Carstache!

Car bras? That's old school uncool! Your vehicle needs a 'stache. Visit Carstache to learn more, especially about their newest, pictured here and available just in time for July 4th!

All thanks to WU-vie Ethan Eyler.

Posted By: Paul - Thu Jun 09, 2011 - Comments (1)
Category: Inventions, Reader Recommendation, Bohemians, Beatniks, Hippies and Slackers, Cars

Jetpack Flies One Mile High

Full video here.

Posted By: Paul - Mon May 30, 2011 - Comments (5)
Category: Eccentrics, Inventions, South Pacific

Weird Science – Yet More Robots

In a strange case of the left manipulator not knowing what the right manipulator is doing, here are two more robots that I somehow managed to miss off yesterday’s post.

First up is the obvious and long overdue companion to yesterday’s beer fetching robots; a robot that can flip pancakes. Obviously there have been automated pancake makers around for a while now, but this robot from the Italian Institute of technology has learnt how to flip a good pancake by seeing how humans do it. Please, Dr. Kormushev, teach it to fry bacon next (Vimeo).



But if some groups are concentrating on robots that ply you with beer and pancakes, Autom’s mission in life is to help you lose weight and live healthily. The brainchild of Cory Kidd, who had the idea while at MIT, Autom first asks you for details of your diet, fitness and exercise regime, then it has daily 'conversations' with you during which it will dispense diet and exercise advice. Apparently a major insurance company intends to trial Autom in the US sometime next year, so we can all look forward to having one of these nag us each morning as a mandatory requirement of our health plan (Engadget).



Hmm, perhaps I could teach the pancake robot to flatten the annoying little thingamajig with its frying pan before making my breakfast stack?

Posted By: Dumbfounded - Fri Jul 23, 2010 - Comments (5)
Category: Exercise and Fitness, Futurism, Health, Inventions, Robots, Technology

Weird Science – Invention Is The Mother Of Necessity

Build a better mousetrap, it is said, and the world will beat a path to your door. The implication being that there are some problems which are just crying out for a solution. And then there are the solutions crying out for a problem - those inventions that, while inspired, are just a tad “out there”. It is this later category I shall be celebrating today.

First up, how clean is your cow? This age old problem has nagged at the minds of farmers down the ages, are their cows clean enough? And why isn’t there an easier way to clean cows? Well these merchants of the soil need worry no more thanks to a Swedish company that has developed the fully automated “cow wash”. Supposedly improving the health and yield of cows that use it, the cow wash uses a free swinging revolving brush to groom the cows while simultaneously stimulating their circulation. Apparently the cows enjoy using it and the makers DeLaval have sold over 30,000 in Sweden alone (Daily Mail).

Bigwigs in the US military will also soon be able to sleep sounder in the knowledge that the men under their command are safely in their underpants. We’re not just talking about any undies though, these have been specially designed by University of California professor Joseph Wang. Not only will his techno-trunks monitor the vitals of the personnel wearing them, they can even administer painkillers or antibiotics as the situation demands (Post Chronicle).

And if your pants don’t save you, at least your modesty will be preserved when you are taken to hospital, all thanks to the University of Montreal. For it is from that fine establishment’s School of Industrial Design that our next invention hails, a hospital gown that isn’t quite so revealing. The DUO gown is the brainchild of Noemie Marquis and Denyse Roy and consists of two overlapping panels, front and back, that is easy to put on and requires no fasteners making life simpler for both patients and staff (Medical News Today).

Meanwhile British scientists have been working on an altogether sterner cover. Nicknamed “bullet-proof custard” by its inventors, Bristol based BAE systems have developed a liquid armour consisting of layers of Kevlar combined with a secret “shear-thickening” liquid that hardens as force is applied. The company’s eventual aim is to produce lighter, more-flexible body armour for the military (BBC News).



