3D Printed Muscles for Google Home: Hey Google, Play ‘Pump It Up’

You know what your Google Home smart device has been missing? Muscles. Mine? Mine has been missing ever being taken out of the package after I received it as a gift because I don’t like being listened to all the time. Even my wife only pays attention to about half of what I say, and she could probably tune that back to about a quarter because the majority of what comes out of my mouth is nonsense and/or burping. Hey Google – add antacid tablets to my shopping list.

Google Home Muscles from Etsy seller 3DPrintThatThing is a $20 set of 3D printed muscles for your Google Home smart device (also for purchase as a 3D printing file on Cults3D for $4 if you own your 3D printer). Now, if you could only change the voice of your Google Home to Arnold Schwarzenegger. Available in black, white, blue, red, and green, Google Muscles is still sure to be a conversation starter. A conversation that presumably starts with, “Hey, are you okay? What’s wrong with you?”

[via DudeIWantThat]

This tiny robotic beetle travels for two hours without a battery

A team of researchers from the University of Southern California have created a miniscule autonomous robotic beetle, RoBeetle, that can travel for more than two hours without a battery. The 88-milligram, insect-inspired robot runs on liquid methanol,...

Muscle sensors may let you control a drone by clenching your fist

There might be a more intuitive way to control robots and drones than waggling joysticks or tapping at a screen. MIT CSAIL researchers have developed a control method, Conduct-A-Bot, that uses muscle sensors and motion detection for more ‘natural’ ro...

These Digital Characters Have a Full Musculoskeletal System

In a quest to make virtual characters more realistic, engineers have been working on ways to make their skeletal structures and muscles more like those found in living beings. Recently, a technology was shown off which takes those simulated biological components to the next level.

Engineers Seunghwan Lee, Kyoungmin Lee, Moonseok Park, and Jehee Lee published the paper Scalable Muscle-actuated Human Simulation and Control, which includes a humanoid digital model with a full skeleton and 346 muscles The digital characters can even learn to kick, jump, run, and even lift weights. Two Minute Papers provides a brief explanation of the tech in the video below:

The simulation technology also has real promise for helping to learn about people with disabilities, how factors like bone deformity, muscle weakness, contracture, and even the use of a prosthesis affect their gait, and possibly to help doctors predict what sort of prosthetics or even surgeries might improve their movements.

Code for the project, dubbed MASS (Muscle-Actuated Skeletal System) has been released on GitHub.

[via Reddit]