Researchers from the University of Electrocommunications (Tokyo) have designed a snake robot capable of navigating tight spaces and climbing over obstacles for search and rescue operations in disaster zones. The key that allows the T2 Snake-3 to perform those tasks lies in its three-dimensional steering, which gives the robot the ability to relax its joints and then push itself from that position.The T2 Snake-3 robot features three-dimensional steering, allowing it to enter tight spaces and climb obstacles. (📷: UEC)According to the researchers, “The operator can easily control and move the robot on uneven terrain by this method. For climbing stairs, the … Continue reading Snake Robot Gains High Mobility and Dexterity

Depending on where you live, summer is coming to a close, somewhere on the horizon, or near-continuous for those that live close the equator. Either way, it can be a great time for “smoking and bbq’ing.” If you can accomplish this with the help of a homemade Raspberry Pi Zero W smoking rig, all the better!This build by HackersHub uses an old oil barrel for the structure of the smoker, held upright with a grate on the top, and a fire basket on the bottom. An externally-mounted fan pushes air in as needed and thus regulated heat generation by the coals. … Continue reading Automated Meat Cooking with Smokey Mc Smokerson

Wireless Temperature, Pressure, and Humidity Monitor for 3D Printing Filament ContainersIn order to keep his 3D printing filaments from degrading, Dr. Scott M. Baker purchased a number of PrintDry containers off of Amazon. While expensive, they seal so tightly that they can pull a small vacuum, ensuring that moisture doesn’t enter your storage container, and the desiccant used to keep things dry can do its job. Unfortunately, he found that while most can maintain a vacuum with a little bit of work, many lose vacuum quickly without a little attention.Not satisfied with his filament only possibly being protected, Dr. Baker … Continue reading Wireless Temperature, Pressure,and Humidity Monitor for 3D Printing Filament Containers

When you consider what the time is, you may look at your phone, or the little display in the corner of your computer screen, but what if you had to design a timekeeping device from logic components? It’s a big job, but after a month of design, plus a month to actually build it, ‘ducamvinh’ has created his own digital clock from basic parts. 7-segment LEDs are used for the display, and components are mounted to a rather large circuit board, on display between two pieces of clear acrylic.The clock includes six CD4026 ICs to control its number displays, along with … Continue reading A DIY Digital Clock Made with Discrete Logic

The Raspberry Pi 4 packs a powerful Broadcom BCM2711 quad-core Cortex-A72 (Arm v8) 64-bit SoC, and as a result, runs hotter than previous Raspberry Pi boards, especially under load. The Foundation does offer a PoE (Power over Ethernet) HAT with built-in fan to cool things down, although it does run on the expensive side at $20. There are other options, such as iUniker’s Raspberry Pi 4 Case that is also outfitted with a fan to keep things cool, coming in at a cheaper $8.99; however using fans for cooling tend be on the noisy side.Pimoroni’s anodized aluminum heatsink case is purported … Continue reading Cool Off Your Raspberry Pi 4 with Pimoroni’s Heatsink Case

Researchers from EPFL (Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne) have developed a new robotic prosthetic hand that shares both human and robotic control. In particular, the wearer controls the fingers, while the smart prosthetic handles grasping and the manipulation of objects. The new technology combines two concepts from different fields — one involves deciphering finger movements from the muscle activity on the wearer’s stump, which translates to individual finger control. The other focuses on the robotic side, which allows the hand to grab objects and maintain contact for better grasping.The robotic hand is controlled through a combination of autonomous and user input using … Continue reading Scientists Design Smart Robotic Hand for Amputees

The United States Treasury Department on Friday announced sanctions against three state-sponsored North Korean hacking groups for conducting several destructive cyberattacks on US critical infrastructure. Besides this, the hacking groups have also been accused of stealing possibly hundreds of millions of dollars from financial institutions around the world to ultimately fund the North Korean Source: Hackernews Continue reading US Sanctions 3 North Korean Hacking Groups Accused for Global Cyber Attacks

While you might stop to wonder why you’d want a robotic vacuum cleaner, Eddie Zhang did not, and for whatever reason went to work turning his first-generation Xiaomi vacuum cleaner into a portable boombox. The idea of a musical robot wandering the house might be appealing to some, but the fact that it’s still an actual vacuum — with the associated noise — makes the listening experience sub-optimal to say the least.As seen in the demo, the bot first declares that it’s “starting the cleanup,” and once it scoots its way around, Zhang then commands it to play music out of its little speaker via … Continue reading Robot Vacuum Cleaner Hacked to Play Spotify

Snakes are incredible creatures, in that while they lack legs, they’re still able to get around quite well using an oscillating motion. While we’ve yet to entirely replicate their smooth natural movements, this servo-driven snake by YouTuber Nevon Projects is a valiant attempt.The snake-bot employs a total of 12 servos to twist its body as needed, producing forward motion with the help of rollers below. As seen in the video at around 1:45, it can even twist itself into a square-ish pattern, and presumably any other shape that one could conceive. The device is capable of slithering across smooth surfaces with … Continue reading Watch This 12-Segment Servo Robot Snake Slither Like the Real Thing