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University of Michigan's MABEL robot hits a stride, breaks a leg (video)
We're going to warn you up front. This isn't easy to watch, but robotics research can sometimes be a nasty business, and some things just can't be left unseen. At the center of the disaster waiting to happen pictured above is MABEL, a bipedal robot that researchers at the University of Michigan have been working on for the past few years, and which, on an otherwise ordinary May 18th, made its first attempt at walking over rough ground. Things got off to a well enough start, with MABEL able to walk with a reasonably natural gait, and even recover after a small slip after a few boards where placed in her path. As the university itself points out, however, the whole point of the experiment was to "push her til she cracked" -- and crack she did, with a shin eventually giving way after one too many boards were added, resulting in one of the sadder sights we've seen in our years of robot watching. Head on past the break for the complete video, if you can handle it.
Ford, U-M students send socially-connected Fiestas on cross-country roadtrip, aim to become Mayor of the USA
Ford is certainly no stranger to internet-connected cars, but it looks like it's now truly stepped up its game with a little help from some University of Michigan students, who have teamed up to send two Fiestas on a socially-networked, cross-country road trip. The two cars (part of the American Journey 2.0 project) apparently each pack a similar trunk-full of gear -- including both WiMAX and EV-DO modems, and a 2.6 GHz PC with an 80GB SSD hard drive -- and they'll each be testing out a number of different applications developed by Ford and the students. Those include the UMich-developed Caravan app, which allows the two cars to communicate with each other during the trip, and three different Ford-developed social networking apps, which will let the cars blog and tweet their progress and, yes, even check in on Foursquare each time they make a stop. Head on past the break for the complete press release, and be sure to hit up the Autoblog link below for a closer look at the cars themselves.
