IllinoisInstituteOfTechnology
Latest
HyTAQ hybrid quadrotor robot travels by air and land, leaves us no place to hide (video)
Few robots can travel gracefully through more than one medium; more often than not, they're either strictly airborne or tied to the ground. The Illinois Institute of Technology's HyTAQ quadrotor doesn't abide by these arbitrary limits. The hybrid machine, designed by Arash Kalantari and Matthew Spenko, uses the same actuators to drive both its flight as well as a surrounding cage for rolling along on the ground, quickly switching between the two methods. It's clearly adaptable, but using the one system also provides large power advantages over a traditional quadrotor, Spenko tells us. While HyTAQ's battery lasts only for 5 minutes and 1,969 feet of pure flight, that jumps to 27 minutes and 7,874 feet when the robot can use a smooth floor instead -- and of course, it can hop over ground obstacles altogether instead of making a detour. The range of the robot and its pilot are the main limiting factors, but the patent process is already underway with hopes of winning commercial deals. We're both excited and worried as a result; as wonderfully flexible as HyTAQ is, widescale adoption could lead to especially relentless robots during the inevitable takeover.
Ilinois Institute of Technology jumps on the iPad bandwagon
Along with Seton Hill and George Fox University, The Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago will be giving a "free" iPad to between 500 and 600 incoming freshman. Since I'm sure they will be giving out the base model, this will cost the school between $250,000 and $300,000. In comments on the previous posts, it was clearly brought out that there's no such thing as a free lunch, and this may be nothing more than a clever marketing gimmick to increase enrollment in these financially strapped times. With IIT tuition coming in at a high, but in the ballpark, $31,363, I can easily understand that a school will try any number of things to keep the enrollment applications rolling in. In this case there may more to it than marketing, since IIT already teaches courses in mobile application development and there is an expectation of faculty in computer science and engineering to build specific iPad apps for use in their courses. With three schools on this particular bandwagon and more to come, where do you stand on this? Is this a marketing gimmick or an honest interest in implementing a new and useful educational technology? [via chicagobreakingnews.com]
