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Kinect hack turns Arduino-controlled delta robot into aggressive claw crane (video)
Candy crane, teddy picker, claw machine, whatever you call it, this arcade mainstay was robbing children of their golden tokens long before we slid into our first pair of Hammer pants, but despite the changing face of the plush offerings within, the crane game's remained mostly the same. Now a team of students at the Bartlett School of Architecture have produced a Kinect hack that could change the way you drop that claw. The rather temperamental delta robot enlists the ever-hackable peripheral in combination with Processing and Arduino to mimic the movements of a user's arm. As you can tell by the video below, the delta hasn't quite figured out the subtleties of human gestures, but the robot's creators say they intend to implement "several autonomous behaviors" once all the kinks are worked out. Frankly, we'd pay our weight in tokens to see the crane game bite back at an unsuspecting whippersnapper. Video after the break.
Haier selects Philips ULC phone design for China
Chinese handset manufacturer Haier recently announced that they've selected Philips' Ultra Low Cost (ULC) reference phone design based on the Nexperia 5128 chipset in their bid to get cellphones into the hands of as many of China's 1.5 billion potential customers as possible. The handset itself, the the HG-Z1000, promises 280 hours of standby time and a relatively weak 3 hours talk time. Given its ultra low cost nature, you shouldn't be suprised to learn that it's otherwise pretty short of features, although it does have a vibrating alert, SMS capability, and 16 soft midi ringtones. Haier also seems really intent on the phone's "ultra low cost," although they don't say how low that cost will actually be, nor do they give a firm launch date.[Via Slashphone]
