Shane Wighton of Stuff Made Here grew tired of the same backyard routine. His dog would find the one muddy spot in the yard, then shake hard enough to coat everyone nearby. Hand washing only moved the mess from the animal onto the people holding the hose. So he built a car-wash style machine that scans a set of nozzles along the dog while keeping owners out of the spray zone.
Super Valid Designs spent two months on a ski lift because mice had moved into the chicken coop and ordinary traps only opened a revolving door. Catch one batch and another arrives. Live relocation felt like a better bet than a pile of snap traps, so the plan became a pair of jobs in one machine: baited gondolas that work as traps, then a cable line that carries those cars 250 feet down a hill and dumps the passengers into brush without anyone walking the route every night.
Photo credit: The University of Queensland
Australian researchers have fitted giant burrowing cockroaches with electrodes, cameras, and spring-loaded syringes so the insects can be steered like tiny remote vehicles and deliver medicine in places no human or ordinary robot can reach.
Most fish-inspired robots arrive locked to one length and one job. Scale them up for a lake or down for a creek and the whole machine usually has to be designed again from scratch. Engineers working between NYU Tandon and EPFL have shown a way around that limit with ScaFi, a compliant robot modeled on the tail-heavy swimming of fish such as cod and mackerel. Those species keep most of their body bend toward the rear, a style that works across a wide range of real animal sizes. ScaFi copies the same idea with a rigid motor-driven front and a flexible tail of fiberglass rods wrapped in red fabric. A single motor pulls two tendons that cross near the tail tip, forcing the familiar S-curve that pushes water backward.
Engineers at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, working with colleagues at Waseda University in Japan, have added a working underwater capability to remote-controlled cockroaches. The insects already carry small electronic packs that let operators steer them through rubble and tight spaces. A new 3D-printed attachment now supplies oxygen so the same insects can keep moving when those spaces fill with water.
Marine researchers have recorded a goblin shark moving through its natural surroundings for the first time. Cameras placed in two distant parts of the Pacific Ocean caught the animals gliding past in the darkness, healthy and undisturbed. The clips come from separate expeditions and mark a shift from what scientists had seen before.
A startup in Hangzhou just released a lightweight collar that listens to dogs and cats and turns their sounds into short sentences on your phone. Named Pettichat, the device weighs only 27 grams and sits comfortably around a pet’s neck. It picks up vocalizations through built-in microphones while motion sensors track posture, movements, and other physical cues at the same time.
A band of wild boars broke onto the sidewalk and grass on the outskirts of Warsaw, as seen on video late one night. Barely a moment later, a Unitree G1 humanoid robot appears from the side, its legs pumping furiously as it fights to stay upright.
Carrot, a betta fish, has been promoted to tank captain thanks to a tinkerer who was determined not to let a fish become permanently locked in one location. Everything Is Hacked spent over a year developing a simple concept and gradually turning it into a reality. It all began with riffing on an old joke about a fish who gets to control the tank, and they set out to make the punchline a living, breathing entity. They were first playing with the concept of putting a simple fish bowl on a toy truck, but it felt too lazy. The major issue here was finding adequate space, as most fish want personal space to breathe, and cramming a full tank onto a small wheeled robot simply wasn’t going to cut it.
Photo credit: Barny Dillarstone
Barny Dillarstone is an adventurer who enjoys traveling to distant bodies of water and placing baited camera systems in places that most don’t even think of. He chose a location near Nusa Penida, a small Indonesian island nicknamed the “Black Magic Island” due to its murky legend and hazardous tides. Over the course of a few days, he was able to get his beloved Insta360 Ace Pro 2 down to about 170 metrers / 600 feet, where the water is so forceful that only the most desperate life can cling to the bottom.