The Geek Church

Hey folks, recently a new form of robotics has been developed by a 27-year old man from Poland.  However, it may surprise you that this man is not an engineer or inventor by trade.  He actually works as a web designer who specializes in graphic design.  You will also probably find it unusual that his building materials of choice for his robotic design is ordinary Lego parts.

According to available sources, the name of this man is Paul and he lives in Warsaw, Poland.  Apparently, he has chosen not to give his last name but he is also known by the name “Sariel” and building things with Lego parts is one of his personal hobbies.  Last weekend, he built a robotic arm out of Lego parts that took two days to construct.  However, this creation is a motorized, functioning mechanical arm.

The robotic arm is operated with four remote-controlled motors and a four-valve pneumatic system.  All of the hand’s fingers are controlled pneumatically and they can adapt to the shape of any grabbed object.  The pneumatic system is powered from an airtank that filled by an electric compressor.  The arm’s joints are operated by linear actuators electrically.  The palm of the hand can also be rotated 360 degrees.

(more…)

Wacom, makers of some cool touchpads has made several models with multiouch capacity.

Once again, the words “world’s smallest” has come up, this time with TRENDnet’s world’s smallest Wireless N USB adapter.

For those of you might be looking for a new Bluetooth headset should be looking at the i.VoicePRO 901.

Samsung has been making a cell phone with a very advanced camera with the SCH-W880.

Panasonic is planning on putting out a 50-inch 1080p Plasma screen that is Blu-Ray compatible. It is also 3-D compatible.

Here is a terrific new product, the Adesso 19-Key USB Numeric Keypad and Optical Mouse.

Like Lego? So do I? Here’s two new products that use Mini figures.

Here’s something interesting: a robot that obeys the master’s thoughts.

I don’t know if you’re familiar with Lego Mindstorms, but they are a serious set of Legos designed to make all sorts of programmable robotic toys.

In fact, I wouldn’t say that Mindstorms creations are toys, but complex robots. Like this one where Hans Andersson (middle name Christian?) designed that can solve Sudoku puzzles.

Watch the video if you don’t believe me, but it does this by scanning, and then from the data it writes in the appropriate numbers. It does it faster than I do it, with better handwriting.

Pretty amazing, isn’t it? Hey, it turns out that Hans Andersson’s next project is going to be metallurgical. There is a picture of it after the jump.

(more…)