While rovers like Curiosity are doing a bang-up job exploring extraterrestrial terrain, they don’t have the capability to scale cliffs and other hard-to-reach places. That’s a job best left to climbing robots like LEMUR, a technology developed by engineers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. JPL’s engineers spent years refining the machine, which was originally conceived as a repair robot for the International Space Station. Now, the LEMUR (short for Limbed Excursion Mechanical Utility Robot) project has concluded, but not before JPL conducted a final field test in Death Valley, California.
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, or even use Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for MakeCode, CircuitPython, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell with Google Hangouts On-Air is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