More in extended >>

Posted By: Dumbfounded - Thu Jul 22, 2010 - Comments (9)
Category: Animals, Farming, Bicycles and Other Human-powered Vehicles, Futurism, Hospitals, Inventions, Robots, Science, Technology, Underwear

Gasoline-powered Wheelchair

Posted By: Paul - Wed Apr 21, 2010 - Comments (4)
Category: Disabilities, Inventions, Motor Vehicles

Weird Science - Towel Folding Robot

Judging by the huge response to what I thought was a fairly large and obscure post about a tiny coincidence, the Hitchhiker's Guide and cutting-edge science is obviously a winning combination.

So here is a super special Douglas Adams bonus, a robot folding towels! Okay so that's a bit of a stretch, but it is still quite cool.

Note that this video has been speeded up 50x, in real time it took the robot over an hour and a half to complete this one task. Perhaps it was feeling a little depressed?

Posted By: Dumbfounded - Sat Apr 17, 2010 - Comments (25)
Category: Boredom, Futurism, Inventions, Robots, Science, Experiments, Technology

It’s A Bird! It’s A Plane! It’s A… Hovercraft?!

With all this talk of ground-effect craft on WU recently, perhaps you feel like owning one, and not just a rusting cold-war relic either. Well now you can as self-taught New Zealand mechanic Rudy Heeman has decided to sell the pride and joy it took him 10 years to build, a flying hovercraft.

At low speeds the vehicle behaves much as any hovercraft would, covering most surfaces with the usual ease, but over 70 km/h the craft's detachable lightweight wings kick in and it takes to the air. But despite being surprisingly nimble in flight, Heeman's invention, called the "WIG", doesn't require a pilot's license to fly (in New Zealand at least) since like all hovercraft it is classed as a marine vehicle. Video in the link (Sky News).

Posted By: Dumbfounded - Mon Mar 15, 2010 - Comments (9)
Category: Flight, Inventions, Motor Vehicles

A Man with Vision

This is definitely one of those "why hasn't someone thought of this before?" type inventions. Back in March of 1985, Josh Silver, a physics professor at Oxford University, had a conversation with a colleague about optical lenses and the sort of specialized equipment needed to adjust them. And in that moment, he had an idea that will affect the lives of billions - a pair of glasses that can be almost instantly adjusted by the person wearing them. No visits to the eye-doctor. No money spent. The concept relies on the principle that the fatter a lens is, the more powerful it becomes. (Remember the kid in fourth-grade who had glasses thick enough to be from the bottom of a coke bottle?) These glasses consist of hollow plastic lenses, inside which are two clear sacs filled with fluid. Using a small syringe, the person wearing the glasses can add or remove fluid, thus changing the power of the lens. Silver's team has already started to distribute the spectacles. You can read more about these amazing glasses, and the man behind them, here.

Posted By: Nethie - Sat Dec 26, 2009 - Comments (8)
Category: Body, Health, Inventions, Science

The World’s Smallest Snowman

The National Physical Laboratory has been around since the early 1900s and is famous for a number of its creations, such as the first working atomic clock. But never let it be said that it's all work and no play in the lab. Just in time for Christmas, the NPL, located in Middlesex, England, has created the world's smallest snowman. The snowman is not visible to the naked eye, being only one-fifth the width of a human hair. It was created with two tin beads used to calibrate electron microscope astigmatism. The nose is ion beam deposited platinum and the rest of the face was milled using a focused ion beam. All that scientific mumbo-jumbo aside, this tiny snowman is adorable!

Posted By: Nethie - Sat Dec 12, 2009 - Comments (6)
Category: Art, Crafts, Inventions, Seasonal, World Records

I’ll Huff And I’ll Puff…

From the BBC children's science show "Bang Goes The Theory...", engineer Jem Stansfield builds himself a giant vortex cannon, and tries to knock down buildings made of straw, wood and bricks...



Impressive, though I'm sure the "Big Bad Wolf" would not have had much of a problem if the third little pig had likewise left out the mortar. Mind you, one of these is just what I need to keep the neighborhood cats out of my garden! :cheese:

Posted By: Dumbfounded - Tue Aug 18, 2009 - Comments (7)
Category: Buildings and Other Structures, Destruction, Geeks, Nerds and Pointdexters, Guns, Inventions, Science, Experiments, Television, Myths and Fairytales