In an attempt to thwart and discourage the use of cars and other vehicles in suicide bombing attacks, NATO has been funding the development of a compact electromagnetic jammer that can safely cause an engine to cut out before a bomber reaches their target.
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Sixense might not be a household name, but its electromagnetic motion sensing technology crops up in the darndest places. The 1:1 tracking technology is used in medical rehabilitation and Japanese arcade games, but it’s most widely known as the wizardry behind the Razer Hydra motion controller. Now the company is gearing up to release a spiritual successor to the Hydra, the Sixense Stem System.
Like the Hydra, Stem offers six degrees of motion-tracking freedom, albeit without the wires or Razer branding. It isn’t necessarily more accurate, but it is more comprehensive — it’s a modular system that offers up to five trackable modules, or “Stems,” that attach to game controllers, VR headsets, accessories or even appendages. We caught up with Sixense president and CEO Amir Rubin to learn more about the Stem’s Kickstarter launch and the company’s first foray into the consumer product space.
Source: Kickstarter
Wireless chargers already exist, but I’m not a big fan of the current setup because it’s not convenient at all. Sure, you don’t have to plug anything to your device, but today’s inductive chargers require that the device being charged remain in contact with the charging dock or platform. That leaves your device more tethered than if you used a charging cable. But what if wireless charging worked like Wi-Fi? That’s what a company called Ossia is working on.
Founded by physicist Hatem Zeine, Ossia is working on a wireless charging technology that it calls Cota. Like today’s inductive charging systems, Cota requires a power transmitter as well as a receiver on the device to be charged. Zeine claims that the receiver can be made small enough to fit inside gadgets and even AAA batteries. Best of all – and this is the trillion dollar claim of Ossia – the Cota transmitter can supposedly power devices up to 30 ft. away. Furthermore, Zeine claims that Cota is as harmless as Wi-Fi, it works through walls and it can charge multiple devices at once. In other words, it’s just like having a Wi-Fi router except this one sends electricity. You can skip to around 2:30 in the video below to see Zeine demonstrate Cota:
Wow. If Cota takes off, future mobile devices won’t need high capacity batteries, because we’ll be able to charge them all the time. Just imagine how convenient that would be.
[via TechCrunch via Engadget]
Just over 18 months after making its video debut, the Navy’s electromagnetic railgun has a manufacturer. BAE Systems — known for e-ink-powered tank camouflage, autonomous spiderbots and machine-gun-mounted lasers — won the government contract and hopes to have phase-two prototypes ready “as early as next year.” While the current design is capable of firing one shot, the Office of Navy Research hopes for six to ten shots per minute. If that doesn’t scare you, consider this: The pulse-driven projectiles travel at Mach 6 and can hit targets over 100 nautical miles away. Don’t worry, it’s not too late to rethink that career of sailing the high seas as a pirate and get to work on that accounting degree instead.
Filed under: Science
Via: Defense Tech
Source: BAE Systems
Aside from generating heat, most electronic devices also emit electromagnetic fields. A rapid prototyping enthusiast named Dennis Siegel has found a way to tap into those fields and store them as usable energy by way of AA batteries. Think of his harvesters as the real life equivalent of the mutant Bishop.
Siegel wrote about his project on his website but he didn’t go into detail about his build process, only that he used “coils and high frequency diodes” to capture the electromagnetic fields. He also said that he made two different types of harvesters that convert electromagnetic fields of different frequencies. Using the harvesters couldn’t be simpler. They’ll automatically gather and store energy as long as there’s an electromagnetic field nearby. The harvesters also have an LED that glow in proportion to the strength of nearby electromagnetic fields. If you still can’t follow that, watch this creepy dude:
Siegel didn’t mention if he’s interested in making a commercial version of his project. But even if he is he still has a long way to go – his current prototypes need literally an entire day to charge one AA battery. Still, it’s nice to imagine that someday our gadgets will be powering each other and even themselves.
[via Dennis Siegel & Fast Co. Design via Visual News]
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