LinkNotes: toys

Showing posts with label toys. Show all posts

2012-06-16

LEGO Haunted House 10228

Creepy! Lego unveils first-ever Haunted House set | Tech Culture - CNET News

The global toymaker says the new set, part of its Monster Fighters line, will be released in September. The set features a house and six ghoulish minifigures.

Source: Creepy! Lego unveils first-ever Haunted House set | Tech Culture - CNET News

LEGO Haunted House Set | GeekAlerts

Available this September as part of the new LEGO Monster Fighters lineup, the highly detailed exterior will have classic haunted house features like, peeling paint/missing shingles, boarded up windows, and broken shutters and railings. Normally that would be more than enough, but LEGO has taken it even further. Once built, you can open the house via the hinged wall to reveal an interior that features a kitchen, bedroom and attic for your playing enjoyment.

Source: LEGO Haunted House Set | GeekAlerts

LEGO® 10228 Haunted House - YouTube

Source: LEGO® 10228 Haunted House - YouTube

LEGO News: Official Announcement: 10228 Haunted House | From Bricks To Bothans

• Add to your LEGO® Monster Fights Collection with the first officlal LEGO® Haunted House!
• Includes 6 minifigures: 2 glow-in-the-dark ghosts, Vampyre, Vampyre’s Bride, Zombie chef and butler
• Features unique ‘crooked’ design featuring boarded up windows and working front gate.
• Haunted House opens to reveal detailed interior with 3 floors.
• First floor features fireplace that swings open and displays a ship in a bottle on the mantle.
• Cook up a ghoulish meal with the Zombie chef in the kitchen complete with old-style stove, jars and table.
• Write letters from the Vampyre’s haunted office.
• Pull the lever hidden in the chimney to release the drop down staircase and access the top floor.
• Top floor features gramophone, records and newspaper LEGO® elements.
• Customize the Haunted House with new stickers for wall hangings, spider webs and curtains.
• Measures 15.4” (39cm) high, 9.4” (24cm) wide and 7.5” (19cm) deep

Source: LEGO News: Official Announcement: 10228 Haunted House | From Bricks To Bothans

LEGO 10228- Monster Fighters Haunted House | Official Images! - YouTube

Source: LEGO 10228- Monster Fighters Haunted House | Official Images! - YouTube

Haunted House | LEGO Shop

10228 Haunted House - Eurobricks Forums

LEGO Monster Fighters Haunted House (10228) Preview - The Brick Fan

2012-06-14

Kinetic Creatures Cardboard Robots

Kinetic Creatures Cardboard Robots | TechNewsDaily.com

A designer-artist couple from Portland, Ore., figured out how to create walking robotic animals — an elephant, a rhino and a giraffe — using nothing but paper.

Lucas Ainsworth, an industrial designer working at Intel, and Alyssa Hamel, a public-school art teacher, took their inspiration from Dutch artist Theo Jansen. His Strandbeest (beach animal) creations are giant mechanical contraptions — in part made from waste, including plastic bottles — that harness wind power to walk on their own.

Source: Kinetic Creatures Cardboard Robots | TechNewsDaily.com

Beach Animal Theo Jansen - YouTube

Source: Beach Animal Theo Jansen - YouTube

What are Kinetic Creatures? | Kinetic Creatures

The kits were prototyped, developed and are currently made using a laser cutter, but it takes over two hours and expensive laser-time to build each kit. Now that the designs are done, we are launching a Kickstarter project to cast the patterns onto die-cut-tools at a local cardboard manufacturing facility in Portland, OR. Using a die-press, the time-per-kit comes way down. That means we will be able to share the Kinetic Creatures, using sustainable materials and 100% local manufacturing, with hundreds of Makers and art students.

Source: What are Kinetic Creatures? | Kinetic Creatures

Kinetic Creatures by Lucas Ainsworth & Alyssa Hamel — Kickstarter

Kinetic Creatures also...

encourage people to build with their hands, minds and imagination. Use sustainable and recyclable materials and support local manufacturing.

Kinetic Creatures takes a complex mechanical linkage, popularized in Theo Jansen’s Strandbeest, and makes it accessible through an easy assembly and friendly cardboard form.

A collaboration between Alyssa- a Visual Arts Teacher and Artist and Lucas- an Industrial Designer, the Kinetic Creatures are intended to encourage building and thinking creatively at home and in the classroom.

Source: Kinetic Creatures by Lucas Ainsworth & Alyssa Hamel — Kickstarter

Kinetic Creatures by Lucas Ainsworth & Alyssa Hamel » Updates — Kickstarter

Kinetic Creatures

Cardboard Kinetic Creatures - Hack a Day

Theo Jansen - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

STRANDBEEST

2011-05-08

Neurowear's Necomimi -- Brainwave-Controlled Cat Ears

Brainwave-controlled cat ears for humans created by Japanese Neurowear (Wired UK)

Japanese company Neurowear is creating a range of fashion items that are operated using brainwaves, including a pair of moveable cat ears.

