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Zothecula writes:
Solar Impulse 2 has completed the Pacific Ocean crossing leg of its round-the-world flight. According to the Solar Impulse organization, the aircraft with founder and chairman Bertrand Piccard at the controls touched down in a night landing at Moffett Airfield in Mountain View, California on April 23 at 11:44 pm PDT after a flight time of 62 hours and 29 minutes from Kalaeloa Airport, Hawaii.
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Zothecula writes:
Shell is perhaps best known for producing what goes into cars, rather than cars themselves. Now, the firm has taken the wraps off the Project M car, a vehicle that's claimed will use a third less energy in its lifetime than a typical city car and around half the energy to build and run than a typical small family car.
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Zothecula writes:
With all the furore about drones today, it's easy to forget that blimps once ruled the skies over sporting events. But one company believes that airships still have plenty to offer in this area, so has developed an aerial platform that carries broadcast gear and won't wreak havoc should it come crashing to the ground.
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Zothecula writes:
It looks like something you'd want to steer clear of in a video game, and most likely real life as well, but this menacing mechanical snake isn't out to hurt anybody. Developed to cut the costs of maintaining underwater equipment, the Eelume robot is designed to be unleashed permanently on seabeds where it will glide through tight spaces tending to gear that is difficult and expensive to reach for us humans.
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Zothecula writes:
From displays that curve to screens that swerve, flexible electronics is fast developing area of technology that promises to put a new twist on the way we absorb information. Bending televisions are an early example of this being adapted to the consumer world, and if a team of Japanese researchers has its way electronic skin (e-skin) won't be all that far behind. The team's new durable, flexing OLED display prototype is less than one quarter the thickness of Saran wrap and can be worn on the skin to display blood-oxygen levels, with the developers working to afford it other health-monitoring abilities, too.
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Zothecula writes:
The good news: The Loch Ness Monster has been captured on sonar by an underwater robot operated by the British division of Norway's Kongsberg Maritime. The bad news: "Nessie" is a prop from a Sherlock Holmes film that sank in the loch in 1969. The monstrous model was long thought lost until it was discovered this week by the Munin Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) as part of an underwater survey of the loch for The Loch Ness Project and VisitScotland.
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Zothecula writes:
Researchers have developed a sheet camera with a flexible lens array which could be wrapped around everyday objects, turning them into cameras. The project, which uses elastic optics, could also see the development of credit card-thin cameras which a photographer simply bends to change the field of view.
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Zothecula writes:
When the Apollo 15 mission landed on the moon in July 1971, it took with it the first ever vehicle to be driven by humans on another world; the lunar roving vehicle (LRV). In the long and complex history prior to that event, however, NASA commissioned the construction of a range of test vehicles for the Apollo program, many of which were eventually scrapped once their experimental use was concluded. One such vehicle – a mid-1960s LRV prototype – ended up in the hands of a junkyard dealer who decided not to break it down for scrap but, instead, held on to it for some years. "Rediscovered" late in 2015, the long-lost prototype is now headed for auction where it is expected to fetch at least US$125,000.
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Zothecula writes:
From buzzing phones to quivering console controllers, haptic feedback has become indispensable in modern computing, and developers are already wondering how it will be felt in systems of the future. Sending ultrasound waves through the back of the hand to deliver tactile sensations to the front might sound a little far-fetched, but by achieving just that UK scientists claim to have cleared the way for computers that use our palms as advanced interactive displays.
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Zothecula writes:
Composite metal foams (CMFs) are little-known materials that are beginning to show some big promise. Last year we saw researchers adapt these lightweight materials to stop various forms of radiation in their tracks, and now the same team has ramped things up to offer protection from something with a bit more force: an armour-piercing bullet, which was turned to dust on impact.
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Zothecula writes:
The pursuit of personal flight took a promising, and kind of wacky, step forward this week with the electric 18-rotor Volocopter lifting somebody into the air for the very first time. The maiden manned flight went off without a hitch, with the makers intent on using the emission-free aircraft as flying taxis a little further down the road.
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Zothecula writes:
Robots have a tremendous potential, but if a way can't be found to manufacture them quickly, cheaply, and in large numbers, that potential may remain exactly that. To that end, MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) has come up with a new way to make soft, hydraulically-powered robots in one step using commercial 3D printers that can print solid and liquid parts simultaneously.
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Zothecula writes:
Computing giant Nvidia has announced the world's first "supercomputer in a box" – the DGX-1. With a cool 170 teraflops of performance, the machine is designed to tackle the complex worlds of deep learning and artificial intelligence, areas of research requiring massive amounts of computing power.
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Zothecula writes:
Believe it or not, autonomous race cars will soon be battling it out on the track. As we reported last year, plans are for the Roborace autonomous racing series to run in conjunction with Formula E, starting in the 2016-17 season. Last week, newly-appointed design chief Daniel Simon, who has a diverse background designing concept cars for both global automakers and Hollywood, released the first look at the driverless Roborace car.
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Zothecula writes:
When diagnosing autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in children, doctors currently rely on reports from parents, and direct observations, but those methods don't always produce concrete results. Now, researchers at the Cleveland Clinic have looked to remote eye tracking to help streamline the process, providing a solid, early diagnosis that lets treatment start more quickly.
