For 10 million dollars, the coastal area belonging to Wisconsin's Concordia University went from eroding wasteland to a beautiful park. According to landscape architecture firm JJR:

Concordia University came to JJR with a clear problem: It was literally losing acres of its waterfront campus to Lake Michigan due to a continually eroding, 130-foot high bluff that steeply dropped down to the Lake Michigan shoreline. JJR's master plan and final design focused on stabilizing the bluff and providing armored shoreline revetments and beaches to halt the continued erosion caused by the severe Lake Michigan wave environment. This project also included recreational and environmental enhancements down the face of the bluff itself.

Read about more runners-up for 2009's best engineering projects via the American Society of Civil Engineers and Popular Mechanics.

Images of the Concordia University project via JJR.

Emotional Robots

What are they?
Emotional robots are robots who can read human facial expressions, tone of voice, and body language to determine the emotional state of the person addressing them. The robot can then simulate an appropriate emotional response using its own tone, facial expressions, and actions. For example, if a person is angry, the robot can behave in a contrite way; if a person is upset the robot can be soothing. They are being developed in research labs, and have been deployed in a limited way in some hospitals in the US and Japan. Two of the more famous emotional robots are Kismet, developed by roboticist Cynthia Breazeal at MIT, whose facial expressions might be crude but are nevertheless very effective; and the Actroid series of robots developed by Hiroshi Ishiguro at Osaka University in Japan. (You can see the Actroid Repliee Q1 in the video below.)

Whose jobs will be eliminated?
Emotional robots are ideally suited for a number of working-class or retail jobs. They will work in hospitals and homes as caretakers, eliminating those jobs for humans. Who wants somebody surly and underpaid taking care of their bedridden grandmother? Emotional robots will also take over receptionist jobs and retail work in many stores. They are incapable of becoming angry or upset when customers yell at them or make strange demands. If a customer is upset, the emotional robot will always act sorry and mean it. In fact, robots have already taken over some customer care services - that's why when you call the phone company or other large businesses, you have to yell at an automated system instead of interacting with people in order to get the information you're looking for. Pretty soon, you'll be yelling at robots in person too, when you walk into your neighborhood Sprint store to figure out what the hell those charges are on your mobile phone bill.

Surgeon Robots

What are they?
Surgeon robots are just what they sound like - a pair of robotic arms equipped with a camera that can conduct surgeries with precision and speed that no human could ever muster. They have already been used successfully in several surgeries. Sometimes the robot arms are controlled by a human, but several successful surgeries have been performed by robots operating autonomously.

Whose jobs will be eliminated?
Surgeons will be eliminated, or will be turned into technicians rather than exalted mega-doctors. This goes to prove that robots don't just threaten the jobs of regular working people - they will also eliminate professional middle-class jobs too. Or they will turn formerly high-paid, highly-trained surgeons into skilled labor like forklift operators.

Brain-computer interfaces

What are they?
Brain computer interfaces (BCIs) are any piece of technology that allows your brain to control a computer directly. One of the most famous examples of this technology is BrainGate, a device that plugs directly into your brain and carries electrical signals from it to a computer. People who use BrainGate are able to control a computer cursor, which has allowed people who are completely paralyzed to communicate again by moving a cursor over a virtual keyboard and typing out words. Future kinds of BCIs will operate wirelessly. One example of wireless BCI was an experiment done on a rat who could be remote-controlled from a distance when operators sent electrical signals to the parts of his brain responsible for directing his body left or right. Often called the "robo-rat," (see video below) this creature demonstrated that BCI works both ways, wirelessly: You can send signals from your brain to a computer, and send signals to somebody's brain too.

Whose jobs will be eliminated?
Brain implants could change the jobs of machine operators. Operating heavy machinery might move from being a physical job to being a mental one. You could use your brain to control a robot who is digging up a fuel tank, or laying cement.

Other jobs that might be profoundly changed are entertainment-industry related. Cameras and sound systems could be brain-controlled, possibly allowing for new kinds of camerawork that will be more crazily vivid than anything we've seen before.

Either way, people trained on the manual systems for industrial machines and cameras will have to learn to use BCI or get downsized.

