Just in case internet iPhone celebrity Jason Chen needed another reason to feel smug: his alma mater, Berkeley, has the highest internet speeds of any city on Earth. More »
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Even if the PR2 is aware that other robots are out there climbing, drawing and saving lives while it’s stuck at home folding towels, it doesn’t let it on. It just goes about its business, folding away, slowly but surely. More »
Developed by Microsoft and University of California Berkeley, the Pictionaire table uses overhead cameras to make digital copies of physical objects, allowing you to manipulate real stuff with all the intuitive, touchy-feely goodness you’ve come to expect of touchscreen tables. More »
DASH, a UC Berkeley-designed, cockroach-inspired robot, manages to take what makes cockroaches so resilient and even retain the cockroach’s singularly creepy movement. This thing is near-indestructible. More »
The Centre for Collaborative Control of Unmanned Vehicles (C3UV–the “3″ makes it hip) at the University of California, Berkeley has developed a system that uses the iPhone to develop tasks, set coordinates and send orders to a fleet of UAVs. Naturally, this development is interesting because it allows a single person to control a large number of small, unmanned aircraft at one time using a mobile phone. But, as Wired points out, the clause in the SDK agreement clearly states that “autonomous control of vehicles, aircraft, or other mechanical devices” is a big no-no. So the future of this type of technology is unclear.[C3UV via Wired]
A new material relies on millions of tiny plastic fibres that can grip solids as the fabric slides across them, then quickly release those objects when pulled away vertically. The technology is based on the anatomy of a spider’s gecko’s foot, and may be used for things like hanging art on a wall, or wrapping a broken leg on a battlefield. Screw that stuff: I’d like to use it to build a Spider-Man climbing suit.
If you liked the ball-bearing tangible drum sequencer the other day, you’ll love this: some students at UC Berkeley’s School of Information have created a similar device, this time combining computer imaging and bubblegum balls to create bangin’ tunes. Using a similar sort of hole-matrix, this version uses nifty software which detects the colour and position of the gumballs, which we think must open up the device to a few more drum effects than you can hear in the video, but whatever—it’s worth it to see the dancing. [Bubblegum Sequencer via Technabob]
The latest edition of Nature magazine details a new method scientists have derived for converting heat energy into electricity, using silicon to instigate the conversion. Researchers have more investigations to carry out, but if preliminary findings are indicative of what is to come, appliances that charge using your own body heat may be on the horizon.
Just like MIT and various other colleges before it, UC Berkeley’s put a bunch of lectures online to YouTube so you can watch and learn from the comfort of your toilet. Berkeley does have a great computer science department (top three or something), but don’t expect many of those lectures online for free though—why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free? One of the more interesting ones is a lecture by Sergey Brin on search engines, who seems to have used at least a little of his billions to hire a personal trainer (look at those pythons). But seriously, I didn’t go to (or watch) lectures when I was at Berkeley, why would I watch these now? [YouTube via News.com] More »
