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DARPA's boffins have just set a new world record in computing with a solid-state integrated circuit that packs the power of a supercomputer into a single chip. You thought your six-core, 3.9 Ghz Mac Pro was a computational powerhouse? This single chip is around 250 times as fast.

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One of the most problematic issues with robots is their ability to be flexible when grasping an object. I mean, have you ever tried that children's claw toy game?

Well, a new kind of robot solves that problem with static electricity to make its parts flexible, low-energy, and capable of lifting all kinds of different objects.

Grabit Inc. is making robots that rely on static charge to lift their prey — that's the same kind of electricity generated when rubbing a balloon against your head, making it stick against a wall. It's also what causes a doorknob to shock you or your hair to stand on end when you put on a fuzzy sweater.

The company, incorporated in 2011 as a spinoff of research institution SRI International, is making these robots specifically for the manufacturing and logistics industries, where most robots rely on mechanical claws, vacuum grippers, or suction cups to pick up objects and move them around. The static-electricity fingers on these robots are low-energy and more flexible than other approaches that robots use to pick stuff up.

Here's what it looks like in action:

The key is a process called "electroadhesion." Electroadhesion uses electrodes to generate positive and negative charges on a surface. When this surface touches another object, it induces charges in that surface as well. Particles with opposite charges are attracted to one another — much as the positive and negative ends of two magnets are attracted — and the surfaces stick together.

The amount of weight they can carry depends on the type of material the gripper is lifting. For example, the Grabit Gripper, a kind of panel handling gripper, can lift four grams per cubic centimeter of sheet metal when oriented horizontally, but only three grams per cubic centimeter of glass. This is because the atoms in metal and glass have different electrostatic characteristics and interact differently with the gripper.

There are several advantages to the Grabit method, according to CEO Charlie Duncheon. The first is high flexibility. Grabit grippers can handle a variety of different objects, while "mechanical grippers tend to be part specific," he says.

For example, Grabit's "panel handling" gripper, shown in the clips below, can lift a circuit board, a fabric square, and a mobile device with the same parts. It uses the same static electricity technology as the finger grippers above.

Another advantage, according to Duncheon, is that electroadhesion uses much less energy than other material handling methods — 1,000 times less than a typical vacuum gripper, he claims.

While Grabit is only focusing on using the technology for material handling, Duncheon says it has the potential for all kinds of other robotic applications. "You can consider everything from service robots, home car robots, healthcare robots — there's a broad range of other applications," he says.

Check out Grabit's demonstrations on their YouTube channel.

SEE ALSO: MIT's Super-Stealthy Robot Cheetah Can Run You Down

SEE ALSO: This Crazy Robot Keeps Going Even After Being Run Over And Lit On Fire

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This 'The Bigger Picture', a series of Photoshop jobs by web design company Aptitude imagining what's outside the margins of famous album covers. WARNING: there is a Justin Beiber one in the mix. Has he had his quinceañera yet? I liked the Nirvana and Bruce Springstein ones, the rest I thought were just okay. But who am I to judge, I'm just a man who's drawn to the nudey paintings whenever I'm at a museum. It's like I have an internal compass. Plus you could set me down anywhere in the world, blindfold me, and I could bee-line it to the nearest liquor store no problem. My body just knows where to go -- it's a gift. "It sounds like an addiction." IT'S A GIFT. Keep going for seven more.

Listen as impressionist Anthony Vincent performs Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” in 20 different styles.

[Ten Second Songs]

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Humanetics has been developing crash test dummies since the 1950s, beginning with aerospace research and eventually moving into automotive world. Now, 60 years later, it's developing the first obese crash dummy because, dammit, we love our 64-ounce Cokes and want to order a Doritos Locos Taco through an app .

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Never run against a wall. Always run in parallel.

The post Commando kid learns a lesson appeared first on Say OMG - Viral Videos daily by SayOMG.

During the 2004 election, President George W. Bush increased his share of the black vote. He did so in part by questioning black voters’ support for Democrats at Democrat strongholds such as the Urban League’s annual convention, where he quoted Charlie Gaines:

Blacks are gagging on the donkey but not yet ready to swallow the elephant.

A new video produced by Rebel Pundit and titled, “Chicago Activists Unchained, Destroy Black Leadership,” reminds me of President Bush’s terrific Gagging on the Donkey speech.

In the potent new video, Chicago activists Paul McKinley, Mark Carter, Joseph Watkins and Harold “Noonie” Ward, explain that Black Americans are in an “abusive relationship with black leadership.”

The money quote is Paul McKinley’s description of the abusive relationship:

“They always talk about black on black crime, and when you hear the words black on black crime, the first thing you think of is a black man robbing you or breaking in your house, and that is a black on black crime. But lets take it one step further. There’s a black on black crime down in city hall, there’s a black on black crime down in all the state capitols in America, where all the black folks are voting against our interests.”

According to Rebel Pundit, even though McKinley, Watson, Carter and Ward are recognized as leaders among the community, local mainstream media refuses to give them a platform. Perhaps that has less to do with fact that they have all served time in prison and more to do with them questioning the injustice caused by the oppressive Liberal/Progressive Democrat agenda.

During his 2004 speech at the Urban League’s annual convention, President Bush also questioned black voters’ support for Democrats:

• Does the Democrat party take African American voters for granted?
• Is it a good thing for the African American community to be represented mainly by one political party?
• How is it possible to gain political leverage if the party is never forced to compete?
• Have the traditional solutions of the Democrat party truly served the African American community?
• Does blocking the faith-based initiative help neighborhoods where the only social service provider could be a church?
• Does the status quo in education really, really help the children of this country?
• Has class warfare or higher taxes ever created decent jobs in the inner city?
• Are you satisfied with the same answers on crime, excuses for drugs and blindness to the problem of the family?