The cat ear product, called "necomimi" is a novelty hair band that is worn in the normal way but features sensors that pick up on brain signals and convert them into visible actions -- in this case by wiggling the cat ears.

Collected from: Brainwave-controlled cat ears for humans created by Japanese Neurowear (Wired UK)

neurowear.net

”neurowear” is the name of our project to develop fashion items and gadgets using brain waves and other biosensor with “Augumented Human Body” as the concept. Other than the first project “necomimi”, we are planning to development other various items.

Collected from: neurowear.net

YouTube - neurowear vol.1 "necomimi" （脳波で動く猫耳）

We created new human's organs that use brain wave sensor.
"necomimi"is the new communication tool
that augments human's body and ability.

Collected from: YouTube - neurowear vol.1 "necomimi" （脳波で動く猫耳）

YouTube - Try! "necomimi" (脳波ネコミミを体験！）

Many people experienced our neurowear "necomimi". It works with your brain signal.

Collected from: YouTube - Try! "necomimi" (脳波ネコミミを体験！）

The product, although at present a bit of a commercial gimmick, could actually be used for a number of other functions. For example, to help allow mentally disabled people show their feelings and easing frustrations within those who are verbally challenged. This kind of technology that doesn’t require too many intrusive components could certainly help in treatment by non verbally demonstrating wearers emotions, particularly in children. The same technology could also be used within other applications. Embedded in a hard hat for example the same brain signal monitor could be worn for workers involved in particularly demanding tasks requiring constant concentration. This kind of new technology aimed at health and wellbeing is a particularly growing market in Japan with its increasing greying society.

Collected from: Cat Ears Controlled by Your Brain

Related

2009-10-07

The Rattleback

Clipped from: The Amazing Rattleback!

Try to spin it clockwise. Watch it spin, shake, and rattle, and slow down.
Then, watch it spin in the opposite direction!

In Wales, it is called a rebellious celt. To us, it's the rattleback. "It" is a long, thin plastic toy with a base shaped like the hull of a boat. When you spin it one way, it turns a few times before the ends start to rattle up and down. The more it wobbles, the slower it rotates - until it stops spinning altogether. Finally, it starts to spin in the opposite direction. What could possibly cause this?

Clipped from: Sepp Hasslberger: Rattleback 'mystery' explained

Rattleback 'mystery' explained

A rattleback, also called a celt or wobblestone, is an interesting little piece of material with a roundish bottom and an unbalanced distribution of weight. When spun, it will soon start to rock and then, as the rocking motion subsides, it will settle down to spinning in the reverse direction. Rattlebacks do not work well on a slippery surface, which means that a certain amount of friction is a necessary condition for it to work...

Clipped from: YouTube - russian rattleback

Clipped from: Rattleback - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Physics

The spin-reversal motion follows from the growth of instabilities on the other rotation axes, that are rolling (on the main axis) and pitching (on the crosswise axis).

When there is an asymmetry in the mass distribution with respect to the plane formed by the pitching and the vertical axes, a coupling of these two instabilities arises; one can imagine how the asymmetry in mass will deviate the rattleback when pitching, which will create some rolling.

The amplified mode will differ depending on the spin direction, which explains the rattleback asymmetrical behavior. Depending on whether it is rather a pitching or rolling instability that dominates, the growth rate will be very high or quite low.

This explains why, due to friction, most rattlebacks exhibit spin-reversal motion only when spun in the pitching-unstable direction, while they slow down and stop spinning before the rolling instability arises when spun in the "stable" direction. Also, after stopping, the spin in the "stable" direction is considerably slower than the original spin speed. Some rattlebacks, however, exhibit "unstable behavior" when spun in either direction, and incur several successive spin reversals per spin.^[3]

Other ways to add motion to a rattleback include tapping by pressing down momentarily on either of its ends, and rocking by pressing down repeatedly on either of its ends.

Clipped from: YouTube - Rattleback

Clipped from: YouTube - Rattleback slow motion

Rattleback slow motion

Clipped from: YouTube - celt, rattleback, wobblestone

Sources:

Related:

2009-05-14

Buckyballs

clipped from www.science.org.au

Buckyballs – a new sphere of science

Up until then, scientists knew of only two forms in which pure carbon occurred: diamond and graphite.

diamond

graphite

Kroto and his colleagues then discovered that the combination of hexagons and pentagons also formed the basis of a geodesic dome designed by the architect and engineer, R. Buckminster Fuller, for the 1967 Montreal World Exhibition. So they decided to name the new molecule buckminsterfullerene (these days shortened to fullerene or buckyball). Chemists write it as C₆₀.

