Technology-based awes

Yup -- and in my neck of the woods, no less. *This* is Pretty Damned Cool (and so is the bionic arm upthread).

It is surprisingly comforting to know that in my lifespan, if something terrible happens to just about any part of me, I'll be able to get a fully functional bionic replacement.

I can't help but wonder how a bionic arm would sound on the guitar.

We may become the robot (or cyborg) overlords that enslave future generations of humans!

Please? >:)

I've always wanted to be in a Dreadnought....

After learning my little brother's got early onset muscular dystrophy... I really don't think they're putting enough research into this. Bionic limbs may be overstated in fiction but if there's potential for something real in there, it can improve millions of lives.

my sympathies :(. i know two people with it and it can be very difficult for everyone involved.

With the rate that bionics are developing its very possible your brother could stand to benefit from them in the near future. Hands with excellent articulation and feet that can actually maintain balance both exist and are easily the two greatest challenges in bionics. with those two licked in the near future there will be little to stop people with all kinds of physical disabilities from living normal lives. The downside to bionics is obviously they replace the limb so if your brother is still growing it would cause proportion issues after mere months of having a new limb fitted. eLEGS, REX and ReWalk are all good setting stones to exoskeleton technology which has the plus of not requiring amputation and are fully adaptable. with MD in its early stages its possible that assisted exoskeletons would be the best way to go as they can be conditioned to use as much or as little motor output as needed from a person to person or even limb to limb basis. The potential is staggering to be honest. How someone goes about getting these however god only knows...

Thread reboot for "Hey guys, silicon's about to be so old-school".

thats really cool :o just looked up graphene cos i never heard of it, thats really fecking cool too >D the potential for it is... well its pretty amazing. every time you think we've got to the point when things just cant get much better, something comes and goes "BOOM! I'M AWESOME!"

Artificial heart breakthrough: make one which doesn't beat. Humans now powered by spiral energy.

That's actually pretty fascinating, and its only one moving part which is the rotor. The fact the reason we have the pulse is simply because the heart needs the gaps to nourish itself. To think outside that and say a machine doesn't need to nourish itself is pretty clever if that is the case.

Altho I suppose the question of how does it work when say you're doing exercise and all that, since the heart pumps more blood, how would this new artificial heart work around that? Very cool either way.

This post has been edited by Jeffk38uk on Jun 14 2011, 12:03 AM

That's what I was thinking: does the constant flow of blood bring more or less blood to the muscles? Does it heighten performance, or dampen it? Also, does it mean you bleed more profusely when injured? Still, a very cool new technology. There's another organ checked off my robot body list.

Bumping this thread, because we now have robots which can fly like birds.

That was quite amazing to watch something mechanical fly with that grace.

It would be from TED, shouldn't be shocked at this point.

That was the single most fucking beautiful piece of technology I have ever seen in my entire life.

Man, the stuff Humans can achieve...

That, my friends(?) is why I love the human race.

One step closer to true AI; a robot that can think for itself to solve problems.

Very interesting: it sounds like a children's story in which a clumsy robot goes around asking other robots how to make tea.

Very interesting: it sounds like a children's story in which a clumsy robot goes around asking other robots how to make tea.

Robots: Learning simple concepts.

And then bigger, more complicated ones.

Why is every other use for the Kinect one thousand times better than its games?

I can one-up that.

(Posted Image)

Meet the GAU-8 Avenger, presumably the GAU stands for "God's Angry U-guys". This is the main weapon of the A-10 Thunderbolt, itself an impressibly sturdy aircraft.

(Posted Image)

You know how most military jets have guns attached? This thing is a gun with a plane attached. It fires 30mm calibre shells which are themselves huge. Here's picture of a guy fitting some shells to an Apache helicopter's weapon:

(Posted Image)

Look at the guy's thumb and then the shells. The GAU-8 Avenger is capable of firing 70 of those a second. That's 4,200 a minute.

I can one-up that.

Meet the GAU-8 Avenger, presumably the GAU stands for "God's Angry U-guys". This is the main weapon of the A-10 Thunderbolt, itself an impressibly sturdy aircraft.
You know how most military jets have guns attached? This thing is a gun with a plane attached. It fires 30mm calibre shells which are themselves huge. Here's picture of a guy fitting some shells to an Apache helicopter's weapon
Look at the guy's thumb and then the shells. The GAU-8 Avenger is capable of firing 70 of those a second. That's 4,200 a minute.

Impressive? Yes. Beautiful? No. I'm not talking about the form of those machines, but rather their function. To kill things. That's ugly, not beautiful.

Well I'm a horrible human being so there we go. Also, can't blame the machine for what it was designed for.

Anything so perfectly designed to excel at a given task like that is beautiful.

I guess we shouldn't tell you about the depleted uranium shells they use as the ammo, huh?

http://www.engadget.com/2011/08/18/ibms-co...uman-brain-her/

forgive me, but is this not exactly what the terminator films described their chips to be.