Ryan at Engadget has a great post about Bug Labs, a company planning to release DIY gadget hardware in the form of modular screens, QWERTY, GPS, Wifi/Bluetooth radios (sorry, no cellular radios). This could be the beginning of a gadget world that could be as open, and sometimes messy, as the PC one. [Bug Labs via Engadget]

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Filed under: Robots

While these days robotics are no stranger to the battlefield, the UK Ministry of Defence is hoping to take things a step further with its “Grand Challenge” competition, which aims to bring autonomous, information-gathering robots to urban warfare situations. Fourteen teams have been picked as finalists, and the true test will come next summer when the robots roll into Copehill Down, an urban warfare training center built during the Cold War, and duke it out with mock targets. The MoD’s hope is for a robot to be able to identify potential snipers, enemy vehicles and other human threats, with a minimum of human guidance, and then report that information back to ground troops gearing up for an assault. Approaches to the challenge include miniature unmanned planes and copters equipped with high-def cameras, and combination setups that include ground units with radar and thermal detection along with aerial units. Points will be awarded for accuracy of recon and autonomy, and the winning team will receive a fancy trophy and military funding. The robots are in it for the glory and the hefty retirement benefits.

[Via BBC News]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

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July 31, 2007 The enormous and still skyrocketing wealth centralized in Dubai has seen some absolutely outrageous construction projects taking off. From the world’s tallest building and a ski slope in the desert to custom-built islands and rotating skyscrapers, the international commerce hub seems to have ingenious developers fighting each other over who can make the biggest show of material excess. The latest jewel in Dubai’s extravagant crown will be a 516-metre tall apartment building, more than twice as high as the previous biggest residential building and with no expense spared on pure luxury. Even its name, the Pentominium, drips with treacle-thick exclusivity. Some floors will be uniquely suspended in mid-air, giving the impression that you’re living in a floating penthouse in the sky, with residents having access to a fleet of luxury automobiles and yachts for transport and entertainment. The ancient Egyptians defined their era with the impossible pyramids of Giza – could the fantastical architecture of Dubai be the defining monument of our era?..

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Iomega’s StorCenter NAS devices are shipping in sizes from 500GB to 1TB with 7200 RPM SATA-II drives. The 1GB uses two drives, so can work in RAID 0, 1, or JBOD (one large drive). Each has Gigabit, but no WiFi, and has Active directory support and UPnP server ability. Interestingly, you can tether drives to this one via the two USB ports. $269 for 500GB, $389 for 1TB. [PR Newswire]

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LEDs are spreading all over the home, and now these Lumen LED Lights have found their way into every corner of your house, bringing a spot of color here and there and adding a little extra style on the way. These 8-inch phallic symbols are available in the colors you see above, and run on three C batteries that the company says will last a minimum of 1500 hours.

These little stainless steel lights look a lot bigger in these pictures—just imagine them about the size and shape of an elongated C-battery flashlight, and you get the idea. Too bad the company’s asking $71 for each one, because it looks like there’s about three dollars’ worth of materials involved. LEDs are already commonplace; too bad trinket purveyors (and their customers) haven’t heard the news yet. [Home Temptations, via Technabob]

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