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The saga of the Apple stair comes to a $9950 end
Ten days ago we reported that eBay seller heylookitskibbe was auctioning a stair from the staircase from the Fifth Avenue Apple retail store in New York. Shortly after our report, the stuff hit the fan. Heylookitskibbe turned out to be former Apple employee, Mark Burstiner. The stair, made by Seele GmbH exclusively for Apple, was being replaced by Seele employees when Burstiner asked if he could have it. They gave the 250 pound stair to him, which he kept for a year before auctioning it. When Seele GmbH saw the news that the stair was on eBay they claimed ownership of the stair and demand that the auction be taken down and the stair returned to them. Burstiner removed the auction but refused to return the stair, claiming that it had become his property. Yesterday we reported that, despite the legal threats, the auction was back on eBay. The auction has now come to an end with Burstiner raking in $9950 for little more than a chunk of glass thousands of people have walked on. The starting bid was $700 with a Buy It Now price of $2500.
Air-fuelled STAIR battery could last ten times longer than traditional cells
It's funny, really. We've figured out how to put men an women on the moon and repair an orbiting telescope, but we can't concoct an AA battery that lasts more than four days inside a Teddy Ruxpin. Thanks to a revolutionary new design from the labs at the University of St Andrews, all that could be well on the way to changin'. Researchers at said institution have teamed up with partners at Strathclyde and Newcastle in order to design an air-fuelled STAIR (St Andrews Air) cell that could theoretically last up to ten times longer than current batteries. Put as simply as possible, this design utilizes oxygen in the air as a re-agent instead of heavy, costly chemicals; the result is a lighter, cheaper battery with loads more capacity. Needless to say, gurus within the project are already dreaming of a prototype to fit in small gizmos such as cellphones or MP3 players, though we wouldn't expect one anytime soon -- after all, there's still two years of research left to complete.[Thanks, Khattab]
Watch out, Rosie: Stanford researchers developing robot butler
Sure we all love robots that can play soccer, crawl through our intestines, or blow things up, but the real holy grail of robotics -- at least to the lazy folks among us -- is a multi-purpose bot that can perform a number of different tasks that humans find distasteful: we need a robot butler. Well thanks to a team of 30+ researchers at Stanford University (the same school that brought us Stanley the Grand Challenge-winning, um, autobot), our dream of one day bossing a domestic bot around the house while we blog from the hot tub may soon come to fruition, as the school's so-called STAIR program has just achieved the first of its four major objectives. Using a webcam and a proprietary algorithm, the STAIR bot is now able to analyze an unknown object and decide how to pick it up based on past experiences; so although it may never have encountered a roll of duct tape, for instance, it can query its on-board database to locate similar objects from which it can form a grasping strategy. The next steps for the robobutler will be significantly more difficult, however, as the project will only be deemed a success when the bot is able to clean up after a party (including loading the dishwasher), assemble one of those frustrating pieces of IKEA furniture using multiple tools, and guide guests around a dynamic space such as a research lab. Just don't expect to see the STAIR bot at your local Circuit City or temp agency anytime soon, as it won't be able to adequately fetch open-air objects until sometime in 2008 and hidden objects until 2011 or later, according to team leader Andrew Ng. Still, we love where this research is headed, because when it comes time for the inevitable mechatronic uprising, our future overlords will be able to calmingly lead us to our dungeons by the hand instead of painfully dragging us by the ear, nose, or other sensitive body part. Click on to check out the robobutler perched on its Segway-based mobility platform...[Via Robot Gossip]
