david gale studios
fine art and ideology since 1978

Scheduled to open in 2014, the Center for Innovation, Testing and Evaluation, as the town is officially known, will come complete with roads, buildings, water lines and power grids, enough to support 35,000 people — even though no one will ever live there. It will be a life-size laboratory for companies, universities and government agencies to test smart power grids, cyber security and intelligent traffic and surveillance systems — technologies commonly lumped together under the heading of “smart cities.”

Not-So-Smart Cities - NYTimes.com

Bartenders love robots.

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Entrepreneur Bre Pettis, 3D printing shot glasses on a self-promotional pub crawl at South by Southwest.

From a Brooklyn Startup, MakerBot, a D.I.Y. 3-D Printer - NYTimes.com

emergentfutures:

Robots to get their own internet
European scientists have embarked on a project to let robots share and store what they discover about the world. Called RoboEarth it will be a place that robots can upload data to when they master a task, and ask for help in carrying out new ones.
Full Story: BBC

The robot is studded with sensors. One is a device that picks up the electrical disturbance that is produced from electrical arcs if electricity is jumping through the air. Another uses lidar, which, like radar, finds the range of distant objects, but using light instead of radio waves.
The lidar would show whether there is enough distance between the power lines and the ground or the trees. There is an infrared sensor that finds hot spots, which could indicate a bad splice, And it has a high-quality optical camera that would look at cables, towers and tower foundations for signs of wear and tear, and even spot encroaching neighbors who could have a backyard swimming pool or garden shed that is partly on the utility right-of-way.

via The New York Times

Robonaut

charlesgale:

Robonaut 2 will join the International Space Station with the launch of STS 133 on about November 1, 2010.

mpoint:

It’s great to see a startup hiring laid-off autoworkers — even if they aren’t human. Autofuss in San Francisco recently picked up three Fanuc s430iL industrial robots at fire-sale prices and reprogrammed them for jobs in TV advertising. Seems that the autobots (nicknamed Puck, Gilda, and Rosie) had transferable skills. Autofuss, makes commercials that call for a lot of crane and dolly shots. With limber, six-axis arms and an ability to move at whiplash speeds while maintaining pinpoint precision, the bots are a natural for fancy camera work.

robots.net/

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