Augmented reality contact lenses

What is it?
Augmented reality contact lenses are basically computer monitors that go directly on top of your eyes, like contact lenses. As a result, you see computer information overlaid on the world you're looking at around you. You could look down a street and see little pop-ups full of information about local stores - or navigate your way to the nearest public bathroom by watching glowing yellow arrows on the street leading you to a cafe with a toilet. And yes, you could also look up into the beautiful, blue sky and see a million Google ads for sky-related products.

You could also be reading io9 in your contacts while your boss yells at you, or watching porn while your parents take you out to dinner to talk about their new kitchen remodel.

Whose jobs will be eliminated?
Like BCI, augmented reality lenses won't eliminate jobs but simply transform existing jobs so much that people trained in the old ways won't be employable anymore.

Already, augmented reality type technologies are used in architecture, to visualize what a building or a given set of structures will look like on the street. Imagine being able to design a building while standing in the vacant lot where it will eventually stand, matching its walls precisely to the proper angles and observing in real life how the sunlight will hit its windows. These contacts will also make it easier for building inspectors of all types to check that structures are up to code: Just stroll around a factory and compare what you're seeing with a virtual overlay of what's supposed to be there (or not there).

There are also thousands of ways such a technology could transform work that we haven't thought of yet. As augmented reality contact lens developer Babak A. Parviz wrote recently, "We already see a future in which the humble contact lens becomes a real platform, like the iPhone is today, with lots of developers contributing their ideas and inventions."

Illustration of contact lens: Emily Cooper

What we have here are just a few of the amazing photographs Gordon shot, and posted on his Facebook page here. He designed the computer controls using an arduino kit from open hardware activist Limor Fried's company Adafruit Industries. Gordon got his homemade creation to fly above 99% of Earth's atmosphere, 3 times higher than a commercial jet, and 1/7 of the way to the International Space Station. Time to get a kit from Adafruit and build your own!

Spaceduino via Adafruit Blog

Unbelievably gorgeous.


Right after this picture was taken, at well over 100,000 feet above Earth, the weather balloon broke. The camera began to plunge back to Earth.


At this point the camera's fall is being broken by a parachute.


Back on Earth.

And retreived by its creator!

According to National Geographic:

Three of today's largest telescopes-Gemini North, Subaru, and Keck-stand within hailing distance of one another atop the nearly 14,000-foot peak of Hawaii's Mauna Kea, an inactive volcano. The altitude puts them above 40 percent of Earth's atmosphere-and most of its water vapor, which is opaque to the infrared wavelengths the astronomers like to study-but also makes it difficult for the astronomers and engineers who work there to breathe and think. Many wear clear-plastic oxygen tubes in their nostrils as routinely as we might wear eyeglasses. Others rely on the body's ability to adapt but worry about making what they call a CLM, or "career-limiting mistake." "At altitude, we don't improvise; that would be a disaster," says Gemini astronomer Scott Fisher. "We're kind of trained monkeys up here. The real thinking goes on at sea level."

These amazing images trace one telescope's production, from glass chunks to completed mirror.

via National Geographic (thanks, Marilyn Terrell!)

Glass is spread over this vast mold, melted, and then slowly spun to create an even, parabolic surface.

These are the 10-pound chunks of the lightweight glass up close.

Now techs must polish the glass until they're read to give it a final coat of highly reflective aluminum.
The polished glass is used in the bodies of super-giant telescope arrays like this one, atop Mauna Kea.
The Large Binocular Telescope on Mount Graham. Images will appear to come from a 22.8-meter telescope. It can also be manipulated to point in any direction you like.

Li's Jetlev-Flyer uses twin water pumps to thrust the rider into the air. And the high-velocity water streams do, in fact, give the rider an altitude of up to 30 feet, and they can steer the device by pushing on the handlebars to properly angle the stream.

However, the use of the Jetlev-Flyer is extremely limited. Because an enormous mass of water is required to achieve the necessary level of thrust for any amount of time, the water cannot be carried on the jetpack itself. Instead, a small vessel is dragged behind the jetpack, pumping water into a long hose attached to the back of the pack. Thus, the Jetlev-Flyer only works near a body of water and is essentially a Jetski, albeit a rather epic one.

Li plans to put the Jetlev-Flyer on sale later this year. So, if you have about 130 grand to burn, you too can have your very own pseudo-jetpack.

