remote control

Adding a new wrinkle to the 'droid versus iPhone debate, a project at Keio University in Tokyo have created iPhone software specifically designed to control androids. More specifically, they've created an interface that puts control of a humanoid robot right at your fingertips.

A recent ad for Vodafone featured Formula One champ Lewis Hamilton piloting his F1 steed, as if it were an RC car, using a Bluetooth-enabled smartphone. Many were fooled, some were not, but really it was just a wishful-thinking play by clever ad people.

But one such convergence of smartphones and automobiles apparently is legit. Computer science researchers at Berlin's Free University worked up this Chrysler minivan that can be controlled remotely by an iPhone app.

In January, researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, told a stunned conference audience that they had managed to create a remote-controlled cyborg beetle by attaching a computer chip to the brain of a giant insect. Now, the paper explaining how they did it has been published in the journal Frontiers In Neuroscience, and they have released a video of the cyber-bug in action.

Lose this remote control you’ve got a serious problem. In two short weeks, a group of German scientists will unveil the iPoint 3D, which allows users to communicate with a 3-D display through simple finger gestures. The technology doesn’t require a data glove, 3-D glasses or any contact with the screen. On the down side it doesn’t negate the need to actually lift your arm.

American soldiers have a bevy of hand-launched unmanned aerial vehicles to choose from these days, but nothing quite as nimble, lightweight and cheap as the Stevens Institute of Technology’s unmanned helicopter. The chopper would allow soldiers to check tall buildings for enemies by flying the camera-equipped, remote-controlled helicopter up staircases and into hidden corners before they go in. The four-pound prototype is made of a doughnut-shaped fiberglass shell 18 inches in diameter; inside, two counter-rotating 14-inch rotors create lift.

For many, the word "apprentice" brings to mind the whimsical scene from Disney's Fantasia where Mickey Mouse, the poor peon to the sorcerer, creates a mess of his master's workspace when the brooms and buckets come to life in a magical musical number. The helicopter apprenticeship at Stanford University seems to contain some of the same elements of unrealism, as helicopters learn to fly and execute complex airborne tricks without a human pilot in the cockpit. In this case, however, there is science behind the magic.

Ah the sweet smell of litigation in the afternoon. Nintendo, hardly a shrinking violet when it comes to courting lawsuits, is being sued Hillcrest Labs over the provenance of the Wii controller.

Instructables user Kipkay has a project that claims to block IR signals from any receiving device. For example, prevent someone from changing channels on a TV. This magic is achieved through scrambling the remotes IR signal. Based on a 555 Timer IC, Kipkay states that this circuit can be innocuously housed inside a standard remote control for activating/deactivating its IR signal jamming function.

(Image: Kipkay)