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NASA's LEMUR robot escaped Death Valley in its last field test
While rovers like Curiosity are doing a bang-up job exploring extraterrestrial terrain, they don't have the capability to scale cliffs and other hard-to-reach places. That's a job best left to climbing robots like LEMUR, a technology developed by engineers from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. JPL's engineers spent years refining the machine, which was originally conceived as a repair robot for the International Space Station. Now, the LEMUR (short for Limbed Excursion Mechanical Utility Robot) project has concluded, but not before JPL conducted a final field test in Death Valley, California.
Daily Update for December 9, 2011
It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here. No Flash? Click here to listen.
Lemur's multitouch music controller now available on iOS
Before the iPhone and the iPad made multitouch screens commonplace, there was the Lemur, a multitouch controller for synths, sequencers, and other electronic music instruments. The device has been used by musicians for quite a while, and it combines a touchscreen controller unit running a version of Linux with all sorts of musical electronic wizardry. Now, the Lemur interface has arrived on the iPad as an app, and it will connect via Wi-Fi to up to eight different computers to run any musical sequencers you happen to have around. I'm sorry to say that I'm not quite musical enough to use or buy an app like this, but I can definitely appreciate the power here. This is the full Lemur interface (used by professional musicians for years) complete with a full editor, custom scripting, custom-made controls, and even physics for those controls (so you can "throw" faders around or bounce dials and switches). The back end sounds really incredible, too. You can connect right out to CoreMIDI or any USB device with the iPad's camera connection dock, or use that aforementioned Wi-Fi connection. Sounds slick. The app is US$49.99, and it actually works on both the iPhone and the iPad. Reviews so far are great, so this sounds like a really cool piece of tech for musicians all the way up to the professional level.
5 apps for the lemur owner
Sometimes a wiseacre editor (we have a few) suggests we do a Five Apps post for a particularly offbeat area of interest. And sometimes we actually start brainstorming these. "Five Apps for the Lemur Owner" has been on our "to hit" list for ages now. The problem is we're not entirely sure we can get behind the idea of private lemur ownership. Sure, there are USDA-licensed lemur breeders, so you can buy a lemur legally in the US and feed it with easily-available primate-chow, but there are many good reasons that lemurs top lists of worst-pet-choices. And better ways to spend your money. That being said, TUAW has been promising a 5 Apps for the Lemur Owner write-up for years now. And it all came down to put up or shut up. We decided to put up. We hope you take this post with the lighthearted humor that is intended. On to the Monkey Business. For US$1.99, you can load your iPhone with Monkeys!!, (yes, those two exclamation points are part!! of its name!!), an app that offers over a hundred "fascinating images that [your pet lemur] will love...you'll never find a better selection of gorillas, apes, chimpanzees, lemurs, and other primates!" Perfect for the lemur whose just a wee bit bored with the primate who actually delivers the primate-chow and cleans up after it. If your lemur is something of a speciesist snob, there's an entire app devoted to lemurity. iLemur (free) offers "The first interactive encyclopedia of lemurs." The application helps you discover "lemur species from a dynamic mosaic," encouraging you to "Find the cutest!" Lest you be put off by this title, be assured the app is full of facts, offering physical characteristics, ecology, conservation status, and more. The Primates (also free) provides an all-round guide to all primates including lemurs, orangutans, gorillas, the guy you sit next to at work, and more. The marketing text specifies that "every primate lover should have this application." Moving on... There are primates aplenty to be enjoyed with ZooBorns, a free app that ties into the much-loved baby animal site. If you have not bookmarked ZooBorns in your browser, do so now. I'll wait. It's not a lemur-specific site, but it's one of the best child-friendly web pages around. Finally, we give you Banana Gun. Because someone had to. This free-app lets you roleplay as one of the last surviving bananas in the world, coming under attack by rabid monkeys. Only the elite banana warriors will triumph. And with that, we invite you to go bananas. (Next up? 5 Apps for the Amish. Send in your suggestions.)
Multitouch pioneer Jazzmutant / Stantum makes cocky three finger pan from past to future of input
Before the iPhone, Microsoft Surface or even Jeff Han's famous 2006 demonstration at TED, a commercial multitouch display already existed. It's a customizable music control surface called the Jazzmutant Lemur, and it dates back to at least 2004. Under the new name Stantum, Jazzmutant's touchscreens continue to impress, and now that its groundbreaking original finally has a potential competitor in the iPad, company co-founder Guillaume Largillier has granted Create Digital Music a sizable interview to comment on the future of the technology. Amidst jabs at Apple for developing a solution only a "Neanderthal" could love, the co-founder hints that the $2000 Lemur might finally see a price drop, and that the company's decided to license their tech to other multitouch tablet manufacturers. Be sure to bring your table salt before hitting our source link, as the second half of the piece is an editorial very much in Stantum's favor, but you might hold off on the full pinch -- it's a pretty good read nonetheless.
Last chance to save lemurs with Delicious developer Mike Lee
If a man bills himself as the world's toughest programmer (site may be NSFW, depending on your sensitivity to four-letter or 12-letter words) it's usually a good idea to take notice when he sets his mind to something. Delicious Monster developer Mike Lee has created a campaign to help save the lemur population of Madagascar, by soliciting $100 donations and in return sending the contributor a stuffed lemur, similar to Mike's world-traveling sidekick Thievey.Your opportunity to do some good, and join the Founding Troop of Club Thievey, closes out at midnight PT tonight. If you were considering a last-minute charitable donation, Mike's cause is a great option -- plus you get a cuddly lemur.Speaking of charitable donations that expire at midnight: the OLPC Give One-Get One program closes out tonight. For $400, you can send an XO laptop to a needy child and get another one for your local undersized technology consumer. Sure, it doesn't run Mac OS X, but it will blend in nicely with your old clamshell iBook collection.
Jazzmutant's multitouch tablet works with a stylus as well
The Jazzmutant folks have been doing multitouch since way before it was in vogue, with patents reaching back to 2004 and some nifty tech to back it up. They spend most of their time on the Lemur and Dexter media control surfaces, but they've been playing around with Tablet PCs, and their first prototype is a beauty. The main advantage of the tech is that it not only can handle unlimited points of contact, so you interact with your apps using as many fingers as you'd like, but it can also accept simultaneous Tablet PC pen input, with precision and pressure sensitivity to boot. They've got the tech retrofitted on a 12-inch Fujitsu tablet at the moment, which they showed off last week at the Siggraph Emerging Tech conference in San Diego. Things are a bit bulky at the moment, but hopefully the tech -- which can be scaled from portable devices to 60-inch LCDs without breaking a sweat -- will be finding its way into real tablets before long. The video is after the break.
