This Robot Snake Means No Harm, Really

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Not so sheepish now: Google Street View adds the Faroe Islands

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View more sharing options Shares 405 Comments 0 Rachel Dixon Thursday 2 November 2017  14.24 GMT Last modified on Thursday 2 November 2017  14.25 GMT The Faroe Islands  has become the latest remote part of the world to be featured on  Google Street View  – thanks to one woman and five sheep. Last July, tired of waiting for Google to map the autonomous Danish archipelago between Norway and Iceland, resident Durita Andreassen started her own  Sheep View . She strapped 360-degree cameras to a handful of sheep and uploaded the resulting images, with their GPS coordinates, to Street View, while petitioning Google to finish the job. (There are nearly twice as many sheep as people on the 18 islands, hence the attention-catching method.) When the project hit the headlines, Google responded by supplying islanders with camera equipment. Residents and tourists captured more images on foot, by bike, in cars, from kayaks and ship...
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Game of Thrones star in Greenland for Google Street View

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These are stranded icebergs that have broken off a nearby glacier. Each year, a glacial lake forms behind an ice dam, with recently calved icebergs floating in it. Eventually the dam breaks and after the lake has drained the icebergs are left behind. These mammoth chunks will slowly melt until the lake begins to refill again later in the year. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Viking ruins in Igaliku Garðar (known as Igaliku today) was founded in around 1124 and abandoned in the 15th century. The last written record for the settlement dates back to 1408 in connection with a wedding that took place at a church called Hvalsey – a site also available on Google Street View. Some of the stones quarried by the Vikings have taken on a second life in the walls and foundations of village buildings, including a church and several houses. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Igaliku The modern settlement (population 27) was founded in 1783 by Norwegian/Danish trader and admin...
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New and Improved RoboBee Flies, Dives, Swims, Then Flies Again

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A Harvard engineering lab has been building a robotic bee for more than 25 years, and it can now do things that even real bees can't manage. For more than 25 years now, a quiet little design lab at Harvard has been working on a unique robotics project — perfecting the world's first and only RoboBee. Research  published  Oct. 25 in the journal  Science Robotics  details the latest iteration of the little bot, which was first conceived by mechanical engineering student Robert Wood in 1991. Since then, the RoboBee project has been a perennial work-in-progress for scientists and students at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the Wyss Institute for Biologically-Inspired Engineering. Even in its most basic configuration, the RoboBee is a mechanical marvel. Its tiny polymer wings – designed to mimic real insect wings – are powered by small ceramic “muscles” that convert electrical pulses into kinetic energy, making the RoboBee the w...
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