thank god for the japanese! without them there would be no wacky meme's or crazy animated movies or...
ROBOTS!!!! a new humanoid robot has been announced called the HRP-4 by Kawada Industries and the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) (wow what a mouthful. reminds me of that line in iron man about s.h.i.e.l.d. ) at a price of $300k US and on sale as soon as january 2011, this might be one of the first commercial successes for robots outside of industry/manufacturing use. it is a truly elegant design. the japanese are also planning on a moon mission using only robots. that definitely eliminates the human risk factor! i am going to start my training as a blade runner immediately
read here:
http://robotzeitgeist.com/2010/09/the-hrp-4-humanoid-robot-unveiled.htmlnext up is the newest X-prize which has james cameron giddy. for $10mil US prize you need to build a submersible craft to make 2 dives to "challenger deep" in the mariana trench, the deepest point humans have been to. some of you might know about the "trieste" and it's successful mission to challenger deep 50 years ago in what could be kindly described as a "primitive" craft. basically it was a heavily reinforced sphere with buoyancy rigging attached. no one has been back since. read about it here:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/earth-environment/article6998764.ece (older article but tied to the next article for refernce)
why is james cameron so excited? he wants to win the prize and not just win the prize but use the dives to get footage for a possible avatar sequel. while no stranger to ocean filming with huge box office films titanic, abyss, this may be at best ambitious. i wish him luck though
article:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1312406/Into-deadly-deep-How-James-Cameron-plans-film-Avatar-sequel-7-miles-seas-surface.html
Topic: =/\= new humanoid robot unveiled and new x-prize announced (Read 1786 times)