Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, Robots

Inventor extraordinaire Dean Kamen spoke at D today about the latest developments in the Luke arm. Not that it wasn’t already impressive enough, but Kamen’s company, DEKA Research, has made even more astonishing developments in the arm’s interface, complementing the early mechanical controls with spatial and neural interfaces. The shot above was taken of a man with transected nerves, which were interfaced directly to the arm, enabling him to delicately utilize numerous degrees of motion within hours of installation. Also in development for the Luke arm is a spatial interface (which would intelligently give some control of movement back to the arm itself), as well as a non-invasive mind interface that utilizes infrared to read neural signals through the skull. Furthermore, to lend in balance and motion with heavier usage, a new body-mounting chassis was built, featuring embedded bladders that tense up (inflate). Fricking crazy stuff. Shots from Kamen’s demo videos below.

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Filed under: Gaming, iPod Family, Interviews, iPhone

TUAW was lucky enough to spend a little time recently chatting with Anders Nilsson of Polarbit.com. Polarbit is an independent game developer based in Europe. They recently ported their mobile Raging Thunder racing game to the iPhone and released it as a free beta to the jailbreak community. (It’s hosted at the Big Boss repository.) Built around the iPhone’s accelerometer, Raging Thunder really expresses the fun, interactive potential of the iPhone as a gaming platform.

Read on past the jump for the full transcript of our interview.

Continue reading iPhone’s Raging Thunder: the Developer Interview

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

We’ll spare you our feelings on non-QWERTY layouts, but one thing’s for sure — Maurin Donneaud’s Carpet ‘board would certainly stretch the mind and leg muscles if used for any length of time. It isn’t the first fabric keyboard to grace the phalanges of eager typists, but this DIY concoction is definitely the largest we’ve seen. Peck the links below for more shots of the construction process.

[Via Hack-A-Day]

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Never mind paying absurd quantities of cash to have some swing analyzer tell you how you’ll never be like Tiger — just pick yourself up one of these concoctions. E Ball’s inflatable golf simulator not only consumes your entire backyard, it takes you back to those glory days of frolicking at the fair with your BFF, and it even allows you to practice your game in less-than-flawless weather. The device enables amateurs to work on their driving and putting, all without having to fetch balls afterwards or deal with the embarrassment of completely hacking it up in front of your more seasoned pals. It looks as if you’ll have to ring up E Ball in order to get pricing details, but we don’t envision this one coming in cheap.

[Via OhGizmo]

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, Handhelds

It’s definitely not for everyone, but if you fashion yourself an amateur MythBuster, you may do well to add Comfile’s new rugged Windows CE-based CuWIN3500 touchscreen controller to your homebrew arsenal, which will let you control an array of sensors, motors or just about anything else you can plug into it. Up front and center on this one is a 7-inch 800 x 480 touchscreen, which gets backed up by a 32bit ARM9 266MHz processor, 64MB of SDRAM, 64MB NAND Flash, built-in Ethernet, and an SD card slot for further expansion. If that sounds like the piece of kit you’ve been waiting for, you can get your hands on one of these right now for $600.

[Via Zedomax]

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We’re pretty certain the world’s big enough for the both of ‘em, but a graphene-polymer hybrid developed by a brilliant team from Northwestern University could prove to be a suitable — and much cheaper — alternative to polymer-infused carbon nanotubes. Put simply, graphite can be purchased for dollars per pound, while single-walled nanotubes are hundreds of dollars per gram. A breakthrough has found that tough, lightweight materials can be created by “spreading a small amount of graphene, a single-layer flat sheet of carbon atoms, throughout polymers,” and these composites could eventually be used to make lighter car and airplane parts (among other things). We won’t kid you, there’s a lot of technobabble in the read link below, but it’s well worth the read if your inner nerd is up for it.

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

We have no real way of verifying whether or not these so-calls crystals were purchased alongside some bizarre time machine on eBay, but we’ll take this guy’s word for it and assume not for the time being. Reportedly, University of Queensland professor Max Lu has teamed up with researchers in order to grow “the world’s first titanium oxide single crystals with huge amounts of reactive surfaces.” Put simply, these very crystals can “absorb sunlight and convert it into electricity.” It’s said that Lu has been working on the project for some 15 years, and even now, he doesn’t anticipate the creation to be commercially viable for another decade. Aside from morphing into fairies and making dreams come true, the things could also be used to “purify air and water.” Pair this up with an invisibility cloak and we’ll really be in business.

[Thanks, Brendan]

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Yeah, so Sony’s hitting us with magically-thin OLED TVs, Microsoft is showing off Windows 7, and Google’s demoing hot new Android phones, but nothing gets us going like an old-fashioned tariff agreement dispute based on the classification of certain types of goods, you know? That’s just good clean fun. It’s also what’s going down between the US and the EU — our charming government has just filed a complaint with the World Trade Organization, alleging that the EU is mis-classifying multifunction printers, flat-panel computer displays, and cable boxes that fall under the 1996 Information Technology Agreement in order to collect tariffs on their imports. Essentially all these products should be duty-free, but the EU says their additional functions require the ITA be re-negotiated to cover them — LCD displays can also be used with DVD players, for example, and so qualify as “video monitors,” which are taxed. Sure, it’s a absolutely semantic fight, but that’s what trade representatives live for — we hear this one’s going to be more massive than the 2006 Canadian Softwood Lumber Import showdown.

[Via Physorg]

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Filed under: iPod Family, OS, iPhone

Did last night’s news of 10.5.3 boasting Google contact syncing with iPhone and iPod touch owners get you down? Well, LifeHacker hopes to lift your spirits as they tell you how to enable Google syncing in Address Book.app without ever syncing an iPhone or iPod touch.

The process requires you to edit some .plist files within Address Book.app. LifeHacker notes that the .plist entry only occurs when you sync some type of iPod first. So, you’ll need to do at least one sync for the entry to show up. Some of the comments seem to recommend that the .plist entry will change back to the original value once you sync an iPod a couple times. Even still, this is a cool hack.

[via LifeHacker]

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Filed under: iPod Family, OS, WWDC, One More Thing, iPhone

Something interesting is hiding in 10.5.3. I don’t know what it is. I don’t know what it does. But if it’s necessary to upgrade if you want to use the new SDK release, that means that there’s a something that ties 10.5.3 to new iPhone features.

So intrepid TUAW readers-slash-detectives, what can you find lurking in that new 10.5.3 firmware release that provides new and exciting iPhone functionality? Let us know in the comments.

My completely wild pulling-it-from-the-posterior guess is something to do with AppStore support — or maybe the iNewton — or maybe “back to my iPhone” support — or… No really, I have no clue. Hopefully Uncle Steve will give us something nice for Keynotemas. Until then, see if you can figure it out.

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