‘Drinking bird’ toys upgraded to generate clean energy from water

Scientists have converted a children’s “drinking bird” toy into a tool that generates usable amounts of electricity. The generator could one day be utilized to power a wide variety of small electronic devices, both indoors and outside.Continue ReadingC… Continue reading ‘Drinking bird’ toys upgraded to generate clean energy from water

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged ,

Insanely athletic $1,600 robot dog gets GPT-powered conversation option

Chinese company Unitree has opened pre-orders on its second-gen robot dog companion. The Go2 can follow you around at jogging speeds, perform some wild gymnastic feats, and even talk to you through a GPT-enabled system that writes code on the fly.Conti… Continue reading Insanely athletic $1,600 robot dog gets GPT-powered conversation option

Life-size Tamiya R/C buggy ready to star on (adult) Santa wish lists

The Little Car Company is taking a brief break from shrinking vintage cars into incredible (and exorbitantly expensive) kid-size creations to do the exact opposite: grow a kiddie car into an incredible full-size, street-legal dune machine. One of the c… Continue reading Life-size Tamiya R/C buggy ready to star on (adult) Santa wish lists

For the adolescent who has it all: Bugatti rolls out Mistral kiddy car

Bugatti blew the Pebble Beach crowd away this summer with the all-new 1,600-hp W16 Mistral, an ostentatious swan song for its W16 engine. At the same time it debuted the car publicly, it made billionaire outsiders the world over extremely jealous by re… Continue reading For the adolescent who has it all: Bugatti rolls out Mistral kiddy car

Review: Turing Tumble lets kids build complex marble-powered computers

Minnesota company Upper Story has sent us its Turing Tumble, a fascinating educational toy that quietly tricks kids into inventing binary logic computers using nothing more than tiny marbles dropping through a series of clicky-clacky plastic pieces.Con… Continue reading Review: Turing Tumble lets kids build complex marble-powered computers

Teenage Engineering gets choral with ensemble of singing wooden dolls

The first project from Sweden’s Teenage Engineering was an art installation in 2007 comprising 22 wooden dolls that formed a singing ensemble. The absolut choir has now inspired the creation of a smaller collection that can voice a bunch of classic son… Continue reading Teenage Engineering gets choral with ensemble of singing wooden dolls

Pet robot Loona looks straight out of a Disney movie

Robot pets have been a sci-fi staple for decades, and in recent years we’ve seen a glut of them finally hit the market, with varying success. The latest is Loona, a quite advanced-looking bot with a lot of tricks up its sleeves and a personality straig… Continue reading Pet robot Loona looks straight out of a Disney movie

Tornado Updraft gives balsa-wood model planes an electric RC makeover

Many readers may fondly recall building rubber-band-powered balsa wood model airplanes. While the things were kinda cool, they didn’t fly for long, nor could they be remotely controlled. Such is not the case, however, with the new Tornado Updraft 12.Co… Continue reading Tornado Updraft gives balsa-wood model planes an electric RC makeover