[Popular Science]

EATR stands for "Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot," referring to the way this robot will forage for its own power sources rather than having to return to base and power up.

Though the EATR is still in the experimental stage, Robotic Technology has high hopes for the robot. In a project spec, company representatives describe EATR as:

An autonomous robotic platform able to perform long-range, long-endurance missions without the need for manual or conventional re-fueling, which would otherwise preclude the ability of the robot to perform such missions. The system obtains its energy by foraging – engaging in biologically-inspired, organism-like, energy-harvesting behavior which is the equivalent of eating. It can find, ingest, and extract energy from biomass in the environment (and other organically-based energy sources), as well as use conventional and alternative fuels (such as gasoline, heavy fuel, kerosene, diesel, propane, coal, cooking oil, and solar) when suitable. For example, about 150 lbs of vegetation could provide sufficient energy for 100 miles of driving, depending on circumstances.

Of course there are no explicit mentions made of dead bodies here - FOX News came up with that meme - but "biomass" could include organic matter like dead animals. Though breaking down plant matter into fuel is a slightly different proposition than breaking down rotting corpses.

Still, there is another potential reason why the EATR could turn to corpse-gnawing. It is going to learn from its environment using a form of artificial intelligence, and figure out what is good to eat. The founder of Robotic Technology, Robert Finkelstein, has described the kind of artificial collective intelligence he hopes to imbue the EATRs with:

The 4D/RCS is a framework in which sensors, sensor processing, databases, computer models, and machine controls may be linked and operated such that the system behaves as if it were intelligent. It can provide a system with several types of intelligence (where intelligence is the ability to make an appropriate choice or decision), including reactive, deliberative, and creative intelligence . . . We are experimenting with a unique approach to achieving swarm behavior and distributed artificial intelligence by partitioning the 4D/RCS among individuals in the collective. In the concept of the Cognitive Collective, THE 4D/RCS is partitioned among multiple robotic vehicles and then reassembled across the collective. This allows robots which are individually reactive with limited intelligence to become deliberative and cognitive within the collective; or robots which are individually deliberative to gain greater intelligence and efficacy within the collective.

This kind of "collective intelligence" is similar to what AI enthusiasts also imagine might emerge from something like Google, which has vast, distributed computing power.

Are we looking at the beginnings of a human-eating, artificially intelligent robot swarm? Possibly. Or we might just be looking at a bunch of dumb, programmable vegetarians who don't need to dock in order to stay powered up.

via Robotic Technology

Created by civil engineering professors Ross Boulanger of UC Davis and James Michael Duncan of University of Maryland, the Geo Photo Album is full of mega-disasters coupled with precise explanations of why buildings have topped or dams have burst. Essentially, you can read the album as a compendium of engineering disasters.

But it is also a compendium of engineering fixes - at least half the site is devoted to images of properly-conceived dams, gas storage tanks, and foundations, that are likely to remain standing in the event of disaster. Check out a few of the images here, along with Boulanger and Duncan's engineering insights. If you need more (and of course you will), you can go to the Geo Photo Album.

Say Boulanger and Duncan about this 1999 earthquake damage in Turkey:

The mat foundation for this building was exposed when it overturned. This building has a relatively large height-to-width ratio, making it more susceptible to overturning failure.

Here's another shot of the 1999 Turkey quake damage. Boulanger writes:

While these buildings are now partly submerged, the collapse of the one building and the near collapse of the other building are illustrative of structural performance throughout Golcuk, and are mainly attributed to the effects of shaking.

The researchers write:

This building hangs over the head scarp of a landslide in decomposed bedrock that was triggered by the 1995 Kobe earthquake. Several homes were buried and over 30 people killed by the landslide.

Here is a picture of a port damaged by the same Kobe earthquake. Says Boulanger:

This car ramp at a ferry terminal collapsed when the fill materials liquefied and the quay wall displaced outwards. The graben behind the quay walls is filled with water.

This is a massive sinkhole that was created when a gypsum stack collapsed in Florida. Gypsum stacks are byproducts of phosphate mining processes. Say the researchers:

This massive sinkhole formed on top of a gypsum stack in Florida, and contributed to contamination of the aquifer below. Grouting work by Hayward Baker to seal the aquifer from the gypsum stack was recognized with a national award.

