Make a Real Robot

Created by the University of Pennsylvania, these bots would impress Q himself. This army of mini quad-copters are controlled with rhythmic precision, a truly awe-inspiring collaboration of music and technology. From playing a synthesizer to drums and cymbals, each robots is mu ...more

Want to build your own life-sized, working replica of WALL-E? Be prepared to take on a second job! Mike Senna spent two years perfecting his own version, working 25 hours a week and totaling somewhere around 3,800 hours for the whole project. He had no blueprints to go by, so ...more

First off, let me say this—using real steam power is dangerous, and heavy, and just generally not worth it when you have modern alternatives. Except, you know, if you're a Steampunk. Or this guy: Video: . The guy in the above video makes some awesome gadgets, which are unfortu ...more

ARGs have taken the concept of video games to some odd and wonderful real-world places. Socks, Inc. might not be the first ARG, and LittleBigPlanet might have defined the sock-puppet-based game archetype, but it is the first game to combine ARG and sock puppet elements into on ...more

Here is the brand new teaser trailer for REAL STEAL coming out in 2011. I believe this was a twilight zone episode at least there was one with a similar premise. Basically in the future boxing is outlawed so we create robots to battle it out in the boxing arena. Looks like Ro ...more

Robotics company Festo Bionics has released footage of a robotic manipulator arm modeled after an elephant's trunk. The first video in the gallery below is the concept animation; click on the second video to see the real thing in action. (Love how the grabbers hand off "giant ...more

Hiroshi Ishiguro is at it again, but this time "it" has a winning smile. Japanese researchers have developed a humanoid robot that can laugh and smile, mimicking a real person's facial expressions. The android, called Geminoid F, is modeled after a woman in her twenties, with ...more

Exploring a new city is tough if you're all by your lonesome. But if you have your iPhone on you, you're not alone at all... there's tons of great apps available for discovering the city around you. We've previously featured an app that helps you decide on what bar or club to ...more

Nobody could predict the success of Microsoft's Kinect, not even Microsoft themselves. So, it was quite a surprise when it ended up earning a Guinness World Record for fastest-selling consumer electronics device, and an even bigger surprise to see people buying one that didn't ...more

"A major hardware update to the masterlock cracking robot. Upgraded the previously non-working latch opening mechanism to be geared down 1:25, allowing it to open the shackle. I also revamped the motor mount to be sturdier, and the base of the unit to hold the lock better and ...more

Don't be fooled by the fancy monocle: this servo-powered serpent is as American as Apple Computers. So American, in fact, that his creators at Carnegie Mellon decided to christen him Uncle Sam. Boasting more points of articulation than a GI Joe, Sam's hobbies include crawlin' ...more

This simple yet odd robot moves like a four-legged, single unit of a centipede, which unfortunately makes me think of the Human Centipede (shudder, don't click on the second video in the gallery below if you're faint of heart... or at work). OK, maybe a stretch. But for whate ...more

Besides Killing Floor, I played a bit of The Witcher over the weekend. If you're curious about the game now is the perfect time. It's on sale on Steam, and the sequel is being released early next year. Though the game is three years old, it's still one of the best western rpgs ...more

This article will show you how to make a proportionally correct 1/187 (about) size Hubble Space Telescope. I tried to add as many details as possible, but it was hard at such a small size. It was really easy, but it did take a while to make. Here are some specs for the real H ...more

It's remarkable that a gaming device (from Microsoft, no less) designed for geeky gamers has incited broad innovation in medicine and robotics. But that Kinect has captured the imagination of hackers-with-MBAs-in-mind is downright amazing. Below, six videos demonstrating a va ...more

Outstanding advancements in medicine and super creepy Androids aren't the only jaw-dropping inventions out there. Every once in a while, an incredibly random—and at first glance, seemingly useless—device comes along and strikes a chord of strangely deep satisfaction. Behold, t ...more

Holy… Lord, help us all—this isn't CG, it's for real. Meet Geminoid DK, the latest spawn from Osaka University Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro's legion of ultra-realistic Androids. If an Android is a robot disguised as a human, what is a Geminoid? Similar in concept to the Bruce W ...more