The transcript of President Bush’s address to the Urban League is available here. Ten years later, I still recommend you read the entire speech.

You can learn more about the Democrat Party’s history of past oppression and present exploitation of black voters by reading Angela McGowan’s book, “Bamboozled: How Americans are being Exploited by the Lies of the Liberal Agenda.”

The post Still More Gagging On The Donkey appeared first on RedState.

Do you often find yourself needing to remove some wrinkles and the smell of cigarette smoke from your favorite jacket, but unwilling to leave the house to go to the dry cleaner? If so, the Swash, a new laundry-ish appliance from Whirlpool, may be exactly what you need. It costs $500 and does not clean your clothes.

What the Swash does, as far as we can tell, is something in between dry cleaning a garment and blasting it with Febreze while hanging it in a steam-filled bathroom. You hang the item in the narrow, vertical machine, and then add a chemical cartridge from Procter & Gamble, Whirlpool’s partner in this strange laundry venture. The substances in the packet are sort of like Febreze, which would make sense because Febreze is a Procter & Gamble product. The packets can de-stink your garments, but do not necessarily clean them.

That leads Bloomberg Businessweek to the question: who will buy this? If you can afford a $500 machine that doesn’t do laundry, you can afford to take your clothes to the dry cleaner on a regular basis. The marketers behind this product show it in a woman’s walk-in closet, where perhaps she freshens up a glittery sweater before wearing it.

It could work in a hotel room, as a compromise between cleaning and wearing a wrinkled dress or suit during important business travel. Otherwise…for whom does this appliance make sense? More importantly, what happens to the people who do buy them if the product fails and is taken off the market, and the chemical cartridges are no longer available?

The Problem With Swash, Whirlpool’s New Not-Quite-Laundry System [Bloomberg Businessweek]

Ádám Török, a product designer in Sopron, Hungary, made this scooter for a school graduation project. His premise is that in the future, most vehicles will be portable. This is a flexible form of transportation. If your bus is late, you don’t have to walk to your destination. You can just take off your belt and scoot there. It's made of metal and plywood and weighs less than 4 pounds.

-via Design Boom

via http://www.tumblr.com/dashboard

An attractive, curly-haired woman named Shoshana B. Roberts, clad in a black crewneck T-shirt and jeans, silently took to the streets of New York City with a hidden camera in order to capture what was being said to her as she walked around. During her 10 hours of walking, she documented “100+ instances of verbal street harassment… involving people of all backgrounds. This doesn’t include the countless winks, whistles, etc.” The silent walk was created by Rob Bliss for Hollaback!, a non-profit that seeks to end street harassment through education.

In August 2014, Rob Bliss of Rob Bliss Creative reached out to Hollaback! to partner on a PSA highlighting the impact of street harassment. He was inspired by his girlfriend—who gets street harassed all the time—and Shoshana B. Roberts volunteered to be the subject of his PSA. For 10 hours, Rob walked in front of Shoshana with a camera in his backpack, while Shoshana walked silently with two mics in her hands. Street harassment is a form of sexual harassment that takes place in public spaces. It exists on a spectrum including “catcalling” or verbal harassment, stalking, groping, public masturbation, and assault. … It’s important to keep in mind that is this video only captures verbal harassment, and Rob and Shoshana can attest to the harassment overall falling evenly along race and class lines. While filming, Shoshana noted, “I’m harassed when I smile and I’m harassed when I don’t. I’m harassed by white men, black men, latino men. Not a day goes by when I don’t experience this.”

via Gothamist

An unmanned Orbital Sciences rocket carrying more than 5,000 pounds of supplies meant for the International Space Station has exploded seconds after launching in Virginia.

The Antares rocket known as Orbital CRS-3 exploded into a massive ball of flames six seconds after launch due to a "vehicle anomaly," the company said in a tweet. The failure occurred shortly after its 6:22 p.m. EDT launch from the Wallops Flight Facility.

"There was failure on launch. There was no indicated loss of life," NASA spokesman Jay Bolden told CNN, though he did say there was "significant property and vehicle damage."

Orbital Sciences is one of two companies (the other is SpaceX) NASA is using to haul supplies to the ISS, according to Reuters. This latest flight was its third of eight planned under a $1.9 billion contract with the space agency.

“It is far too early to know the details of what happened,” Mr. Frank Culbertson, Orbital’s Executive Vice President and General Manager of its Advanced Programs Group, said in a statement. “As we begin to gather information, our primary concern lies with the ongoing safety and security of those involved in our response and recovery operations. We will conduct a thorough investigation immediately to determine the cause of this failure and what steps can be taken to avoid a repeat of this incident. As soon as we understand the cause we will begin the necessary work to return to flight to support our customers and the nation’s space program.”

Roughly one-third of the cargo was dedicated to science experiments, among other gear onboard. The NASA blog has a full listing: 

• Science investigations: 1,602.8 pounds
• Crew supplies: 1,649 pounds (includes flight crew equipment, food, flight procedures books)
• Vehicle hardware: 1,404.3 pounds
• Spacewalk equipment: 145.5 pounds
• Computer resources: 81.6 pounds

Via Ars Technica:

The mission, termed Orb-3 by the company, will be delivering 2,300 kg of cargo, including supplies, equipment, and scientific experiments. Those will be carried in the Cygnus spacecraft, which is currently sitting atop an Antares launch vehicle. The second stage of Antares is a solid rocket, and this mission will mark the first use of a larger second stage, which will allow the company to carry more supplies in the future.

Here's the video:

Here is what the rocket looked like four minutes before launch:

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Time-lapse footage by wildlife photographer Will Burrard-Lucas of the ‘Great Migration,’ showing thousands of Wildebeest crossing the Mara River in Northern Serengeti, Tanzania.

via

 

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