Remote Control

With the help of the Swinglet CAM you can create your very own local aerial map a la Google Maps, or monitor wildlife distribution in a given area, or maybe just get a feel for what's going on in the neighborhood. The small, unmanned aerial vehicle can take off and land on its own and its integrated camera will snap high resolution images along a predetermined flightpath or as directed by remote control. Read More

Mail order retailer Hammacher Schlemmer is hoping that someone out there will be willing to plunk down the price of a luxury automobile on its Emotive Robotic Avatar. The US$65,000 device is essentially a stationary remote-control robot, through which its user can carry on conversations, make gestures, and convey five different emotions. On one hand it's a taste of the future, on the other... that's a very expensive puppet. Read More

Parrot's AR Drone, the iphone-controlled, twin-camera packing RC quadrocopter we first saw in action at CES 2010 has now been released. The US$300 flyer features interchangeable hulls for indoor and outdoor use, flight stabilization, autopilot technology, plus it can be networked with other drones for multi-player gameplay. Read More

It’s just what every young boy with a messy bedroom has dreamed of – a robot that trundles across the floor, picks things up, and takes them away. WowWee’s Roboscooper can do just that, although it’s limited to small objects that weigh no more than an ounce. The toy robot has six rubber wheels, a cargo bed, articulated arms, and a WALL-E-like head with infrared eyes. Users can guide it to objects manually with the remote control, or leave it in autonomous mode, where it roams around (avoiding obstacles) and picks up whatever it comes across. It then takes the items to a location determined by the user, where it shakes them out of its cargo bed. Read More

Sick of straining your arm to get that all-important above the crowd video angle? Here's a solution that will give you a true birds-eye view. Due to hit the market at the end of the year, FlyingLift is a remote controlled quadrocopter which can carry a conventional video camera of up too 500 grams in weight while beaming images back to the ground in real-time. The system consists of an electrically powered carbon fiber chopper, a backpack-mounted receiver unit, a hand-held controller and a set of video glasses which deliver what the camera sees to one eye while leaving the other eye free to follow the quadrocopter in flight. Read More

Last week the RMS Titanic, Inc. finally finished up an unprecedented photography expedition at the site of the sunken Titanic off the coast of Newfoundland. The team obtained high-definition and even 3D images which surpassed any photos taken of the wreck site to date. They completed the mission just in time too, with Hurricane Igor ushering them back to shore, like a cranky museum security guard scolding you for taking too many pictures. Read More

How many device remotes do you have? One for the TV, one for the DVD/Blu-ray player, one for cable/satellite box, one for the hi-fi and perhaps even one for the computer – have I missed any? Maybe you've tried to consolidate all of these various remotes into one big universal control with lots and lots of buttons. The Gesture Remote offers something a bit different. The simple interface is completely free of buttons and spatial thumb gestures are used to access menus and choose content. Read More

The main event of the Robotech exhibition held in Tokyo this past week featured the Robo-One Grand Prix event, pitting an assortment of bipedal humanoid robots against each other in an improvised octagonal wrestling ring. Many of you might have seen clips of Japan's rastlin' robots, but as there were more than a few impressive takedowns and attacks on show, I thought I'd share a few highlights. Read More

BAE Systems’ Multi-Operated All-Terrain Vehicle (MOATV) is a semi-autonomous vehicle designed to reduce the burden on ground troops. As well as being driven like an ordinary vehicle, the MOATV can be tele-operated by a remote control or instructed to semi-autonomously follow or go directly to a soldier operating a PDA. The company says the technology on the MOATV, which includes collision detection and avoidance systems that allow it to negotiate around objects that lie in its path while operating autonomously, can be applied to any vehicle. Read More