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Sometimes, all you need in life is a cat tail cushion
You may not instantly recognize the name "Yukai Engineering," but you may have already come across its earlier products like the Necomimi brainwave cat ears or the Bocco "family robot" at some point. At CEATEC, the Japanese company unveiled its latest wacky product, the Qoobo "tail therapy" robot. This is essentially a cushion with a realistic cat tail that reacts to stroking and patting, such that it's able to comfort its "owner" like a real pet would simply through tail wagging. To make it more lifelike, Qoobo also wags its tail randomly when it is left alone for too long.
Neurowear wants to read your mind, geotag your feelings (video)
Geotagging your photos? Old hat -- Neurowear wants to geotag your mood. The folks that brought animated cat ears to the human race is now using NeuroSky's brainwave-reading headgear to suss out your emotional state and share it with your friends. We dropped in on the group at Tokyo Game Show to take a look at an early prototype. After strapping a familiar Mindwave mobile headset to this editor's skull, a companion iPhone app sprung to life, reading off relaxation levels and assigning cartoon faces to the user's mood. The reading could then be recorded on a map, tagging how the user felt at a given location and time and allowing them to share that information with their friends. Had a great time at a new coffee shop? Now you can prove it, and encourage your social contacts to join you. It's an interesting idea, but its still a long way from hitting the app store -- the demo we were given was only a concept app, and the geotagging portion of the demonstration was simulated. It may be awhile before you can tweet your feelings directly. Need another way to express yourself? Don't worry -- Nerosky is adding a brainwave controlled tail, dubbed Shippo, to its line of cranium controlled animal parts. Check it out (as well as our quick neurotagging demo) after the break. %Gallery-166239%
X-RHex Lite robot grows a tail, always lands on its feet (video)
By far the greatest challenge for robots with legs is staying upright when the going gets rough. A team at the University of Pennsylvania's Kod*lab has a hunch that we don't need extra smarts to make that happen -- just an extra appendage. The upgraded X-RHex Lite (XRL) carries a tail that will swing in the right direction to keep the robot upright if it's caught out by a fall, much like a cat. That's impressive for a nearly 18-pound robot (the previous Tailbot was 0.4 pounds), but we're pretty sure no feline has six springy legs; the XRL can crash to the ground and still get back up like it ain't no thing, which gives it a fudge factor others don't have. We don't know if the hexapod critter will lead to more than further experiments. If there are fewer stuck rovers on future exploration missions, though, we'll know who to thank.
3D-printed tail hooks up with Arduino, wags the dog (video)
In the year 3000, surgeons should be able to graft animal body parts onto our willing flesh. But, let's be real, aside from a reanimated Walt Disney (ok, not really), most of us won't live to see that scifi horror-filled day. Filling in, for the time being, is a nifty Arduino hack from the mind of one Artharis that breathes erratic life into a 3D printed tail. Its clumsy flailing is more disturbed-dragon-with-ADHD than aroused puppy, but we'll take what we can get for now. Shame, though, that Halloween's already come and gone, otherwise this would've made for a nice house party icebreaker. Peep the spastic animatronic in motion after the break.
Robotic 'mood tail' is everything you hope it to be, and more
Why hang on to your emotions when you can wag them proudly with a robotic mood tail? Sure, you may never have asked that question yourself, but intrepid DIYer Wei-Chieh Tseng seemingly has, and he's done something about it. Apparently, the tail makes use of the ever dependable Arduino and an RFID reader to detect different emotion cards that set off varying degrees of tail-wagging, or you can simply control the tail yourself using a Wii nunchuck -- because, why not? Did we mention there's a video? Check it out after the break.
Double-amputee New Zealander has mermaid dreams fulfilled
New Zealander Nadya Vessey -- who lost both of her legs to the knee when she was a child -- has just received a prosthesis that's pretty much unlike anything we've ever seen (outside of Splash). About two years ago, she approached Weta Workshop, who specialize in design and manufacturing of costumes and special effects (and have worked on projects such as The Lord of the Rings trilogy) to see if the company might be interested in making her a working, prostethic mermaid tail. Turns out they were, and they've just completed the final product. The tail, which is composed of wetsuit fabric and plastic molds, with a custom paint job and digitally-imaged effects, enables Nadya to swim quite effectively, apparently, and is an all around sexy piece of machinery. No word on what one of these slick dudes would cost in real life, but we have a feeling we couldn't justify the expense just to tool around in the kiddie pool.Update: Check out the video after the break![Thanks, Pyper]
Breakfast Topic: Should raid progression even be tracked anymore?
With the ease of Wrath of the Lich King raiding we're seeing guilds kill boss after boss at an alarming rate. And I'm not just talking about 5-man heroic bosses (those seem a bit hard, actually). I'm not even talking about 10-man bosses (easy cake). I'm talking about the big bad sorry excuse for a boss that is 25-man raiding.Some guilds can roll their face over the keyboard and kill something.Others just have their cat play with the mouse and keyboard for a couple hours.Still others are hiring 25 monkeys to sit in a room together clapping their hands while throwing feces at the screen. The occasional flick of their tail hits the keyboard and presses any of the numerous iWin buttons currently in game that automatically kills a level 83 mob. While the monkeys are doing this and other disgusting acts, they're also writing Shakespearian dramas, fixing the economy, bailing out the auto industry and homeowners, and ending all wars through creating world peace.This is what 25-man raiding has become. It's so easy a caveman monkey could do it!Do boss kills even count for anything anymore? Not really, no.
CyberConnect2 planning something or other for the DS
CyberConnect2, like every Japanese developer with any damn sense, is working on a new game for the DS. The question is: what is it? Based on this preview image, the likely candidates are: a new Tail Concerto game, and a new entry in the excessively serial .hack series.The big mechs and anthropomorphic animals suggest Tail Concerto. However, the reference to "The World" (which was the name of the fake MMORPG in .hack) as well as a character that looks just like .hack's protagonist Kite, hint at a .hack game.Who knows? Maybe it'll be a combination of the two. Maybe it'll be a board game with characters from both series.[Via NeoGAF]