Shiny, pretty touchscreen vending machines have finally gone mainstream in Japan. My only question is... what's taken so long? The vending machine business can be quite lucrative (location, location, location), so all the more reason to make the interface as aesthetically appe ...more

Love folk art but could do without the folk? Prepare to have your heart stolen by a self-folding origami automaton. Scientific American writes, "Researchers at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) have invented a real-life Transformer, a d ...more

Chris Burden's latest piece is a portrait of L.A.'s hot mess of traffic, entitled Metropolis II. The artist has constructed a miniature highway system, complete with 1,200 custom-designed cars, 18 lanes, 13 toy trains and tracks, and a landscape of buildings made with wood blo ...more

Three-dimensional printing is one of the many wonders of modern technology. It's the first step towards real life Star Trek replicators and Timeline-esque teleportation chambers. While we aren't at the level of reconstructing strands of DNA, it's already possible to make tons ...more

I think it's fair to say that every maker yearns for a 3D printer. You can replace circuit board connectors, fix your glasses, create ski grips, and make whole machines out of printed plastic parts—even a 3D printer. But without a 3D printer on hand, you can always resort to S ...more

ACTION MOVIES The Hunger Games (2012) Set in a future where the Capitol selects a boy and girl from the twelve districts to fight to the death on live television, Katniss Everdeen volunteers to take her younger sister's place for the latest match.Dir: Gary Ross With: Jennife ...more

WonderHowTo is made up of niche communities called Worlds. If you've yet to join one (or create your own), get a taste below of what's going on in the community. Check in every Wednesday for a roundup of new activities and projects. Thanks to all of our active moderators and ...more

In the age of automatic video editors and all around software-assisted creativity, how can a humble blogger help people master a program if said program does all the work for you? This isn’t a theoretical question, dear reader. In the old days (you know, like two months ago), ...more

Long before the HoloLens or the Magic Leap One, a California-based team of independent filmmakers envisioned what the future of augmented reality might look like. Now, after millions of people viewed the initial short film called "Sight," the directors, operating under the na ...more

Real life transformer, OmniZero, can climb a ladder, perform somersaults, jump rope, crack eggs, battle other robots, and best of all, carry a person. Witness all of these actions of the various OmniZero prototypes in the video gallery below.

Have you ever wanted to control a swarm of robots? Well, now you can! Robotics researchers at New York University (NYU) have created an app which controls 'bots from your smartphone, using augmented reality. This AR app would certainly come in handy when you want to make a cof ...more

Over the last few years, the only thing teased by Magic Leap more than the Magic Leap One itself has been the company's flagship gaming title Dr. Grordbort's Invaders. The game, developed by New Zealand studio Weta Workshop, finally got its debut last week during the L.E.A.P. ...more

We've seen a number of unique mashups of augmented reality with other bleeding edge technologies, but somehow it took until 2018 for someone to come up with a now obvious complement to AR: 3D printing. Cornell information science doctoral student Huaishu Peng has developed an ...more

Bad news first: It's not out yet, but it's coming really soon. The premise for the game is this: A powerful hacker configured a script that triggered if he didn't log into his computer for 14 days. If that happened, it'd send a set of instructions to someone (you!) to contin ...more

Can't help but smile at this goofy, endearing nerd "master" (Vitalijus Rodnovas) guiding his copy-cat protege robot (coined Waldo). The rig allows Waldo to mimic Rodnovas' body movements in actual real time. Hackaday has dug up the HowTo notes: "...The project page is slight ...more

Mystery is a tricky thing. Used correctly, it can give onlookers the impression that wondrous and perhaps valuable things are afoot. However, once the veil of suspension of disbelief is removed in any significant way, that same mystery can quickly turn into not just skepticism ...more

With Facebook and Twitter dominating the world, playing chess opposite a real, touchable person is no longer necessary. With the ChessBot, you can now play on a real chessboard remotely - the next best thing to in-person play. From Norris Labs: "Although ChessBot by itself d ...more

Occasionally, a not-so-great movie also does something so right that you have to forgive some of its sins and give it a little love. Such is the case with the latest film from Keanu Reeves, Replicas, which takes a HoloLens-style device and gives us a look at how future researc ...more

