Quadrotor Roundup
In the last couple of years quadrotors have become a leading platform for aerial robotics. Precision control, maneuverability, and the ability to pack on a payload make quadrotors the choice when designing an aerial robot.
Fun & Games
The latest DIY ideas, techniques and tools for bikes, rockets, R/C vehicles, toys and other diversions.
One-Sheet Plywood Boat – Tiny Yellow House
For this episode of “Tiny Yellow House” for Make Magazine, host Derek “Deek” Diedricksen pulls another idea from his book Humble Homes, Simple Shacks. This time, its an easy wooden boat made from little more than one sheet of plywood. More info: http://wp.me/p1CIX9-qLg
UPDATED! Is Microsoft Taking Credit for “Kinect Hacking”…?
Yes, it does seem the Microsoft PR machine & (new) Kinect studio team is trying to take credit for the open source “Kinect hacking” community and says they purposely “allowed” hacking – the report ignores the efforts from all the open source Kinect hackers out there and how this all happened. They also left out the threatening and intimidating when Johnny Lee, Limor “Ladyada” and myself first started the Kinect bounty and got the open source drivers out there with Hector. When then all watched an amazing open source community flourish. It’s also a little confusing because Kinecthacks.net is not part of Microsoft in any way… WIRED has a full write up on the real story from the most recent issue.
Lego Omniwheel Clusters
Shown here is a later-stage prototype in engineer and hobby roboticist Xander Soldaat’s development of a Lego holonomic drive platform using native Lego system components for the omnidirectional wheels.
Lego Robot Draws What You Look At
An eye-tracker records the movement of the visitor’s eyes while looking at photographs of different objects. A robot hanging from the ceiling on top of a large pile of paper makes one dot for every point the visitor has just been looking at. This results in large scale images showing how the same objects have been perceived differently.
Bike Lock Lifts Your Bike Out of Reach
The wildly popular video of this German bike lock prototype blew me away. Clamp your bike to the motorized unit, and it scurries up a lamp post, securing your bike in the sky
Lego Carpentry Tools
AFOL Marion (aka Brixe63) built these realistic Lego tools. My favorite detail is the way she used trans greenish yellow elements to form the level’s bubble.