This little guy just showed up on UC Berkeley’s Biomimetic Millisystems Lab YouTube channel. It’s called STAR, for Sprawl-Tuned Autonomous Robot, a six legged skittery thing just 12 cm in size that can adapt its limbs and its gait to zip over and under obstacles.
via ieee spectrum

When we think of robots, we tend to anthropomorphize a bit. Years of TV and movies have gotten us used to thinking of the machines as mechanical versions of us. The fact is, though, the next generation of robots will come in a staggering variety of shapes and sizes, many of them — or at least come of their traits — inspired by the animal kingdom, like DARPA’s AlphaDog or this inflatable “soft robot& … Read More → "3D printed robotic suckers make robot octopus a terrifying possibility"

These fantastic color plates of marine mollusks are from the 1833 scientific atlas, “Voyage De La Corvettte L’Astrolabe.” The five volume atlas documents the scientific expedition of French naval officer and naturalist Jules Dumont d’Urville, who circumnavigated the globe aboard the French exploration ship Astrolabe between 1826 and 1829. The plates were scanned by Paul K of BibliOdyssey.
via Read More → "19th century illustrations of marine mollusks"

Roboticists at Brown University are one step closer to the dream of a building a robotic bat, and it’s an important step — they’ve developed a robotic bat wing, without which a robotic bat would be nothing more than a robotic mouse, which I think we can all agree would be pretty boring. I mean, sure, right now, the wing is mostly only good for learning more about the aerodynamics of bat wings and demonstrating … Read More → "Robotic bat wing developed, surprisingly not funded by wayne enterprises"

There is a 22-foot-long, 200-ton steel monster under Manhattan. Dead, resting deep somewhere under Grand Central Station and Park Avenue, this machine and her twin brother excavated the massive tunnels that you can see here, one of the largest public transportation works of our time.
via Gizmodo

Continue Reading</ … Read More → "Incredible images of the massive new tunnels hollowing New York City"

When a child is born with the congenital deformity known as microtia, they have an underdeveloped external ear – also known as the pinna. Even though their inner ear may be normal, the lack of the external structure can affect their hearing, plus it looks unusual. Normally, a replacement pinna is made from a foam-like material (or sometimes even cartilage from the rib cage) and implanted under the skin, although these don’t always look particularly natural. … Read More → "Scientists use 3D printer and cartilage cells to create artificial ears"

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Anyone can take some old junk and make art, but not everyone can be a Marco Fernandes. The Portugal-based product designer uses recycled components from old DVD players, stereos, computers, toys and other electronics, and turns them into cute little “R³bots” (pronounced “are-cube-bots”).
via DVICE

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Programmers often say that regular expressions are fun … but now they can be a whole lot of fun in a completely new way. Want to try your hand at a regular expression crossword?
via I Programmer

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A relatively straightforward classroom experiment this may be, but the fascinating (and beautiful) images produced by students at the University of Surrey when they imprinted their smartphone onto a bacterial growth medium will inevitably give owners of similar devices pause for thought.
via Gizmag 

Read More → "Bacterial colonies lend whole new meaning to “smartphone culture”"