Thursday, August 26, 2004

Day of the Dolphin

Remember William Gibson's short story Johnny Mneumonic? Of Course you do! Anyway the story featured an ex-Navy junkie cyborg Dolphin named Jonesy the War-whale. Well, the Navy really does use Dolphins in mine-clearing operations but they're not cyborgs (or junkies either one hopes) anyway here's a pretty picture
http://www.strategypage.com/gallery/articles/military_photos_20048260.asp
For more pics, info and even calendar pages for your desktop go to the Navy's offical site at
http://www.spawar.navy.mil/sandiego/technology/mammals/index.html

More fun with exoskeletons!

Just to show that the japanese aren't the only ones working on exoskeletons here's the DARPA funded UC Berkeley BLEEX project http://bleex.me.berkeley.edu/bleex.htm

Monday, August 23, 2004

Dommo arrigatto Mr. robotto

Back when I went to NEXTFEST, there were a lot of demonstrations of Japanese robotic prowess. Of course the most impressive was the Sony Asimo but they also had a "muscle suit" a sort of exoskeleton developed to help disabled people with mobility. You can read more about it at http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/08/09/japan.robots/index.html

Thursday, August 12, 2004

They blowed up real good!

While most of the xprize coverage has focused on the frontrunners Spaceship One and the Canadian Davinci Project, that doesn't mean the other teams are just sitting on their hands. Rubicon 1 had a test flight last week which didn't exactly go as planned. http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/08/09/bc.privaterocket.ap/index.html
learn more about this and other x-prize hijinks athttp://xprize.com/

Taking the rockets out of rocket science

Looks like NASA is finally investigating alternatives to chemical rockets for propulsion http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/08/12/space.propulsion/index.html
while most of these ideas have been around in one form or another decades actually testing them out to see if they work would be a positive step.