Nov 14 2016
LIDAR (LIght Detecting And Ranging) sensors play a critical role in almost all autonomous and semiautonomous vehicles. Using lasers and relatively simple time of flight calculations, LIDAR can very accurately measure distances and generate detailed 3D maps of environments, but traditionally the best performing systems have been large and very expensive. German lighting manufacturer Osram Opto Semiconductors unveiled their new …
Jul 12 2015
This post is a throwback to March, 2006 when I purchased the original Vex Robotics Design System v0.5. I had originally posted these pictures and their respective comments on Flickr. I had forgotten all about them when I happened to stumble upon them today. Although I think I was more surprised to find that Flickr …
Jun 25 2015
The RadioShack here in town, *my* RadioShack, is finally closing its doors forever after more than ten weeks of clearance sales the likes of which I won’t likely ever see again. I scored a lot of cool gadgets at ridiculously low prices, but my favorite continues to be the littleBits modular electronics system. As I’ve …
Jan 05 2006
The International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) has been in full swing in Las Vegas for the last few days, and while there’s been a lot of cool gadget news and product announcements, there hasn’t been much worth mentioning here until today. To the surprise of many people, myself included, Lego announced this morning that the …
Dec 10 2005
I’m finally getting through posting about the robots at IREX last week, but the one that is left on my list, the ROBOTIS Bioloid robot kit, may be of the most interest to amateur roboticists. There are several robot kits available these days, and they run the gamut from relatively simple and cheap to expensive …
Oct 20 2005
Computerworld.com is reporting on some of the predictions coming out of this week’s Gartner IT Expo. Specifically, experts are predicting that robots and “sensor-rich” devices may soon play a major role in IT. Jackie Fenn, a Gartner analyst, believes that IT products will get smarter in the coming years. Integrating arrays of sensors to monitor …
Oct 19 2005
Nature.com has published an article about the work of Ravi Saraf, a chemist from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln and his student Vikas Berry in integrating living bacteria into an electrical circuit that is part of a humidity-detecting device. While there have been other instances of circuits built to react to microorganisms, this “cellborg,” as …
