Not nearly as intrusive as it first sounds, the Body Orifice Security Scanner (BOSS) is a chair-shaped mobile metal detector that officials are considering installing in every prison in England and Wales. Designed mainly to weed out one of the most popular forms of contraband -- cellphones -- the new BOSS II is said to be sensitive enough to detect even a single SIM card being smuggled somewhere inside an individual. So far the two £6,500 ($12,900) chairs that have been used at the Woodhill jail in Milton Keynes since April have helped authorities seize 21 handsets, with inmates who trigger an alert segregated and swiped down by a metal detector every time they leave their cells until the metal object has been, um, passed. While this system does humanely do away with uncomfortable cavity searches, those poor souls with a knee replacement, a bit of shrapnel embedded in their hip, or the like seem destined to toil away in solitary confinement for eternity.

[Via SlashGear]

If you're scouting out colleges to showcase your robot crafting skills, make sure the University of Florida is given some very strong consideration. Fresh off of a second straight victory at the Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Competition, the kids in Gainesville are flaunting another robotic creation that can make shopping a lot easier (and a lot safer). Gregory Garcia, a graduate student in mechanical engineering, developed a shopping cart that not only follows you around the store, but keeps a steady pace while cruising and throws on the brakes before clipping someone's heels. Garcia got the inspiration for the B.O.S.S. (Battery Operated Smart Servant) from his (presumably mischievous) little sister, who enjoyed ramming into his legs as a child while manning the buggy. A number of sensors aid the cart's maneuvering techniques, including a color sensor which allows the shopper to hold a piece of fabric behind them for the B.O.S.S. to keep track of -- it apparently accelerates and decelerates based on the speed and distance of the fabric ahead, and Garcia made quite certain that the shopping cart could stop on a dime in order to prevent those awkward heel injuries. While we're not sure how the cart would perform during the madness of holiday shopping, especially if it tried to follow every white (or green, or red) article of clothing around, but we're sure Gregory had a grand 'ole time finally showing that heel-biting cart who's boss.

We've seen all of these fancy add-ons like USB, SD and Bluetooth show up in all sorts of separate car stereos, but BOSS is the first we've seen to get up the chutzpah to throw them all into one stereo for the ultimate in nerdy in-dash entertainment. Thanks to our complete inability to read Korean, we're not really sure what these stereos, the 638B and P255B, do beyond the obvious, but the pretty pictures tell us that you can plug your USB phone in for charging and possibly other functionality, and that there is iPod functionality of some sort. Sounds good to us, now all we need is a car and we're set.