http://mrfuture.com Robots, Rockets, and the World of Tomorrow Fri, 14 Nov 2008 20:32:18 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Originally a nuclear bunker, this underground data center for one of Sweden's largest ISPs has greenhouses, waterfalls, German submarine engines, simulated daylight (and can withstand a hit from a hydrogen bomb.) And for the life of me, I'd swear it was the headquarters from Danger Diabolik. HQ features include : German submarine engines ... http://mrfuture.com/2008/11/14/the-underground-data-center-of-my-super-villain-dreams/ Gilo Cardozo, a paramotor manufacturer (picture a parachute with a giant fan) had the notion four years back to attach a paramotor assembly to a car. The result, he's about to take halfway around the world.  The vehicle is a modified Rage Motorsport off-road racing buggy, and flies at speeds ... http://mrfuture.com/2008/11/10/from-england-to-timbuktu-in-a-flying-car/ From the Money.co.uk article:  "A New Mexico based company have started production on hot tub-sized nuclear generators designed to power communities across America.Powered by low-enriched uranium fuel, each Hyperion Power Module will produce enough clean, safe and environmentally friendly energy to reliably power 20,000 standard American homes for 10cents per ... http://mrfuture.com/2008/11/10/mr-fusion-coming-your-way-in-2013/ Here's a quick link to a great looking purpose-built robot from a group of designers called The Play Coalition.  There isn't much descriptive text, but it looks to be a quadruped plant holder that moves around the apartment, tracking the sun.  It's a great looking combination of wooden legs, pegged ... http://mrfuture.com/2008/10/20/plantbot-wooden-robot-guardian-of-houseplants/ Stanford University has launched a series of 10 free, online computer science and electrical engineering courses. These include topics in Artificial Intelligence and "Introduction to Robotics", taught by distinguished robotics professor Oussama Khatib. Editor of MIT Press' The Robotics Review, President of the International Foundation of Robotics ... http://mrfuture.com/2008/09/18/stanford-offering-free-online-robotics-ai-courses/ From a BBC Technology Article: "Nasa has confirmed that laptops carried to the ISS in July were infected with a virus known as Gammima.AG. The worm was first detected on earth in August 2007 and lurks on infected machines waiting to steal login names for popular online games.... The laptops infected with the ... http://mrfuture.com/2008/08/27/orbiting-computer-virus-infects-space-station/ Robot Watch has a great article on a new Robo-One competition in Japan, to be held September 6th in Kawasaki's Azeria "underground city."The competition's goal is to have your robot "Buy things [in] the underground city", which sounds fantastically sci-fi, post-apocalyptic chic. To accomplish this the robots may use ... http://mrfuture.com/2008/08/20/2008-robo-one-competition-robots-love-shopping-for-eggs/ Looking for that mid-range robot to bridge the gap between your i-Sobot and a Robonova? Mech-RC is hoping to occupy that niche soon. Their core platform is a 17-servo humanoid robot with a remote control and a custom set of gui-oriented pc software focused on animation and integration of sensor ... http://mrfuture.com/2008/08/13/mech-rc-2-great-looking-mid-range-robots/ The Engineer reports on a project at Plymouth University that combines computer vision / object recognition, and A.I. learning with human-robotic interaction. The work at Plymouth is an effort to apply human learning processes to robotic systems, teaching the robot word meanings and object recognition as if it were a small ... http://mrfuture.com/2008/08/07/robotics-enhancing-ai-learning-in-the-uk/ An episode of Computer Chronicles (1983-2002) about the Tsukuba Expo 85 has some fantastic segments about mid-80s robotic visions of the future. At 10:57 We get a good long look at Waseda University's Wabot 2 playing the organ, with great commentary about robots and society from the late Professor Ichiro Kato. And ... http://mrfuture.com/2008/07/13/the-robots-of-japan-tech-expo-85/