[YouTube]

Make:

This chair-like robot consists of a planter with robotic legs and some circuitry to detect sunlight levels in the room. When the robot finds the brightest spot it scurries on its legs over in that direction in order to give the plant the most exposure. This reminds us a bit of the “Photosynthesis Robot” by FutureFarmers, although this one would probably be a more manic version of the project.

[via make | plant bot]

GREENSBORO, N.C., Oct. 9 Quaintance-Weaver Restaurants and Hotels announced today that the Proximity Hotel in Greensboro, NC, has been awarded LEED Platinum by the U.S. Green Building Council. Opened in late 2007, the Proximity and the adjacent Print Works Bistro are the first hotel and first restaurant to obtain the USGBC’s top level certification. LEED is the USGBC’s rating system for designing and constructing the world’s greenest, most energy efficient, and high performing buildings.

Dennis Quaintance, the CEO and CDO (Chief Design Officer) of Quaintance-Weaver, is obviously delighted. “When we started the design process four years ago, I would have never believed that we could use 41% less energy and 33% less water without one iota of compromise in comfort or luxury and with minimal additional construction costs,” says Quaintance. “It just goes to show what a determined team can accomplish if they use common sense and get a little bit of help from the sun.”

His “sun” comment refers to the 100 solar rooftop panels that heat water for the AAA Four Diamond hotel. To illustrate how the hotel and bistro save energy without negatively affecting guests, he asks, “How is it a compromise for a guest to shower with water that is heated by the sun?”

Quaintance collaborated with his subcontractors on every little detail and personally tested most products, and this attention to detail is paying off in savings. For example, the hotel and restaurant will use two million gallons less water during the first year, saving more than $13,000 by spending less than $7,000 in additional construction costs.

Proximity did not attain this milestone by just using less energy and water. They also:

• Recycled 87% of the construction debris (1,535 tons)
• Sourced over 40% of the building materials locally
• Used over 20% recycled content
• Restored 700 feet of an adjacent stream
• Installed the first regenerative drive elevators in North America, generating electricity on the descent
• Provided natural lighting to 97% of the occupied space
• Used elaborate energy recovery systems so as to provide large amounts of fresh air
• Sourced 90% of the furniture locally
• Plus more than 60 other sustainable practices

[Proximity Hotel | via Energy Roadmap]

“Carcade is a concept for an in-car videogame for the passengers, which captures the landscape and uses it as a videogame environment. Existing objects, for example trees and architecture, are recognized by the camera and enhanced by videogame assets. The game is influenced by the manner of driving of the car. If the driver accelerates, the game becomes increasingly difficult. If the car comes to a stop a different game situation evolves. We developed a small game concept and a functional prototype, with which we did a test drive on the street. A webcam is connected to a laptop running camera tracking software which recognizes the horizon and objects in the environment. The player has to maneuver a spaceship and collect points whilst trying to avoid crashing into oncoming enemies.”

[Carcade | Oh Gizmo | via DVICE]

Evan Roth is one Bad Ass Mofo. Check out his latest project:

“T.S.A. Communication is a project that alters the airport security experience and allows the government to learn more about you then just what’s in your backpack. Thin 8.5 x 11 inch laser-cut sheets of stainless steel comfortably fit in your carry on bag, simultaneously obscuring the contents you don’t want the TSA to see while highlighting ideas you do want them to see. Change your role as air traveler from passive to active.”

UPDATE: The official TSA blog has written about it.

[TSA Communication Project Page | Evan Roth]

Elizabeth A. Thomson at the MIT News Office writes:

MIT researchers and colleagues are working to find out whether energy from trees can power a network of sensors to prevent spreading forest fires.

What they learn also could raise the possibility of using trees as silent sentinels along the nation’s borders to detect potential threats such as smuggled radioactive materials.

The U.S. Forest Service currently predicts and tracks fires with a variety of tools, including remote automated weather stations. But these stations are expensive and sparsely distributed. Additional sensors could save trees by providing better local climate data to be used in fire prediction models and earlier alerts. However, manually recharging or replacing batteries at often very hard-to-reach locations makes this impractical and costly.

The new sensor system seeks to avoid this problem by tapping into trees as a self-sustaining power supply. Each sensor is equipped with an off-the-shelf battery that can be slowly recharged using electricity generated by the tree. A single tree doesn’t generate a lot of power, but over time the “trickle charge” adds up, “just like a dripping faucet can fill a bucket over time,” said Shuguang Zhang, one of the researchers on the project and the associate director of MIT’s Center for Biomedical Engineering (CBE).

The system produces enough electricity to allow the temperature and humidity sensors to wirelessly transmit signals four times a day, or immediately if there’s a fire. Each signal hops from one sensor to another, until it reaches an existing weather station that beams the data by satellite to a forestry command center in Boise, Idaho.

Scientists have long known that trees can produce extremely small amounts of electricity. But no one knew exactly how the energy was produced or how to take advantage of the power.

In a recent issue of the Public Library of Science ONE, Zhang and MIT colleagues report the answer. “It’s really a fairly simple phenomenon: An imbalance in pH between a tree and the soil it grows in,” said Andreas Mershin, a postdoctoral associate at the CBE. The first author of the paper is Christopher J. Love, an MIT senior in chemistry who has been working on the project since his freshman year.

