RT @KentBottles: Paralyzed, Moving a #Robot With Their Minds

MakerBot DIY Robot Petting Zoo, May 14, 2012 at 09:36AM, from adafruit industries blog http://www.adafruit.com/blog

Protei is a fleet of pollution collecting sailing drones. Initiated by Senior TED fellow Cesar Harada it is a result of collaboration between artists, designers and scientists and as such it belongs to the intersection between fields.It is designed as a low-cost open-source oil collecting device that semi-autonomously sails upwind, intercepting oil sheens going downwind. It is meant to be hurricane-ready, self-righting, inflatable, unbreakable, cheap and easy to manufacture for immediate response. It appropriates existing technologies so that it is possible to apply them quickly to address the crisis. The machine in development now is Protei_Oil_Spill for collecting spilled oil at sea, but being an open source project, other versions may be designed in the future for other purposes : Protei for the North Pacific Plastic garbage patch, heavy metals in coastal areas, toxic substances in urbanized waterways...

There’s a great science fiction story, “The Electric Ant”; in it, an injured man is taken to the hospital, where operating surgeons discover that, unbeknownst to him, he’s an android. After hearing the news, the man realizes his reality is dictated by reels of punched tape in his chest. He begins to tamper with the reels. After punching a new hole, a flock of ducks flies through his room. When he cuts the tape entirely, the world disappears.

The story is by Philip K. Dick, the legendary flipped-out weirdo and science fiction author whose books have been endlessly adapted into films. Everyone knows Blade Runner, based on his novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? What most people don’t know is that the late Philip K. Dick has been reincarnated. As an android.

The story begins in 2004, when a team of roboticists and intelligent systems designers built a functional robotic likeness of Philip K. Dick. It looked like Dick, dressed like Dick – down to the gauche floral button-ups – and could hold forth on a wide range of subjects pertaining to his work. A low-res YouTube clip of the android in its prime shows it casually propped up on a brown divan, servomotors quietly abuzz, calmly informing its interlocutors that he was not a writer, but a “fictionalizing philosopher.”

Veteran ZX Spectrum videogame creator, Martin Wheeler has launched a new indie project which he hopes will help his daughter and others like her, affected by autism. Go Robo! is a casual arcade game featuring a booty-shaking robot, deadly dancing girls and a soundtrack of electro beats. Developed for iPhone and play-tested by the designer's two children, the game is out now on the App Store and 25% of all sales are being donated to support people with autism, via the National Autistic Society.

CreeperWare today launches Vortex - The Escape 2.1 for iOS, a genre-defying blend of action platformer and puzzle game, allowing for both fast paced action gameplay and/or methodical puzzle play. Players control ENDR, a quirky robot, as he weaves his way through the testing facility with the aid of his Vortex gun. An outdated robot, he tries to prove his worth, defying gravity, traveling impossible distances, and weaving through environmental hazards to complete 32 levels.