Segway RMP

Segway's new RMP, sporting omnidirectional tires

Segway, the company that brought you the two wheeled, self balancing electric get- around vehicle, has unveiled a new model at RoboBusiness 2008. At the moment we don’t know much about the new RMP (Robotic Mobility Platform), apart from it being a standalone autonomous object transportation robot and the suggestion that it might cost up to £31,500, that’s $50,000 for you americans . The platform itself in this concept seems to be relatively low to the ground, giving it a low centre of gravity. It will be sporting my new favourite concept subject- omnidirectional wheels! These wheels would obviously allow the robot to move in any direction required, giving it the capability of moving in and out of spots that other conventional robots would not be able to move around in. As for the weight it can carry, in the video it shows a man kneeling on top of it, and later in the MAKE article it says that it can carry up to 400lb. See the video below.

This year, so far, I have found two different concepts which use omnidirectional wheels, both designed by major companies, suggesting the future is looking bright for this new technology.

You can find the original article at MAKE here.

My Birthday!

Cake!

Once again, 26th of October, and I’m sixteen! Hooray!!!

I’ve had this blog since I was 14, and it has only succeeded and thrived over time. It has had fairly constant number of hits every day, even when I haven’t been able to write much, eventually adding up to a massive number of views- I’ve now beaten the 60,000 mark. Thanks to everyone who has made this possible- I’m very proud of it!

Mitsubishi MMR25- Vision of a Future Rally Car

You may remember a post I wrote a little over a year ago now on a concept for omnidirectional tires for vehicles. You can find the old post with a video showing how they work here. In that particular video, the tires are shown to be used on a forklift truck, allowing it to manoever in ways never possible before with conventional tires.

Mitsubishi's concept rally car

This week, while Stumbling, I came across this page, which I was surprised to see, showed a concept vehicle designed by Mitsubishi unveiled at the LA Auto Show this year that incorporated omnidirectional tires! The original article was taken from Jalopnik and shows Mitsubishi’s vision of what they think will be a future rally car. I think that as omnidirectional tires are shown in more concepts, people will gain more of an interest and perhaps one day they may even become mainstream, built on normal domestic vehicles!

The MMR25

“The MMR25 incorporates an omnidirectional wheel design that consists of eight independently-controlled electric motors within each wheel hub. This makes the MMR25 the first and only “8 x 4” wheel drive vehicle. The rotational direction of the tires allows the vehicle to be driven forward while pointing the nose of the vehicle in any direction, instead of drifting you can actually drive sideways (or at any angle.) Innovative “Oblique Aerodynamics” gives the vehicle aero advantages when driving sideways.”

I think that this new, completely revolutionary (excuse the pun) technology is all very exciting will be offering amazing new possibilities in the world of automobiles.

Usain Bolt- Wow!

I am sure the Beijing Olympics have escaped nobody, and am even more certain that Usain Bolt’s performance there has been outstanding. I am not a huge sports fan, but when I saw his 100m and 200m races, I was amazed!

I have been able to find the videos of the two races which I hope you will enjoy!

Men’s 200m Beijing 2008

Unfortunately this video’s video and sound is out of sync, but if you find a better one please tell me and I will replace this one.

Men’s 100m Beijing 2008

I have been unable to find a 100m video on any official sites, and I cannot embed this video, oddly, so please click on the link to watch the 100m race.

Click here to watch

Bebo Kick Ups Cheat

Many of you may use the Bebo social networking site. This site has fairly recently allowed third party applications such as games, and one of the most popular games is kick ups. In this game you have to click on the ball at the right time to make it bounce. This is not as easy as it sounds, and a pretty average score is about 12 or 13 before the ball drops to the ground. If you look on the leaderboards, you often see people with huge scores like 998. This is thanks to a computer program being used by people to train up their kicks. What I am going to explain is not this technique, but a simpler one that doesn’t involve downloading anything, meaning that there’s no risk of getting viruses. With this you can go on as long as you like, but it’s quite time consuming.

What you do, is you click on the ball to start, and then as it is in the air, quickly right click and push P. The ball will stop in mid air, and all you have to do is move your mouse to it and click on it again. You just repeat this process until you have the number you would like, when you just let the ball fall to the ground, which will save your high score. It’s a simple and silly little thing, but it’s good fun when your friends have no idea how you got such a high score.

