Gearfuse

The world just got a little creepier.

Honda, the company that made your sister’s ‘02 Civic, has developed a way to transmit brain signals to a robot, allowing humans to control robots remotely. Honda has “read patterns of electric currents on a person’s scalp as well as changes in cerebral blood flow when a person thinks about four simple movements – moving the right hand, moving the left hand, running and eating.” What is this technology? Is it safe? Are there going to be repercussions? Will Skynet come alive next year?

During a presentation in Japan, a man wearing a helmet with a bunch of cables connected to it was able to think about moving his right hand and like clockwork, the ASIMO on stage lifted its hand. This could pave the way for huge advances in medical technology for those with disabilities. Imagine not being able to walk and all of a sudden, you can think about walking and your robotic legs will do just that. Or we could all get killed by a bunch of Honda-branded robots. It’s your call.

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We don’t get the chance to see many snakebots. There’s the Japanese M-Tran, a shape shifting robot, but that hardly counts as a snakebot. Anna Konda, however, is very much a snakebot. Despite looking and acting very similarly to a penis, Anna is really a firefighter.

Anna has 20 joints, each with 33 degrees of freedom, giving it an extensive range of movement. What makes Anna such a stalwart firefighter is not only does it shoot water, it’s powered by water. Each joint module contains hydraulic valves and cylinders capable of handling up to 1450 PSI of water pressure. The downside is, Anna will never go wireless. Fire hoses aren’t wireless, are they?

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Japanese mobile phone operator, NTT DoCoMo is experimenting with this mind boggling approach to mobile device control that’s sure to give anyone an eye headache worse than TV coming through your glasses. How does it work? Firstly, no hands are needed. Simply move your eyes up or down to raise volume, accordingly. To skip a track, look right twice. Currently, they only have this technology controlling a mobile music player by sensing the electric fields eyes make when they move. In the future, who knows what this form of control could be used for?

Listening to the latest and greatest Josh Groban hits? Turn that shit up. All it takes is looking up. Say there is a bird flying overhead and you just so happened to be listening to the loudest death metal, ever. You look up, the volume raises and you’re officially halfway to becoming Helen Keller. You’ll then be forced to listen to tunes with the Shake-Up headphones, which is more buzzing and vibrating than any Justice song you’ve ever heard.

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Pesky trespassers, beware! This USB missile launcher is outfitted with a radar that picks up enemy movement in its field of vision. The instructions to make one are provided with a circuit board layout and a free download of the C# code to run it. Just plug this missile launcher into your PC and you’ll be scanning for Charlies in to time.

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In response to rising cellphone charges, citizens in Madrid, Spain has gone on a no-cellphone campaign last week. It is really hard to imagine if you are from places where public phone booths are getting demolished to build new wireless towers. A lot of people in Madrid supported the campaign, but there were people spotted for using the phonebook off cellphones when dialing in a phonebooth. We simply can’t live without cellphones any more, which is something that we never expected 5 years ago. Wait till we can’t live without 3G. –Sam Chan

Article [FujiSankei]