Despite what the images here tell you, cockroaches are not cute, nor cuddly, and certainly not adorable. They are not your friends. They are meant to be squashed under foot sprayed with Raid and sent to Roach Motels, not hugged and squeezed with love. They are a natural enemy to humans and all other forms of life. So why is this store in Thailand selling plush toys of giant roaches? To further their cockroach agenda, that’s why. Clearly the guy running the place is the giant insect from Men in Black.
“Peter the Cockroach” is very realistic. Meaning that it is terrifying and disgusting. This plush roach is anatomically correct too, with the antenna, nasty spiky legs, wings and all the rest. Buy this thing at your own risk. It’s sure to attract other real cockroaches because they think this is their giant queen. It looks disgusting, but when you get down to it, this is just a regular plush toy. It may look soft, but you should still never hug this thing.
If you want to creep your friends out, you can find this bizarre toy at a store called Mheemeekhong for about $27(USD). Can you imagine a whole store full of these nasty creatures? I bet they go through a lot of employees because they get attacked on the night shift.
[via Lost At E Minor via Mike Shouts]
Harvard University researchers have been working on a miniature robot called the Harvard Ambulatory Microbot (HAMR) for a while now. The insect-inspired, waterproo microbot recently received an upgrade, and now it can swim and walk underwater – on land, too. While it’s not the most graceful looking robot on those huge foot pads, it is quite capable.
The foot pads use surface tension and related buoyancy to float on the water, while electrowetting (reducing the contact angle between a material and a water surface under a voltage) helps it break through the water and also walk on the ground below. Plus, its circuits are coated in Parylene to prevent them from shorting out.
When it’s time to return to land, HAMR overcomes the surface tension force with a stiffened transmission and soft pads that redistribute the friction while it climbs out of the water. The robot weights only 1.65-grams. If it were larger it would have a hard time staying above-water. This guy may be tiny, but he can even haul cargo in the form of a 1.44-gram payload.
They still have to find a way to return HAMR to land without a ramp, but I’m sure they will accomplish that soon enough. The team is thinking about a jumping mechanism or gecko-like adhesives so it could climb walls too. I’m sure they have some other big ideas for this tiny robot down the road as well. Stay tuned.
[via Engadget]
Miniscule robotic drones might be the future, but they've been tricky to get off the ground. Until now, any wing-flapping insect robot had to have a power source, making it too heavy to lift off with its tiny wings. Now, however, researchers at the U...
I don’t know what it is about horned beetles, but I find them quite creepy. I think it must have been that scene from The Mummy where one crawled under the guy’s skin, or when thousands come crawling out of the ground in The Mummy Returns. Yep, that must be it. But if you’re not creeped out by these creatures, then you might be interested in this bottle opener.
Made by Fred, the Bottle Beetle looks just like an horned stag beetle, but in this case, it’s made of gold-tone zinc alloy, and capable of popping open a cold brew with its mighty horns.
You can grab a Bottle Beetle over on Amazon for just $13(USD). Let’s just hope it doesn’t decide to crawl under your skin.
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