You could go to Montreal to get an idea of what a buckyball looks like. But perhaps an easier way is to look at a soccer ball: you will see that it consists of 20 hexagons (the white patches of leather) and 12 pentagons (the black patches), exactly the same pattern as that of the new molecule.

clipped from en.wikipedia.org

A 3D model of a en:C60 molecule, also called a "Buckyball".

An association football is a model of the Buckminsterfullerene C₆₀

clipped from gizmodo.com

Bucky Balls Are Like Silly Putty Made with Rare-Earth Magnets

clipped from www.thinkgeek.com

BuckyBalls Magnetic Building Spheres

Super powerful, rare earth, magnetic balls - for you to play with.

Make sculptures, puzzles, patterns, shapes, jewelry . . . the joy is endless.

Each set contains 216 BuckyBalls.

Ages: Not for kids or adults under 12 years of age.

Dimensions: each Buckyball is approx. 0.125" in diameter.

clipped from www.youtube.com

Sources:

Japanese Nurse Robot Twendy-One

clipped from www.medgadget.com

Would You Trust Your Patients to Twendy-One?

PTC (The Product Development Company® of Needham, Massachusetts) is reporting that one of its software products has been selected by Waseda University's Sugano Laboratory as "the main engineering tool for the development of a human-symbiotic robot."

clipped from twendyone.com

HISTORY

WENDY (Waseda Engineering Designed sYmbiont)

TWENDY-ONE is an advanced version of the WENDY robot (Waseda Engineering Designed　sYmbiont) which was developed in 1999 in Sugano Laboratory,

Egg breaking

clipped from twendyone.com

CONCEPT

TWENDY-ONE

When TWENDY-ONE manipulates an object with various shape, it is easy for TWENDY-ONE to adapt to the object by passivity to absorb external force generated by the positioning deviation. In the same way, TWENDY-ONE can adapt to human motion and hold a human. As a result, TWENDY-ONE can manipulate an object dexterously as well as support a human.

clipped from twendyone.com

DEMO

clipped from www.youtube.com

2008-12-19

i-Sobot -- Robot of the Year 2008

clipped from www.bouncingredball.com

i-Sobot wins Japan’s Robot of the Year award

i-Sobot, winner of the Good Design Award in Japan and recognized as the smallest mass-produced humanoid robot by the Guinness World Records, stands just 16.5cm, weighs about 350 grams and is powered by 4 AA batteries for about 1 hour of operation. 17 miniature motors give it about 200 types of movements.

clipped from www.robotsrule.com

i-SOBOT

Special Features

This talented little robot can do push-ups

He can stand on his head

Responds to 10 different voice commands, with varying funny responses to some the commands

He can SOMERSAULT!

He even does the splits

Tons of different special actions like do his own Western gunfight scene, beg for mercy, act like he is drunk. He’s a bit of a ham for the camera!

clipped from www.youtube.com

i-SOBOT Humanoid Robot Introductory Video

2008-06-24

Sega, Hasbro's A.M.P Robot

The A.M.P. (Automated Musical Personality) wheeled robot can follow you around and play music wherever you go. Using the remote, you can easily manage all of his movements and cycle through five different modes: Dance, Track, Drive, Park and Follow.

clipped from www.viddler.com

Meet Hasbro's Ampbot, the mother of all Rollys

clipped from afp.google.com

Sega, Hasbro unveil new dancing robot

The A.M.P will retail for 80,000 yen (745 dollars) and can be hooked up to an MP3 player or iPod

clipped from www.hasbro.com

Learn More

A.M.P. Automated Music Personality press release
Go

clipped from www.pcmag.com

A.M.P. Robot Makes Your Music Follow You

This child-sized bot from Hasbro can dance, follow, and blast tunes with a serious set of speakers.

Designed primarily as a high-styled entertainment bot for music-obsessed teens and adults (16 to 25 years old), A.M.P. (which stands for Automated Musical Personality) balances on two wheels and will follow his remote or roam around the house while blasting music from a high-fidelity, three-speaker system.

clipped from www.pcmag.com

Palm-Sized Remote

Remote Attached

A.M.P. Bot - Side View

A.M.P. Bot - Left Side

A.M.P. Bot - Backside

A.M.P. Bot with Stand Down

Pages

2012-06-16

2012-06-14

2011-05-08

2009-10-07

Rattleback 'mystery' explained

Physics

Rattleback slow motion

2009-05-14

2009-01-07

2008-12-19

i-Sobot wins Japan’s Robot of the Year award

i-SOBOT

Special Features

i-SOBOT Humanoid Robot Introductory Video

2008-06-24

Sega, Hasbro unveil new dancing robot

A.M.P. Robot Makes Your Music Follow You