It's only taken about a million years, but someone has finally decided that improvements are possible in automobile braking lights. Students from Virginia Tech have developed a new system that can show not just whether you're stopping, but if you're slowing down, when you're about to stop, and how quickly you're pressing the pedal. The concept uses an array of horizontally arranged LED lights -- when you begin to slow, lights in the center glow orange, after a certain threshold side lights turn to red, and if you're slamming on the brake, they'll all flash red. The team, led by mechanical engineering Professor Mehdi Ahmadian, has plans for the system beyond the lab, though they speculate that it will be easier to add them as additional indicators on commercial vehicles at first. If this pans out, someday soon we may all be tailgating a totally psychedelic light show.

While the Virginia Tech Hokies tend to rely more on dazzling special teams teams play than sheer defensive prowess, the players take a lickin' regardless. In a presumed extension of Beamer Ball, the sparkly helmets donned by the football squad will sport internal accelerometers and wireless transmitters that beam (ahem) information about the seriousness of each blow to a Sybase database in order to tell if and when a certain player has had enough. The primary objective is to prevent any long-term injuries and detect concussions before individuals can even realize they're hurt, and an interesting byproduct of the system has shown what types of thwacks are typically sustained at different positions. The HITS (head impact telemetry system) technology could reportedly be used in places like the battlefield as well, or moreover, rigorous rounds of Wii Boxing -- but we're sure WVU's Punchstat system is already on top of that.

[Photo courtesy of VT]

Although we've seen failed attempts at turning amoebas into helpers, Virginia Tech's Dennis Hong is hoping that his creations will see a bit more success. Using funding from the prestigious CAREER grant, the researcher is designing a Whole Skin Locomotion (WSL) mechanism "for robots to work on much the same principle as the pseudopod, or cytoplasmic foot, of the amoeba." The device's primary goal seems to hover around the world of search-and-rescue, as the diminutive crawler can maneuver in and around tight spaces without regard for its own health, and of course, a nearly-microscopic bot just can't be developed without hinting at one day ending up somewhere inside your body. Notably, it appears that Mr. Hong isn't satisfied with just building a prototype, as he's already got plans for implementing the technology into projects such as IMPASS (Intelligent Mobility Platform with Active Spoke System, DARwin (Dynamic Anthropomorphic Robot with Intelligence), and STriDER (Self-Excited Tripedal Dynamic Experimental Robot).

[Via MedGadget]

In a fitting tribute to the pioneering scientist after whom it was named, Virginia Tech's Dynamic Anthropomorphic Robot with Intelligence (DARwIn) has finally "evolved" enough (it's now on the fourth iteration, DARwIn IIb) to compete in the traditional Japanese sport of robot soccer. The VT team -- composed of striker DARwIn IIa and goalie DARwIn I -- will reportedly be the first US competitors in the humanoid division of the popular RoboCup tournament, whose 2007 finals are actually being held right here on American soil in Atlanta. DIIa, the more sophisticated of the Robotics & Mechanisms Laboratory's (RoMeLa's) two bots, is built around a LabVIEW-powered 1.4GHz Pentium M with 1GB of RAM, 256KB of flash memory, 23 total actuators, a pair of FireWire cameras, and a gyroscope -- clearly the delicate head-mounted cam was designed before the head-butting ugliness of World Cup 2006. Keep reading to check out a vid of big D in action -- as well as tumbling over -- and then hit up the Read link for more pics, specs, and action-packed soccerbot clips.