Light Start – Drone bugs, Hyundai’s exoskeleton, Kickstarted fart-tracker, and Overwatch’s Hanzo

Researchers are giving drones the ability to cling to walls and ceilings now

Here’s an idea that isn’t terrifying at all. Stanford University researchers have given a quadcopter drone the ability to land on the sides of buildings and on ceilings, like a bug, lizard or some kind of mechanical Spider Man. Okay, that last one is pretty cool. The researchers have given the drone microspines, which allow it to stick to unconventional surfaces. The point isn’t to scare the crap out of technophobes who think that drones are after them (that’s just a bonus) but the innovation, which is sill in development, could be used to mount a drone on a surface and shoot video from there. The landing technology doesn’t require electricity so you could just perch it, film for a while and then fly your drone back rather than having to recharge the battery so often. Hit the video above to see the microspine tech in action.

Source: Stanford University

Mecha are coming – Here’s Hyundai’s take on a human-controlled robotic exoskeleton

You had to know that this day was coming. Humans will be augmenting their strength using robotic exoskeletons, which opens the door for Xenomorph battles and epic in-air fights with clusters of SRMs. Hyundai have something a bit more basic in the works, a wearable robotic suit that is more than just a movement assistance er… assistant (which the company has already built). The wearable robo-suit has applications in combat, construction, to some kind of robot fighting league that we would totally watch. Hyundai will be bringing these to market at some point, they’re just not saying when. Whether you’ll be able to pick on up at Makro is another story but you can snag a sneak peek at the link below. Now if someone will give us a call when we can finally pilot a fully-loaded Sunder mech, that would be awesome.

Source: Hyundai

A fart-tracking Kickstarter failed recently. We wonder why?

We hear an awful lot about crowdfunding successes but far less about the failures, the ones that don’t make it. Take the CH4, which Kickstarter patrons didn’t. The campaign for this little wearable device came to an end last week, missing its $180,000 goal by around $176,000. That might have something to do with the fact that it’s a wearable fart-tracker. Yes, really. The idea is more complex than that, it was supposed to help you identify which foods to avoid so that you could limit your “gases”, as the campaign so euphemistically put it. The longer that the CH4 was used, the more likely you were to get accurate info on which foods to avoid putting in your body. We’re pretty sure that beans, mushy peas, and certain types of fish would be high on that list.

Source: Kickstarter

Catch up with Overwatch’s Hanzo in the new Dragons short

If there’s one thing that Blizzard can do it’s tell a story that sucks you in immediately. If you’re not drawn into this new Overwatch animated short then you might not have a soul. This outing tells the story of two brothers and two dragons. The brothers, Hanzo and Genji, are characters in Overwatch and Blizzard have used every trick in the book to make you care about their conflict in just a few short minutes. It’s not required watching for some Overwatch fragging but it certainly helps to put your characters in context – in fact, if Blizzard ever wants to make TV shows, we’ll be the first in line to start watching. Even if this video does go a little Dragon Ball Z towards the end there. We’re supremely okay with that.

Source: PlayStation (YouTube)