Rex

Robomule Rex follows soldiers, voice commands

"Fetch" and "heel" may be the latest commands to join the military lexicon, with the arrival of Rex, a small, six-wheel-drive load-bearing robotic vehicle designed to follow squad-size units in response to voice commands.

Envisioned as a robotic "beast of burden" for the modern soldier, Rex can carry more than 400 pounds, a typical load for groups of 3 to 10 ground soldiers, for 72 hours at a time without refueling, according to developer Israel Aerospace Industries.

"The robotic vehicle follows the lead soldier from a given distance, utilizing technology developed and patented … Read more

Mini robot can cruise through burning buildings

South Korea's Hoya Robot is developing a mini firefighter helper bot that can enter burning buildings to conduct reconnaissance and check for people.

The Firefighters Assistant Robot can apparently operate for up to 30 minutes in fires, and can withstand temperatures up to 320 F. It can also survive falls of more than 6 feet. It's water-resistant, as seen in this experiment video.

It may look like a tank up close, but the bot can nearly fit in the palm of your hand and weighs only 3 pounds.

The remote-controlled rover can scoot into a blaze and transmit … Read more

Electric T-Rex wants a bite of the X-Prize

The Campagna T-Rex is a high-performance reverse-tricycle with a pair of front wheels handling the steering, a 1400cc motorcycle drivetrain with a single drive wheel out back, and a two-seat passenger compartment in between. OptaMotive has partnered with Campagna Motors to bring high efficiency to the formula without losing any of the high performance. How do they plan to do it? By chucking the gasoline-fueled drivetrain and creating an all-electric T-Rex to compete for the Progressive Automotive X-Prize.

OptaMotive's code-name for the project is "Surge," but I think the "Grimlock" would be a much better … Read more

Novell's new Linux chief has Suse history

Markus Rex, formerly the chief technology officer of Suse and currently on leave from Novell, is back in the saddle as acting general manager and senior vice president of Novell's Open Platform Solutions business unit, reporting to Novell CTO Jeff Jaffe, as Novell announced Monday.

Rex had been on loan to the Linux Foundation as its CTO for the past year. He's a fervid community believer, someone who will help balance Novell's interest in driving Linux-based revenue with the need to rebuild its relations with the Linux community that soured on Novell in the wake of its patent deal with Microsoft.… Read more

iRex delivers next-generation electronic book reader: Preview of the next Amazon Kindle?

Gizmodo posted a blog post yesterday on iRex's new line of "digital readers" and took a few whacks at the company for over-promising and under-delivering.

You see, iRex, which developed the full-featured but pricey Iliad reader, recently ran a little online teaser ad that alerted the world that, "A new era in digital reading" was set to begin on September 22nd. Well, the blogger at Gizmodo wasn't impressed with what iRex is now offering up: a series of three 10.2-inch monochrome e-ink displays that start at $649 for a base "read-only" … Read more

Where this is episode 69!

EPISODE 69

On today's show we're joined by Rex Sorgatz from Fimoculous. We'll talk all about his infamous blog along with his history of being an original blogger. Plus we ask Jeff about some of the games he's playing, listen to some calls from the public, and maybe even a little dinner for two--all today on The 404.

Listen now: Download today's podcast