Imagination Factory

Dani Clode How many times have you wished for a third hand while trying to carry too many things? Well, you can't have that yet because it's not a thing (at least not an  available thing ), but maybe you  can  get yourself another thumb, which is almost as good. Dani Clode, a graduate student at the Royal College of Art in London, created The Third Thumb, a 3D-printed  prosthetic  that straps onto your hand. The thumb is motorized and connected by cables to a bracelet. Pressure sensors underneath the wearer's feet connect to the thumb's motors via bluetooth. So, working the extra digit just requires you to press down with your foot. Clode said that she linked the thumb to foot controls because with actions like driving, using a sewing machine or playing piano, we already have practice completing tasks that require hands and feet to work together. Clode says the project is meant to explore how we can add capabilities to our bodies wit...

Sphero's made a name for itself with connected, rolling toys like the   Ollie ,   SPRK   and, perhaps most famously, the   Star Wars -inspired   BB-8 . Of course, the company couldn't have brought its replica of the   Force Awakens character to market without Disney's approval, and the two seem to be keen on working together. Today, Sphero introduced its first app-controlled car, based on the "Ultimate Lighting McQueen" personality from Pixar's   Cars   franchise. Sphero says the new toy is its most animatronic device yet, featuring six motors for steering, drifting, lifting and moving up and down, as well as animated eyes and a mouth that make it feel more realistic. In addition, there are five capacitive touch panels around the vehicle's shell, which let you do things like wake it up and have it talk to you by simply rubbing your hands on spots like the windshield. The companion app isn't only for driving, as Sphero's built-in a ...

Carnegie Mellon Creating a smart home currently requires either linking every connected device one-by-one or adding sensor tags to old appliances to make a cohesive IoT network, but there might be an easier way. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon  developed  a concept for a hub that, when plugged into an electrical outlet, tracks ambient environmental data -- essentially becoming a sensor that tracks the whole space. With this in hand, savvy programmers can use it to trigger their own connected home routines. The researchers introduced their sensor nexus -- dubbed  Synthetic Sensors -- this week at ACM CHI, the human-computer interaction conference. As the video demonstrates, just plug it into a USB wall port and it automatically collects information about its surroundings, uploading it to a cloud back-end over WiFi. Machine learning on the device parses results into recognizable events, like recognizing a particular sound pattern as "dishwasher is r...

Hayo The IoT-powered  smart home  has caught the tech world's fancy for years, promising domestic command at your fingertips. But beyond set-and-forget environmental preferences, connected devices are usually configured via smartphone app or voice-controlled through a hub. But if you want to flick on your IoT machines with a wave or table tap,  Hayo  will soon launch an Indiegogo to bring spatial remotes to your living room. Each Hayo device is a camera-equipped cylinder you park in a corner of a room. Turn it on, connect it to WiFi, and it will scan the area, creating a spatial map. You can use its dedicated smartphone app to assign specific triggers corresponding to particular places in the room: Tap the end of the table to flick off the lights, wiggle your hand in front of the TV to turn it on, and so on. Of course, it'll still take a minute to link your web of devices and corresponding activation areas, and perhaps tapping your bookshelf...

Remember the movie  Xanadu  about a Greek muse that comes to earth and rollerskates into everyone's heart? The  leaked footage  of Boston Dynamics' two-wheeled robot Handle is sort of like that. Except replace the movie's disco soundtrack with the screams of frightened humans. The two-wheeled "Handle" robot was presented by Boston Dynamics' founder Marc Raibert at a function attended by venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson who shot the video. During the event Railbert said that the rolling humanoid was built to carry items (hence the name Handle) and is an experiment in combining wheels with legs. He also said it's more efficient than and could be less expensive than the  Atlas walking robot . Of course it would be limited to smooth surfaces.  The footage (which Boston Dynamics asked Jurvetson to blur but has since been mirrored by other accounts) shows the Handle spinning and leaping with ease on smooth surfaces. It's incredi...

