Boo!
At the Structure and Motion Laboratory, we’re not boring scientists who robotically focus only on writing grants and publishing papers, much as senior management might want us to pretend. We’re human. We like fun. And we like Halloween. And brainssss! What follows is some good, jolly, Halloweenerly, spooky, sciencey fun that we came up with yesterday (in between writing grants and papers, ahem).
First, our surreal B-movie extravaganza: It Came From the Biomechanics Laboratory. See if you can piece together the plot:
(subtitle: Open John’s freezer… if you dare!!!)
And in case you want more of the ritual sacrifice of the pumpkin at beginning, here are two versions in glorious slo-mo, from our AOS high-speed digital video cameras:
and
Finally, an outtake from the film, in which Gary, the RHex robot from Andrew Spence’s Spencelab, takes his gory vengeance on a hapless cameraman, and then turns on his masters!
Thanks to our brave participants: Miguel Lamas (who compiled the first video), Luis “Demon Emu” Lamas and his squad of brave –but now devoured– emu-wranglers from the RVC, Andrew “Robo Arrigato” Spence, Jeff “Giraffe Leg” Rankin (nice acting, Jeff!), Olgascoob Panagiotopoulou-doo, Becky “Schrodinger’s Evil Cat” Fischer, Rich “Sit, Stand, KILL!” Ellis, Hazel Halliday, and finally that unnamed plucky, cute little kitty-girl (lone survivor and heroine of our story)!
Happy Halloween… muhahahahaaaaaa!!!
I wanted to bring these to your attention, because I imagined you would find them as confusing and vaguely distressing as I did:
store.nike.com/us/en_us/?l=shop,pdp,ctr-inline/cid-1/pid-582071/pgid-501035
(That’s a dorsal view, right? Basically the runner has her legs on backwards? I know the commentariat here is very good at x-rays and anatomy.)
Weird. On the back the x-ray shows pins and plates. Only $90 which is about what the kid who made it earns in three months.
And the model’s legs aren’t nearly long enough.
Good and appropriate choice of music for the vid and loved the shout-out to Ubu at the end.
Ha! Well spotted! I am groggy but yes, seems like a dorsal view… weird and disorienting to see it placed this way on a real person. Thanks for sharing!