The marketing team for Marvel Studios is doing "whatever it takes" to make sure you see Avengers: Endgame when it hits theaters in a couple of weeks, including offering an updated set of augmented reality Playmoji for the Playground app on Google Pixel. Included in an update ...more

In December of last year, Australian Feliks Zemdegs broke the human world record for solving a Rubik's Cube with a time of 4.737 seconds. Well, this robot did it way, way faster by solving one in under 1 second. Don't tell me a robot takeover isn't real possibility. Video: . D ...more

Social engineering is a pretty important item in a hacker's toolkit. In Mr robot there was a time, we saw Elliot using social engineering to gain access to his therapist's boyfriend's email and bank accounts by calling him and pretending to be someone from his bank, then Elli ...more

A controversial video from Magic Leap's past has once again surfaced, but this time it comes with a lot more credibility and a good bit of excitement around the Magic Leap One headset. New Zealand's Weta Workshop has revealed that it will release the game "Dr. Grordbort's: In ...more

It may not be as large as the Samsung Galaxy Note 2, but the Galaxy S3's screen size is still big enough to make iPhone owners cry themselves to sleep. The 4.8-inch AMOLED display with 720 x 1280 pixels makes the GS3 a great mobile companion—and an even better portable gaming ...more

While Apple and Samsung have started integrating depth sensors into the iPad Pro and Galaxy smartphones, more advanced AR experiences are arriving for standard smartphone cameras on Android devices. Earlier this month, Niantic began rolling out updates for Pokémon GO that add ...more

Whenever the name Magic Leap comes up, the talk inevitably seems to turn to the company's big-name backers and "unicorn-level" amounts of cash poured into the venture. And if it's not that, observers tend to focus on the company's market strategy and overall prospects. These ...more

Mixed reality can give you the feeling that you've uncovered a hidden world layered into the physical one you already know. This can happen in so many ways, from a trading card that births a hologram or a first-person shooter with robots blasting through your walls. Xperiel—a ...more

The $35 Raspberry Pi is an amazingly useful single-board computer (SBC) with a good balance of price, performance, and connectivity options. But for some projects, it just isn't enough. Whether you need more computing power, a smaller size, or better machine-learning capabilit ...more

The latest film addition in the American-produced Millennium series, The Girl in the Spider's Web, was just released on Blu-ray a few days ago. As you could expect, the movie has many hacking scenes throughout, just like the previous English and Swedish language movies centere ...more

The game wizards at Insomniac take pride in diving deep when it comes to world-building, and the same is true for the studio's latest title for Magic Leap One called Seedling. Revealed on Wednesday at the L.E.A.P. conference in Los Angeles, the Magic Leap One-based title is l ...more

The mainstreaming of augmented reality won't happen overnight, but it's becoming increasingly clear that traditional media is leading the charge in the effort to introduce the public to immersive computing. A recent example came from none other than USA Today via its 321 Launc ...more

On Friday, audio giant Bose emerged as the latest, and perhaps the most surprising company to announce that it's planning to release augmented reality smartglasses. There's just one problem: these smartglasses don't present any visual content whatsoever. The wearable is asso ...more

Forget what you know about controlling augmented reality experiences. "Scroll" lets you interact with augmented reality using a much more subtle approach: A ring. It looks like an ordinary ring on your finger. It's black, sleek, and attractive, which is a huge plus. Scroll re ...more

Virtual reality headsets are all the rage these days, and among the menagerie of tech companies gunning for the top spot, there's one mysterious startup that is ahead of the game—Magic Leap—and you can tell just by watching their latest demo video of their product in action. V ...more

So, how does someone keep their hacking life completely secret? What This Is: I'd like to know how hackers keep their hacking life secret. So with a bit of experience and knowledge obtained from elsewhere I want to share what I know, and also ask a few questions to become ev ...more

I wish these robots were real, but alas, they're simply the brainchild of Barry McWilliams, an artist who wants to make a book about them. His Kickstarter for only $5,000 is now fully funded, so the book will be coming soon. There's still a lot of time left in the fundraiser, ...more

A man named Tom Hardwidge has taken it upon himself to create an army of steampunk insects from a bunch of different found materials, including bullets and pocket watches. He's made a ton of them—and they're really awesome. They're modeled after real insects, too, and aren't j ...more