W e've  touched the hardware  and were left with some good impressions. But that's only half of the equation: What about the games? Nintendo is offering several upgraded (and some brand new) titles for the Switch. While some depend on the new controller interfaces ( Arms ) and sharing aspects of the new console ( 1-2-Switch! ), others, in classic Nintendo style, tap in our nostalgia ( Sonic Mania, Ultimate Street Fighter 2 ). And there was another chance to play  Zelda . Here's every title we could get our hands on at the Switch event. 'Splatoon 2' It's  Splatoon , innit? It felt just as good as the original Wii U game, with smooth frame rates and Nintendo's cutesy idealized urban environments. Barely anyone's played the original, so the lack of progress here isn't likely to faze either ardent fans or newcomers. We all just want more  Splatoon. Incidentally, this was one of two games I played wholly on the Switch rather th...

Keeping a motorcycle upright at high speeds is simple, mostly you just have to hang on. Yet, when a bike is slowly cruising through a parking lot, in traffic, or at a stop, balance is handled by the rider. That can be difficult on larger, heavier cycles like cruisers. Honda's trying to make bike stability easier with its new Riding Assist technology. Honda's bike doesn't just help a person keep a bike upright, though. The motorcycle also keeps its self upright, even without a rider. The researchers realized that if a bike can stay upright on its own, then why not allow the bike be able to drive itself, so it did. If you're thinking that Honda has outfitted their research bike with gyroscopes, though, you would be mistaken. Instead the company has taken its Uni-Cub mobility research and applied it to a real-world problem. Not everyone wants the bike to handle balance though. No problem, as the bike transforms from regular riding mode to balance mode. When it does this...

Disney's research division  revealed  last year that one of the company's goals is to bring its fictional characters  to life ... as robots. Well, folks, we may now be witnessing the birth of a robotic Tigger. The House of Mouse's scientists have  designed  a bouncy machine with one leg that can hop around without support. It can only stay upright for around 19 hops before it adorably topples over, but according to its creators, other one-legged robots and aren't as portable and can't balance on a single limb without a tether.  Tigger-bot, however, can naturally bounce on its own. The secret lies in its leg mechanism that the researchers call "Linear Elastic Actuator in Parallel" or LEAP. It uses compression springs to support the structure's weight and a voice coil that pushes against the ground. We're sure it helps that the whole leg can move forward, backward, right and left instead of staying rigid. It will likely take a...

As much as we enjoy virtual reality these days, there's still the occasional urge to fiddle with virtual objects using just our hands. If all goes well, the upcoming  Manus VR glove  will be the first to unwrap our hands from controllers, but it'll only provide tactile feedback, meaning you still won't be able to feel the shape nor physical properties of virtual objects. This is where Dexmo comes in: This mechanical exoskeleton glove tracks 11 degrees of freedom of motion and offers variable force feedback for each finger. To put it simply, you'll be able to realistically squeeze a rubber duck in the VR world. Better yet, this seemingly clunky glove claim to be lightweight and also runs wirelessly "for a relatively long time." Dexta Robotics, the Chinese startup behind Dexmo, has spent the last two years coming up with over 20 prototypes before getting to the current version. Unfortunately for us mere mortals, it'll be a while be...

    Sponsored Links by Taboola IoT Gateway Protocols: Modbus vs. MQTT Intel 3 Fun Android Apps that Bring a World of New Knowledge Right to Your Device Intel How the Intel Compiler Vectorizes Your Code—And Why You Should Let It Intel Best known for its sleek and  intelligent remote controlled cars , Anki is stepping into new territory with its latest product, a small robot toy named  Cozmo . If you've seen  Wall-E , you've already got a good sense of its personality. Thanks to a combination of artificial intelligence, robotic movement designed by former Pixar animators and computer vision technology, Cozmo is curious and incredibly expressive, with the ability to interact with the world around it. It's smart enough to recognize your face and remember you over time, and it can explore its environment and play games with its very own toys. But it's most interesting feature? It's n...