ArsElectronica

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  • Quadrocopter fleet stuns Londoners with giant hovering Star Trek logo (video)

    by 
    Jamie Rigg
    Jamie Rigg
    03.25.2013

    Before quadrocopters become Skynet's roaming recon fleet, they'll begrudgingly entertain us, and in a recent promotional enterprise, a swarm braved the London "spring" to remind us of the imminent launch of Star Trek: Into Darkness. Over the weekend, drone masters Ars Electronica Futurelab sent a party of 30 LED-tagged AscTec Hummingbirds halfway to Hoth, and used the relative darkness of Earth Hour to set an approximately 300-foot high Star Trek logo twinkling over Tower Bridge. A video of the event can be found below, complete with epic music and movie cut-scenes sure to send even the most Vulcan of trekkers to sickbay with hysteria. If anyone behind the promotion is reading -- please, whatever you do, just don't give them phasers.

  • Robot Partner 2.0 shuffles objects around the table so you don't have to

    by 
    Joseph L. Flatley
    Joseph L. Flatley
    09.16.2008

    This is Robot Partner 2.0 by Slovenian artist Stefan Doepner. Recently exhibited at the 2008 ARS Electronica Festival, Robot Partner is billed as a robotic "living table installation." The table can clumsily shuffle objects around itself using an undisclosed technology (magnets, perhaps?) and is intended to showcase the "absurdity" of "service-automation." We're not entirely sure what that means, but you can see for yourself after the break.[Via Make]