clone Factory captures your face from different angles, puts it all together in the computer, prints it and hands you a bill for $1,300 US bucks.
Clone Factory uses one of the most advanced 3D printers (made by ZCorp) on the market to print out these plastic little mini-selfs of its customers. Disney recently used these same printers during their annual Star Wars Weekends at Walt Disney World where guests could either have their likeness frozen in a slab of carbonite or put onto the body of a Stormtrooper (complete with detachable helmet).
Most of Clone Factory’s customers are actually women. Not only do the women seek to preserve how they look on special days like their weddings, they also have the exact outfits they’re wearing at the time as well as their hair and make-up recreated as well.
Which doesn’t make any of this any less creepy.
[DesignTaxi]
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