And here's one possible solution to bad engineering. Here you can see a picture from a project to make the Port of Oakland less likely to fall apart in an earthquake. Boulanger explains:

The grid of soil-cement columns is exposed at this location. The piles within the grid will support a wharf that is being constructed. The grid of soil-cement walls extends down through soft soils into harder, competent soils, and acts to increase the stability of the channel slope.

The system wouldn't have cars that flew exactly - instead, they would be suspended from thin wires you could barely see. According to English Russia:

It was called the "super string transportation system" and was claimed to come to replace the existing rail road technologies. The steel cords under great tension had to be stretched on the polls across all the country to support the high speed (up to 500 km/h - 300 mph) trains movement.

It would be sort of like a gondola system, only it would look more space-age. In fact, these images look like public transportation on another planet.

Plans for the trains were approved in the 1970s, and work began on them right away. As you can see from these images, the system was never very extensive but it was durable. This is what the tracks look like today.

This was a prototype of the cars they imagined using the tracks. Basically, it looks like a truck. It's also not suspended from a wire, but apparently that was part of a later plan.

This is an example of a contemporary super string car, put on exhibit recently in Moscow. It looks a lot more futuristic than those trucks, but it's still a long way from being a flying car. No word on whether the super string system outside Moscow will ever be revived.

via English Russia

This list will give you a powerful injection of robot crotches, real and imaginary. Here you can see concept art of a giant robot designed to put out forest fires. It has four arms and a massive reach. Unclear why exactly it needs that mega-crotch, which I think contains water pistons as well as what seem to be giant graspers in the scrotal region. How would you like your burning trees harvested with that?

Speaking of what you do and do not want harvested, this clip from 1980s classic Cherry 2000 reminds us of the gentle art of the implied robot crotch. Our human protagonist is getting it on with his Cherry 2000 bot, giving us a teeny glimpse of robo-ass before getting all sudsy and humpy with her hidden (but not unused) crotch. Sadly, he hasn't learned the first thing about circuit boards. Water isn't good for them. So his crotch satisfaction is severely undermined.


And then there's another twentieth century classic: Robot Jox. Which is all about people who zoom around inside giant robot armor things, which happen to have crotchly surprises in store for us.


Let's get real again, though. Check out this recently-built Japanese robot, who keeps his human companion safely tucked right between his legs. If you've ever dreamed of being inside robot wood, well this is your chance.

This is an action figure based on characters from Appleseed, the anime where humans and cyborgs are so entertwined that it's hard to know which is which. And that provides us with this amazing and rare double-crotch shot. We've got our fighter girl, showing her crotch, snug inside her robot armor, which also has quite a substantial bulge in its special place. I don't know what to call this. I think what it means is that in the future, genitals will be a lot more complicated than ever before.

Not that genitals will necessarily be any less annoying, as this video by Japanese bizarro artist Murakami makes clear. His character Inochi, a robot going through puberty, still has to contend with unruly boners even though he's an artificial being. Being weird-looking probably doesn't help.

In the realm of dangerous robot crotches, there's the crotch you can just barely glimpse in this picture of the replicant Pris from Bladerunner. At one point in the film, she does a full-on crotch attack on protagonist Deckard, wrapping her legs around his neck and almost squeezing his noggin off.

Nemo Gould's sculpture, Goliath, has such an anotomically-noticeable set of bits between his legs that the poor bot has been defaced multiple times by neighbors in the posh San Francisco neighborhood where he resides. Poor Goliath. Luckily, Nemo has been able to restore him after he was vandalized and his robo-balls still hang free.


This giant statue of a Gundam robotic armor soldier looms outside Tokyo, his mega-crotch keeping everyone safe from forces in the world who hate magnificently large pocket rockets.

Sure, Devastator has giant balls, but nobody competes with Optimus Prime's undercarriage OK? Check out the heft on that.

And no list of this sort would be complete without a tip of the hat to the ladies. Here's Kristina Lokken from Terminator 3, demonstrating the latest innovations built into her model. Namely, an ability to make her termino-boobs expand in order to impress male police officers.

What you're seeing here is just a chart of industrial robots, and how many there are per 10,000 human industrial workers. So this does not account for all the AIBOs, Roombas, and other kinds of robots you might have in your home. It also does not include robot hospital workers, which are quite common in Japan. So Japan's lead when it comes to total robots might be even greater than its already-impressive lead here.

