I guess it is only the ultra-techie and ever exploring guys at MIT who most often come up with rare oddities and amazing fusions like this. Few folk at the prestigious institute just thought that spending summer on the beach or taking time off to surf is not cool, so the decided to turn a shopping cat into a Go-kart and it is not like they have taken a mesh and put on engine on it to help it trod along. This little baby that its crazy makers like to call as ‘LOLrioKart’ can hit a speed of 45 mph on asphalt and if you crazy enough to do that, then you better carry the helmet along.
Read More

The exploration of underwater terrains may be a dream for most people, especially because of how expensive  submarine can be. However, it may not remain a dream for very long if this Russian company mange to achieve what they desire to do.

Marine Innovation Technology has designed a submarine which can be powered mechanically by two people. Powered by pedalling, the two seater submarine is extremely cost effective making it affordable for a large number of the population and the simplicity of handling also means that driving this underwater vehicle will require no training. two average persons can keep the submarine going for at least four hours, with the vehicle running at a speed of 2-3 knots. On surface, it can hit speeds of 2-5 knots.

Read More

Ever heard of your chair knowing your mind, following your brainpower? The researchers at MIT are designing a wheelchair that responds to verbal commands. This user-friendly system can learn all about the locations in a given building, and then take its occupant to a given place in response to a vocal order. Just by saying “take me to the cafeteria” or “go to my room,” the wheelchair user would be able to avoid the need for controlling every twist and turn of the route and could simply sit back and relax as the chair moves from one place to another based on a map stored in its memory.
Unlike other attempts to program wheelchairs or other mobile devices, which rely on an intensive process of manually capturing a detailed map of a building, the MIT system can learn about its environment in much the same way as a person would: By being taken around once on a guided tour, with important places identified along the way. Outdoors in the open, such systems can rely on GPS receivers to figure out where they are, but inside buildings the wheelchair prototype relies on a WiFi system to make its maps and then navigate through them, which requires setting up a network of WiFi nodes around the facility in advance.

The research which has been funded by Nokia and Microsoft will especially be a boom to the patients who have partial or substantial loss of muscle control. As the research progresses, Nicholas Roy, assistant professor of aeronautics and astronautics and the one behind the machine, says he’d like to add a collision-avoidance system using detectors to prevent the chair from bumping into other wheelchairs, walls or other obstacles besides including a wide number of other applications, such as automated forklifts that can learn where to take a crate and repeat that process.
So, this one is sure to take you places!!
Via MIT / BoingBoing