Is Zhora Just Around the Corner?

One step closer to "Blade Runner":

Carnegie Mellon’s Incredible Robot Snake Climbs a Real Tree

Carnegie Mellon has taught its robotic snake to climb trees, though one hopes it won’t start offering your spouse apples. “Uncle Sam” (presumably named for its red, white, and blue markings) is a snake robot built from modular pieces. The latest in a line of ‘modsnakes’ from Carnegie Mellon’s Biorobotics Lab, Uncle Sam can move in a variety of different ways including rolling, wiggling, and side-winding. It can also wrap itself around a pole and climb vertically, which comes in handy when scaling a tree. You have to watch this thing in action. There is something incredibly life-like, and eerie, about the way it scales the tree outdoors and then looks around with its camera ‘eye’. Projects like Uncle Sam show how life-mimicking machines could revolutionize robotics in the near future.

I hope there are other efforts underway to make snakes like the one Zhora dances with in Blade Runner.

In the first Suki series, Suki works in robot theory as a consultant to industry.

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Patrick 12th in ARCA qualifying UPDATED

Patrick 12th in ARCA qualifying

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- For a few minutes, at least, Danica Patrick had the fastest qualifying time for her Daytona debut.

It didn't last very long.

Patrick briefly held pole position early in Friday's ARCA qualifying session, eventually falling to 12th as other drivers posted faster speeds. The IndyCar star will make her widely anticipated stock car debut Saturday -- and, as her crew chief noted, at least she's starting close enough to the front to see the pace car.

"Now it's just time to think about how the heck I am going to run this race," Patrick said.

Read the rest at the link above.

Update:

Suki|2.7.10 @ 9:27AM|#

Danica came in 6th in the ARCA race, Bobby Gerhart won. Not sure on the later race.

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Copyright 2009, 2010, SJE Enterprises, all rights reserved.