IEEE's Erico Guizzo says, "By 2011, the world’s industrial robot population is expected to rise to 1.2 million." Holy crap.

SOURCE: IEEE Spectrum; Tokyo Mango

The prankster, known only by his pseudonym Schlangemann (which he used to submit the paper), created the paper using SCIGen - the automatic CS paper generator. His pseudonym is taken from a German movie called Der Schlangemann.

"Schlangemann" reported to Slashdot today that the paper had been accepted to the conference, which is sponsored by the IEEE, a highly-regarded professional group for engineers in the United States. You can see the accepted paper posted on the IEEE's website. Here you can see where Schlangemann is named chair of a panel [PDF]. The abstract reads:

Recent advances in cooperative technology and classical communication are based entirely on the assumption that the Internet and active networks are not in conflict with object-oriented languages. In fact, few information theorists would disagree with the visualization of DHTs that made refining and possibly simulating 8 bitarchitectures a reality, which embodies the compelling principles of electrical engineering. In this work we better understand how digital-to-analog converters can be applied to the development of e-commerce.

The good news is that the IEEE has done its job so well that now computers themselves can submit papers and present them at its conferences. The bad news is . . . well, pretty obvious. I guess this means Alan Sokal can finally, at last, shut the hell up about how science journals never accept fake articles.

SOURCE: Slashdot

The 797B weighs 1,375,000 pounds, which means it can pulverize you and your whole gang of ninjas with no effort at all. This gives you a sense of the scale, with a human about half the size of one of its tyres:

Here is the Cat 3524B engine, below, which powers our mega-robot.

And here is a schematic showing how the already-computer-operated controls function. Presumably, the Carnegie Mellon team will create a way to control these computers wirelessly so that a remote operator can push the start button. If you want to see more, you can download a PDF with tons of information about the 797B from Caterpillar.

Generally, the 797B is used in mining operations purely as a hauler. It can haul 380 tons of rock at up to 42 mph. Imagine what would happen if the 797B got pissed that you weren't respecting its robot rights — that's 380 tons of rock moving toward your face at a pretty high velocity. So mind your manners, and always say please and thank you when dealing with the autonomous 797B, which will be hitting the market in 2010.

Images via Caterpillar.

You Call That a UGV? This is a UGV [via Ares]

Apparently the biggest problem the students faced when testing versions of the suit was that people wearing it suffered excruciating pain from the load. According to the Jerusalem Post:

Knowing that such an "extreme sport" would require top physical fitness, [the students] sent friends who were in good condition to a gym to get an idea of their physical limitations. "We discovered that some of the loads the wearer could experience were great enough to turn gliding from fun into torture," [suit developer Yair] Segev said. "After defining the physical limitations of the flier, we built a simple aerodynamic model of a human in a light, winged suit."

I guess smashing your face directly into the wind isn't as fun as Christian Bale makes it look?

Technion Students Design Batman Suit [via Jerusalem Post]

Similar craft have been manufactured in the U.S., such as Honeywell's Micro Air Vehicle (MAV) — though the MAV achieves flight via fans that push the craft up, rather than reducing air pressure above so it can rise. The idea behind these craft is that a military base or unit in the field could use them to scout locations or aid in rescue missions. A flying saucer could float over an area that's been attacked, and feed images back to soldiers who want to find out if there are any survivors. Already, emergency responders in the U.S. have used devices like these for rescuing people in collapsed buildings.

According to The Register:

The Fenstar 50 will be the first GFS saucer to use an internal combustion engine. Previous craft have been electrically powered, and have suffered from very short endurance. The current [state of the art] electric saucer . . . can normally stay up for just two and a half minutes. The new Fenstar 50 is expected to manage up to an hour, carrying a payload of 5kg - a quarter of its all-up weight. GFS aims to keep the total weight under 20kg.

Yes, I want one please. And I want a space inside so my kittens can fly in it.

Brit Firm to Demo Serious Flying Robo-Saucer [The Register]

A spokesperson for E.ON, the company building the biomass power station to replace the Tinsley towers, told the UK Guardian:

One tower went down perfectly. The second only came down partially, a third [of it] was left standing - not exactly what we hoped for. There were rumours they hit the motorway. But when the dust cleared the Highways Agency said there was absolutely no debris on the [nearby M1] motorway. One of our teams chipped away at the concrete where it had become stuck and it finally came down at 5.30am.