To solve the puzzle of where the voltage comes from, the team had to test a number of theories — many of them exotic. That meant a slew of experiments that showed, among other things, that the electricity was not due to a simple electrochemical redox reaction (the type that powers the ‘potato batteries’ common in high school science labs, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemon_battery). The team also ruled out the source as due to coupling to underground power lines, radio waves or other electromagnetic interference.

Testing of the wireless sensor network, which is being developed by Voltree Power (http://voltreepower.com), is slated to begin in the spring on a 10-acre plot of land provided by the Forest Service.

According to Love, who with Mershin has a financial interest in Voltree, the bioenergy harvester battery charger module and sensors are ready. “We expect that we’ll need to instrument four trees per acre,” he said, noting that the system is designed for easy installation by unskilled workers.

“Right now we’re finalizing exactly how the wireless sensor network will be configured to use the minimum amount of power,” he concluded.

The original experiments were funded by MagCap Engineering, LLC, through MIT’s Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program.

[MIT via Boing Boing]

Japan of course! Yahoo News:

TSUKUBA, Japan - A robotic suit that reads brain signals and helps people with mobility problems will be available to rent in Japan for $2,200 a month starting Friday — an invention that may have far-reaching benefits for the disabled and elderly.

HAL — short for “hybrid assistive limb” — is a computerized suit with sensors that read brain signals directing limb movement through the skin.

The 22-pound battery-operated computer system is belted to the waist. It captures the brain signals and relays them to mechanical leg braces strapped to the thighs and knees, which then provide robotic assistance to people as they walk.

Cyberdyne, a new company in Tsukuba outside Tokyo, will mass-produce HAL. Two people demonstrated the suits at the company’s headquarters on Tuesday.

A demonstration video also showed a partially paralyzed person getting up from a chair and walking slowly wearing the HAL suit.

“We are ready to present this to the world,” said Yoshiyuki Sankai, a University of Tsukuba professor who designed HAL.

Sankai, who has worked on robot suits since 1992 and is also Cyberdyne’s chief executive, said a full device that covers the entire body is also being designed, though it is unclear when it will be available commercially.

HAL comes in three sizes — small, medium and large — and also has a one-leg version for a 150,000 yen, or $1,500, monthly rental fee.

Noel Sharkey is a robotics expert not affiliated with the technology. The professor at the University of Sheffield in the U.K. said HAL will have wide-ranging benefits for the elderly others with movement disabilities.

“HAL can only lead to extending the abilities of the elderly and keep them out of care for longer,” Sharkey said in an e-mail to The Associated Press.

Cyberdyne said its policy is not to reveal how much it costs to manufacture the device. It is unclear when HAL will go on sale to the public or what the price tag will be.

Robotics technology is common in manufacturing sectors, but product liability concerns restrict its widespread use in everyday life. Sankai said the HAL technology is devoted to social welfare purposes only, adding he has refused requests from military officials to share it.

Some European nations have already expressed interest and HAL may soon be on the market there, but U.S. sales are still undecided, Sankai said.

The University of California, Berkeley, and other researchers around the world are working on similar robotic suits that increase mobility.

[Yahoo News]

A while back we had plants that would send out tweets to alert you that they needed watering. Now we’ve got plants with full on blogs. Is this a new low for blogging or a new high for totally awesome useless technologies?

Pink Tentacle writes:

If houseplants could blog, what would they say? To find out, Kamakura-based IT company KAYAC Co., Ltd. has developed a sophisticated botanical interface system that lets plants post their thoughts online. A succulent Sweetheart Hoya (Hoya kerii) named “Midori-san” is now using the system to blog daily from its home at bowls Donburi Cafe in Kamakura.

The plant interface system, which is built around technology developed by Satoshi Kuribayashi at the Keio University Hiroya Tanaka Laboratory, uses surface potential sensors to read the weak bioelectric current flowing across the surface of the leaves. This natural current fluctuates in response to changes in the immediate environment, such as temperature, humidity, vibration, electromagnetic waves and nearby human activity. A specially developed algorithm translates this data into Japanese sentences, which are used as fodder for the plant’s daily blog posts.

To activate a web-controlled fluorescent lamp positioned next to the plant inside the cafe, click the “Give Light to Midori-san” (緑さんに光をあげる) button at the bottom of the widget, enter your name (or a nickname), and click OK.

Once the lamp activated, the widget shows a real-time view of Midori-san under the light.

Judging from the blog content and the numerous “thank yous” below the fold of each post, Midori-san seems to really appreciate every chance it gets to photosynthesize.

In addition to exploring the potential of intelligent networks that involve the natural environment around us, KAYAC hopes this entertaining plant interface system will inspire people to think about the environment in new ways.

[The plants’ blog translated into english | Kyo no Midori-san | via Pink Tentacle]

Nikon Corporation (Michio Kariya, President) is pleased to announce the successful development of the Media Port UP (”UP” read as individual letters), a multimedia playback headset device that also supports Internet connection. This innovative product, which incorporates display, headphones, mobile A/V player, Wi-Fi capability, high-capacity memory, and power source in a single compact unit is the first of its type. The UP allows users to easily enjoy high-quality images, videos, and music anywhere. Two UP models will be available—the high-performance UP300x and the basic UP300. The Media Port UP will be available only in Japan through the Nikon Imaging Japan Inc. (Takao Nishioka, President) online UP Store (http://www.upstore.jp/).

[Photo gallery | Nikon | photo via Dvice]

[by abi tamara zambon on Flickr]