Gizmodo Australia » capsule

Swallowable Camera Pill Robots Now Anchor To Your Intestines Safely

John Mahoney — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 14:00:04 +0000

What wonderful times we live in. If you’ve got some funky stuff going on down below, a good way to diagnose exactly what’s happening is to swallow a pill-sized camera robot to have a looksie. Only problem is, those things have trouble swimming upstream, if you will, to stay near the specific trouble spot. Carnegie Mellon university researchers have potentially solved that problem with a new capsule bot that uses tiny feet covered in hairlike adhesive projections to anchor the ‘bot at a specific point, without damaging sensitive tissues when it’s time to get unstuck. All the same, I really just don’t know if I want anything anchoring to my intestines, ever. More including a quick video over at: [Technology Review]

First Look At New Russian-Euro Lunar Capsule

Matt Hickey — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 01:30:00 +0000

Here it is, fellow space-geeks, the first official image of the new joint Russian-European manned spacecraft, and we’ll be damned if it doesn’t look like something out of the Ikea Kitchen Collection. It’s made to ferry up to four people (cosmonauts or astronauts?) to the moon and back, with a two-stage orbiter-and-lander design much like the original American lunar missions. What’s interesting is that the craft uses thrusters to slow its descent to the moon’s surface as well as to launch itself off the surface. The Russians state that they expect a launch in 2018, though a launch could happen sooner if stock rockets currently available are modified, which sounds perfectly and totally safe to us. [BBC]

Capsule Fire Extinguisher Concept Arms You With Flame-Tamping Grenades

Gizmodo US Edition — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 13:50:29 +0000

This rugged fire-extinguisher concept contains both an oxygen supply to help you breathe and exploding powder pellets that you roll, grenade-like, into a fire to put it out at a distance. We’re slightly worried at the idea of having an oxygen tank near lots of flames, but hey ho, it’s great that designer Woo Seok Park is looking at improving the humble extinguisher with this Capsule concept. Our imagination now has us racing to tackle that burning building with McClane-like shouts of “Yippeekay-ay, Motherf…” Well, you know the rest. [Yanko designs]