A Quick Reaction Test!

Hi everybody, sorry I haven’t posted for so long. I’ve had exams, but now I’m back I have been overwhelmed by the number of hits I have been getting! Thanks everybody!

I found this quick reaction test a while ago- be careful- it gets very addictive! Click here to play it.
The best I managed to get was Rocketing Rabbit- but I haven’t managed it again

Tell me what you get in the comments below!

How to draw different facial expressions- 15,000 hits!

While browsing around today, I found a great blog post on how to draw facial expressions. You can find the original article on this site, along with other interesting articles and other tutorials.

Here is a small selection of the drawings on the blog post at DaniDraws.com. You can find the full post with many more diagrams here.

I would also like to thank you all for your presence here on my blog, as without you I would have no audience, and without an audience, I could not have reached the 15,000 hits I have achieved! So thank you!

Lolcats

Lolcats- we internet people all know what they are. Amusing pictures of cats or other animals with funny captions (usually lacking in grammatical correctness) related to what they’re doing in the picture. The top WordPress blog is a lolcat site- ICanHasCheezburger. You can even create your own lolcats with this generator.

Occasionally I’m going to post my favourites on here for you all to enjoy.

An amusing video for you all- Cyriak’s Animation Mix

I found this cool video today whilst browsing for something cool to post up here, at the request of one of my most loyal readers. I’ve seen this video before and I thought I should share it with all of you, I love it. It’s made by Cyriak, and I strongly suggest you have a look at the rest of his work here.

The music in the video was also composed by him, and he has quite a repertoire of previous animations. He has even been hired by larger companies such as Coca Cola to make adverts (in his case a Coke Zero ad).

This animation mix is really most enjoyable for English people in my opinion, although I’m sure you will all enjoy it.

It’s My Birthday!

26th of October- my 15th birthday!

Happy birthday to me,
Happy birthday to me,
Happy birthday to Seb,
Happy birthday to me!

Wahay!!!

Sorry I haven’t been writing recently, but I’ve been really busy with work etc.

I hope you all have a great day and do lots of fun things. Luckily over here in the UK we’re on holiday!!! What better time to have a birthday?

The True Meaning of The Beijing 2008 Olympics Logo

I found this picture using StumbleUpon today and I thought I should share it with you.

The picture was originally from Peking Olympische Spiele 2008 – wie das Logo entstand- a german site.

Here it is:

Edit:
On February 8th Harvard Mossige posted a comment showing an quick animation he made for the Beijing 2008 Olympics Logo- I thought it was great! Thanks for that!

This is his animation that can also be found here.

It is reminiscent of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests- you can learn more about this awful massacre here and here.

Switch on. Switch off.

Hello again.

I found this quick video while browsing on the internet today, and thought I’d show you all. The video is a quick and fun one advertising the importance of turning off devices and not just leaving them in standby mode.

Before I show you the video, I’d just like to share a few facts on standby mode with you.

- Britons waste the equivalent of around two power stations’ worth of electricity each year by leaving TV sets and other gadgets on standby.

- Electrical equipment in sleep mode used roughly 7TWh of energy and emits around 800,000 tonnes of carbon.

- Standby modes on electronic devices account for 8% of all British domestic power consumption.

-Estimated annual CO2 emissions from devices left on standby:
Stereos – 1,600,000 tonnes
Videos – 960,000 tonnes
TVs – 480,000 tonnes
Consoles – 390,000 tonnes
DVD players – 100,000 tonnes
Set-top boxes – 60,000 tonnes

(Source: Energy Saving Trust)

Shocking isn’t it?

Yaharr!!!!!! It be Talk Like A Pirate Day!

Today, Wednesday 19th September be TLAPD 2007! I hope ye all spent your days wearin’ eyepatches, finding parrots, sailing ships, wavin’ flags and swords, singin’, drinkin’ rum, walkin’ people off the good ol’ plank, talkin’ like a pirate and lootin’ people aroun’ you. If ye be interested in a little bit of the history of talk like a pirate day on wikipedia, click here. For the proper website, click here. Arrr!

And now, for some nice ol’ piratey things/sayings.