Photos by Christopher Furlong/Getty.

Thousands Watch Fall of Tinsley Towers [UK Guardian]

Once each year, the Office of Naval Research holds a conference where they explain what they're currently working on. This year, the ONR detailed several weapons systems that seem like they were lifted straight out of your favorite military sci-fi novel.

Solid state fiber lasers could be mounted in "pods" on aircraft, able to deliver 100 kW blasts. Free Electron Lasers will begin development in 2010, and will hopefully have the ability to take out incoming ordinance or even small attack (or suicide) boats. The lasers don't stop there - helicopters could be equipped with laser terrain finding gear to help them land in "brownout" conditions.

Lasers not sexy enough? How about directed microwave weapons? I've been dreaming of one of these for years, to take out the thumping audio systems of cars that drive past my house. The Navy would rather use them to fry the electronics in enemy equipment.

The ultimate naval weapon might be the hyper-velocity railgun. It could propel projectiles up to 230 miles with killer accuracy at speeds close to Mach 7. The Navy holds a world record for "highest electromagnetic muzzle energy launch of a projectile" using such a weapon. I have no idea what that means, but I know I wouldn't want to get hit by one. These megaguns aren't without their flaws, though. That kind of muzzle velocity tends to destroy the barrel of the gun, and each firing draws something like three million amps. Image by: U.S. Navy.

Navy Wants Lots of Lasers [Defense Tech]

M-3500 ship-cleaning bot. Pictured above, the M-3500 clings to the outside of giant cargo ships, and uses water to blast all the goo and rust right off the hull. Here you can see it on the underside of a ship, but later it will crawl all the way up the side, leaving a sparkly trail of shiny hull in its wake. Read more about M-3500. Photo for C|Net by Michael Kanellos.

S.A. Robotics Waste Container Handling System (WCHS). The WCHS is designed to handle drums of waste or toxins, delivering them to "bagout ports," or spots that the barrels will drain into. The WCHS is operated remotely, and can pick up a barrel, then rotate it onto its side, and feed its contents to the bagout port. It can also be set up to work entirely autonomously. The waste drum lift on the left can heft and then rotate 1000 lb. drums; while the "daughter lifts" on the right can handle 1000 lb. drums as well but can't rotate them. S.A. Robotics has several other garbage robots, like a waste separator and bots that suck shredded cables off the ocean floor.

BigBelly Solar Compactor. This Trash Compactor bot, powered by a solar panel that's protected by ultrahard plastic, compacts all the trash tossed into it and even separates plastic trash out into a separate container. This means more garbage can fit into a smaller container, eliminating those overflowing trash cans you see everywhere in city parks. The next generation of BigBelly's bot will have remote networking capabilities, letting waste management workers know when the machine is full to the brim. You can already see the BigBelly Compactors in San Francisco, Vancouver, Boston, and on a bunch of college campuses across North America. Apparently the plastic covering their solar cells is so strong you can smash it with a baseball bat and it will remain uninjured. Though doing that is not recommended.

UltraStrip paint-stripping robot. Like the ship-cleaning robot, the UltraStrip clings to the sides of buildings or ships, stripping paint as it moves. Developed at Carnegie-Mellon, the UltraStrip you see here is stripping paint off a ship's hull.

Roomba and Scooba. By now, you've probably met one of the cuddly, autonomous Roomba sweeping bots or Scooba mopping bots created by iRobot (which also builds military reconnaissance bots). Push a button on the Roomba's back and it zooms around a room, feeling its way along the walls with its pressure-sensitive front section, swirling in ever-widening circles on open floor, and even freeing itself from cords that get caught its vacuum. They will even find their way back to their power station and plug into it when their batteries run low.

Swarm Robots. The NSF has pumped hundreds of thousands of dollars into a project that would turn autonomous, swarming robots into a vast waste-cleanup unit. Swarming robots work by communicating with each other wirelessly to tackle tasks. Waste-eliminating swarm bots would probably be waterborne, and capable of sucking up toxic spills on the ocean. They might convert the sludge into harmless material, or absorb it until they are full and then swim back to a central base to be drained into a safe container.