Spiders are about the last animals you’d expect to have blurry vision: after all, they have so many eyes.

But spiders, specifically jumping spiders, have weird vision. Specifically, they have weird depth perception. They’re perfectly still when hunting, so they don’t move to judge depth. They have four eyes, but their visual fields don’t overlap. So how do they judge distance and grab prey out of the air, every time?

Focus. Spider eyes have a layer that focuses each wavelength of light, but one layer focuses green light sharply, while a deeper layer focuses green light as a blur. In other words, if there’s green light, a spider has nearly perfect depth perception.

How will this help robots? By mimicking this structure, it’ll help robots better judge distances and thus make them better coordinated and better able to plan and execute a series of actions. It will also justify building creepy spider bots, and that’s the most important thing of all.

via Ars Technica

image courtesy Shutterstock

Peter Kokis of Brooklyn RobotWorks* builds exoskeletal costumes of famous robots and prop weapons out of regular household items, recycled plastic containers, hardware, pet supplies, sporting goods, and other relatively cheap stuff repurposed and repainted to make something awesome. He tells us the Terminator exoskeleton above even included parts from a toilet. I’ll refrain from saying, “This costume is the sh-t!” except for just now when I said it anyway.

That Terminator took about 300 hours to construct and weighs 120 pounds, Kokis says. He builds costumes and props to order and makes appearances at private or corporate parties, promotions, and special events, not just as the Terminator, but also as one of three Autobots from The Transformers: Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, and Ironhide. His upcoming designs* include the Xenomorph from Alien and an Iron Man suit.

Several pictures of his four exoskeletal costumes are after the break. Slideshow, roll out.

[All images courtesy of Peter Kokis*.]

* Warning: music autoplays at link.

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If you’re anything like myself, then you constantly wake up in the middle of the night with nosebleeds, screaming and mumbling about the eventual robot apocalypse. That said, I think we should all book our plane tickets now and head on down to Mr. Lucky’s Used Chevrolet the University of Miami School of Law for their upcoming conference to discuss the legal status of robots. I am not messing with you. Yes, I did say “robots”.

The conference, taking place in mid April, is currently accepting proposed topic discussions via email. They’re asking that a synopsis up to three pages long be sent to robots@law.miami.edu by January 12th, so if you’re still sitting on that term paper you wrote about the legal ramifications of that Mr. Machine toy marching like a Nazi, I suggest you finish that puppy up and send it on in.

Our pals over at io9 posted a list of sample topics for the roundtable, which we’ve included after the jump. You can either check that out -or be like me and just pop Terminator 2: Judgement Day back into your parent’s VHS deck and do some more pushups.

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We love the elderly, provided they’re not driving or allowed to handle anything dangerous. Except they are. We’re about to arm the elderly with all sorts of crazy technology, and only we at GammaSquad foresee the inevitable: all-out war.

They’re going to use the tech we give them to beat the ever-loving crap out of us and conquer the world. Seriously. It’ll start with their lawns, and their lawns will keep expanding until everywhere is their lawn. Movies will be turned down low, cable will show nothing but Matlock, and the entire world will turn into Florida.

And how will this pervasive attack on our carefree way of life be possible? How is Grandma going to kick your butt, and your friend’s butts, and the butts of the entire First Battalion in the first Nursing Home Wars? With this stuff:
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If you’re scared of Chuck E. Cheese type robots, get ready to live in a world of terror, because the Japanese have figured out a way to sync mascot heads with the movement of your face.

The technology is actually fairly incredible. The system, which requires no contact on the face, scans your muscle movements constantly and reacts accordingly. Which in this video means blinking and the mouth flapping like a cuddly fuzzy nightmare creature, but has applications as diverse as helping the bedridden take control of various functions in their hospital room and helping vehicles to steer…or detect when their driver is about to fall asleep and warn them to pull over.

But primarily it’s going to be used to skeeve the rest of the world out, because that’s how Japan rolls, baby. Video under the jump.
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Are you looking to take being a man-child to the next level? Well Hammacher Schlemmer, the makers of ridiculous toys for guys with too much money and no particular interest in having sex again have you covered.

Their latest creation? The “Bionic Boppers”, or in the words of any person who ever sees them “life-sized Rock ‘Em, Sock ‘Em Robots” (the person saying that will either be impressed or incredulously shaking their head depending on whether they’re male or female).

You can actually climb inside these monstrosities, make the arms punch via joystick and move them around in slow motion (these things go up to 3 mph fellas) using the built in scooter motor and hidden wheels. We have to admit, these things are not lacking in functionality, and that’s how it ought to be considering they cost 17 thousand freakin’ dollars.

Now we’re just waiting for them to release some accessories. How about a nice flamethrower add-on? The ability to replace the generic robot head you whack away at with the heads of various celebrities and politicians? A vacuum attachment so at least you can tell your wife you were cleaning up while playing robots? Call us Hammacher Schlemmer. We’ve got more of these.

via Geekologie