“Yaharr!!!” “Shiver me timbers!!!” “Arr!” “Bring me one noggin of rum, now, won’t you, matey.” “Avast, there!” “Dead men don’t bite.” “Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest — Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!” “There! That’s what I think of ye. Before an hour’s out, I’ll stove in your old block house like a rum puncheon. Laugh, by thunder, laugh! Before an hour’s out, ye’ll laugh upon the other side. Them that die’ll be the lucky ones.”

“We’re going this way, that way, forwards and backwards over the Irish sea, a bottle or run to fill my tum and that’s the life for me!” ARRRRR!!!

Google Earth Secret

A hidden flight simulator!

Google has always done its best to make programs that compare with Microsoft’s dominating software- office programs for example. And to be honest, the software has always been quite stable and perfectly usable. As it happens, Google has also just launched its own Powerpoint rival. But, we never thought Google’s rivalry would extend to gaming.

Now, in the new Google Earth, you will find a secret Flight Simulator with which you can fly around Google Earth’s excellent satellite imagery as if you were really in a plane. At the moment, there is only a choice of two planes, but this will surely be expanded with time. The HUD is simple but easy to work with.

To access the simulator, open Google Earth and hit (in Windows) Ctrl+Alt+A or Command+Option+A in Mac OS. You can start anywhere in the world- from a list of pre-determined airports you can choose from or from the point you are at at the moment you push the command for the flight sim. The F16 Viper is a quick fighter jet, but the SR22 is easier to fly. A list of controls can be found here, but joysticks can also be configured.

The actual game is very simple, but what really makes it interesting is being able to fly over and past real pictures of real locations, and not just CGI. I personally think it’s a great idea, and has lots of potential, especially if Google continue to include nice little additions to their software.

[Source: Techcrunch, Images: Nice Ventures, WebWare, MrBelShaw.com]

Post #50-Well, how was your summer?

Unfortunately, for some of us, summer is over now. School starts again tomorrow, and homework, coursework, work and more work is on its way.

On a more positive note, this blog has now reached 5000 hits, so thanks to everybody who has made that possible. Tell your friends about it please!

Thanks to everybody at the Northbourne Music Course, this year was great as always!

Have you ever wondered what a hard drive is really doing inside, what all that clicking is? Watch this:

Sorry about the short post, but I have had almost no time on my hands, but I’ll be back posting soon.

Compare the World’s Military Power

I found this interesting site while browsing a while ago, and I thought I should spread the link around. With this site you can compare 39 of the most powerful armies in the world. But, you must bear in mind that nuclear weapons, past and current military experience, unit training and equipment quality are not taken into account. The facts and figures used in these comparisons is based only on disclosed public sources. It provides a unique analytical display of national military strength based on sources from all over the globe. It is based on statistics such as yearly military expenditure, weapon inventories, oil reserves and available manpower.

You get quite a few surprises here, for example finding that Turkey and India have more powerful armies than the UK.

Click here to go to the comparison site.

Watch out- here comes the future!

Omni-directional technology made by Airtrax. This video shows multiple cylindrical shaped tyres around a single axis that help guide the forklift in all directions. Think of the possibilities! This kind of agility and manoeverability could save so much space in car parks, helping with parking in tighter spots, and roads could be made narrower allowing for more land development!

For those of you who cannot see the embedded video player click here.

Edit: 26th October 2008- Here is a design by Mitsubishi incorporating this concept in a future rally car

I’m Back! 3,000 hits!!

Well, I’m back after 3 weeks holiday in France, Die Schweiz, Germany amongst other countries.

I was amazed last night when I found that while I was away, my blog clocked up another 2,387 hits!!!  So, to Jamie who complained at how 1,000 hits wasn’t good enough for him, I hope now he has realised that I am more amazing than he originally thought. Thanks to everyone who helped with this, especially Banana on bodybuilder forums who put a link to one of my posts which alone brought me 200 or so hits in just one day.

I’m exhausted (got back really late) so after some quick browsing, I found this which I thought was pretty cool. It’s an Xbox 360 system with lots of money spent on it to make it into an amazingly impressively uber console. Myself, I don’t like Playstations, Xboxes etc (apart from the Wii which is amazing), I am more of a PC person, but I have to admit this is pretty cool. Click here to go to the site.