X-Ar; Almost Iron Man

As the news get's grimmer and grimmer coming out of Japan. We watch the news each hour hoping to catch a glimpse of a super-robot (you know) they have, to come and save the day. But, until then an American company is trying to compete in the "make everybody a cyborg", race. Very similar to the Hal exoskeleton that we told you about back in 2009! Equipois (don't ask me how to pronounce that), a California based company hopes to have factory workers and other people who do repetative heavy lifting, using these in the very near future. 

 

For around 2 to 3 grand anyone rich enough to consider that cheap can own one of these things and become a superhuman. Their website says officially that it will not make you a superhuman though. They claim it's  more for people who spend long hours extending their arms, like surgeons, and jewelers or dentist. Equipois  CEO Eric Golden (great name-can't be real), has hinted that a brain controlled interface could be easily attached to the X-Ar, but claims "they're a little bit away from kicking that off". The company states that it plans to further develop this technology to assist the disabled, such as veterans and people who are paralyzed. The company already makes a mechanical appendage that is kind of like a crude Dr. Octopus tentacle. Hopefully if this is successful they'll work on the aesthetic design as we inch closer to a full Iron Man suit! 

Johnny 5 is Alive!

Le plus ça change plus c'est pareil

Where 's Bonny Tyler when you need her? It seems that some kids watched Short circuit and grew up a to make sure we could all have our own Johnny 5! Named the Spykee this WiFi robot can be controlled through the internet from anywhere in the world and can watch, hear, speak and monitor (isn't that the same as watching) anything you want. according to the website Meccano designers came up with Spykee in January of 2006 ; they had the "crazy" idea that anyone "despite of age" could build and own their own spy-bot! And after many prototypes and models they brought forth " a little futuristic marvel to delight all those who are crazy about new technologies." Now why they make it a point that children can buy and build this robot is a mystery, perhaps it's because the designers where deprived the right to build their own robots as children. We don't know!
It almost seems like their marketing this towards kids, but what does a kid need with a robot that has a thermal filter, fiber optics, and offers free phone calls over the internet? And what kid can afford the $369 price tag? I mean if you were a 15 year old weed dealer still living at home it might be useful to make sure that your mom isn't snooping around your room looking for your stash!

More robots to spy on you at work!

Remember the Telenoid R1 we told you about a few months ago? Well it seems the little ghost sperm has some slightly less creepy cousins sprouting up out there. Well today we learned about the new Vgo's telepresence system, which kinda looks like that Wall.E cartoon that we've never seen. Marketed as a way for micro managing office managers to be there in the office when they can't actually be there in the office looking over the shoulders of their fellow office drones, nit-picking everything they do, and making sure no one spends all day on facebook, looking at pictures of the fun and exciting people that got away from them. The website tout's that you can "use Vgo to monitor facilities, processes and people". Ah joyous, now the roving eye-ball monster from Big Trouble in Little China has gotten a modern techno update! Their slogan is "You don’t make a call – you just go there". Coming in at around four feet integrated with a small screen, camera, speakers and microphone. The user can access the robot by sitting at his home through his system Vgo has priced this robotic terror at $6000 by its makers (and $1200 per year service contract)

This weird little thing rolling around the empty, lifeless corridors of dull gray office buildings of the future is straight out of a deleted scene from Brazil! It's not the first of it's kind; in 2009 a company called Anybot created one that closely resembled Johnny 5. It stands about 5 feet tall and is equipped a 5 megapixel camera, forward-mounted display, WiFi and optional 3G connectivity, and a laser pointer because, well, freaky talking robots with some assholes face on them need lasers for pointing at things! Available for somewhere in the $15,000 - $25,000 range.

Pretty soon we're all gonna be surrounded by these machines, tormented by fat weak-ass bosses who are all sitting around some jacuzzi at the Radisson! Luckily these abominations have not been equipped with arms of any kind just yet, but soon enough they will have super strong robot arms controlled by Monkees in a lab out side of Philadelphia. These are indeed strange times my brothers and sisters!

Can Ghost in the Shell be far behind?

Great leaps in technology happen when someone takes something that exist and tweaks it to either do something better or something it was never meant to do. Before we can even get to the point where motion capture technology moves us into the realm of Minority report where we are physically (in a sense) interacting with digital information, well we get this...

I remember reading an article in Wired way back in 1998, where the head of Sony talked about these think tanks they have around the world. They were taking the best and brightest kids straight out of college and paying them to sit around and dream up stuff. One of the things was this hyper mask that allowed you to steal an image of someones face and wear it like a mask! Another thing they talked about was an invisibility cloak.  This is what it looked like back then (see right). You weren't really invisible to anyone with a brain, but it was a start. In 2008 scientist in America and Japan announced they had made a break through in nano-technology that greatly improved what they are now calling Optical Camouflage. Scientists at the University of California in Berkeley developed a material that could bend light around 3D objects making them “disappear”. Light is neither absorbed nor reflected by the objects, passing “like water flowing around a rock,” according to the researchers. As a result, only the light from behind the objects can be seen. One technique used nano-metre technology-scale stacks of silver and magnesium fluoride in a “fishnet” structure, while another made use of nanowires tech that made of silver.As the resolution technology improves so does the invisibility, this is only the beginning! Once they get the tech down, then we can get some sweet wet suits endowed with it and then-The Major!