Back in December when Amazon announced that it wanted to use drones to deliver packages to Prime users in only 30 minutes, many folks thought that sounded farfetched. Word has now surfaced from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) that the government wants to trial its own delivery service in Dubai using drones.
The service would feature drone aircraft to deliver items to citizens such as driver’s licenses and other government documents. A prototype drone was unveiled this week and the UAE government plans to test the drone for six months.
The battery-powered quadrotor will carry packages in an upper cargo compartment. It also will have fingerprint scanners and retina scanners to ensure delivery to the correct person. The team behind the drones says they could cost as little as $1100(USD) each, and carry loads up to 3.3 pounds distances up to 1.86 miles.
Assuming a successful test in Dubai, the government wants to roll the drone aircraft out to the remainder of the country in the next year.
Last November we heard about VRcade, a virtual reality system that lets the user move around while wearing a VR headset, thanks to wireless wearable electronics and cameras. A company called Zero Latency is working on the Inversion Project, a very similar setup for VR poster child Oculus Rift.
Details are scarce about the Inversion Project, but I’m going to bet that it also requires cameras or motion sensors aside from the hardware that’s worn or carried by the user. The video below demonstrates the technology with the help of a simple zombie game disappointingly called Zombie Fort: Smackdown and not Rift 4 Dead.
Zero Latency will demo the Inversion Project on Feb. 16 at Melbourne Australia’s Pause Festival. Hopefully details will trickle out of the event soon after.
About a year ago, we mentioned that DARPA was working on a plan to develop electronics that would destroy themselves on command. The idea was to get devices that soldiers could take into battle that could be destroyed if lost or left behind. I have a hard time keeping up with my smartphone in the house, I can only imagine how easy it would be to lose one when someone is shooting at you.
DARPA has now started giving out millions of dollars to companies to develop these electronics. DARPA gave $2.1 million to PARC to develop a program called DUST. That program involves electronics with dummy circuits that can dissolve into sand-like particles with an electrical trigger.
IBM was also given $3.5 million to develop strained glass substrates that can explode when triggered. That would result in CMOS sensors in electronics that can be destroyed using radio signals. Another firm has been given $4.7 million to develop a battery that can self-destruct. The goal is to leave the devices non-usable and any information on them non-retrievable if the device is lost.
Most of us are lucky enough to live in peaceful places where landmines don’t threaten our lives on a daily basis. Unfortunately, many people still live in fear of stepping on landmines and losing their limbs – or worse, their lives. This is true for Colombia, where over 10,000 people have been maimed or killed because of these lethal weapons.
Well aware of this fact, design firm Lemur Studio came up with a landmine detector called “SaveOneLife” that fits right inside a person’s shoe.
As designed, it will use a small coil of conductive material that produces an electromagnetic field. This is key to how it works, as this field will be able to interact with the electromagnetic field of the landmines. When a landmine is detected, the user will get an alarm on the armband that works in conjunction with the sole – hopefully before they step on one.
Iván Pérez, Lemur’s creative director, explains: “The device was created with the goal of saving a life, hence the name, first by the families of the victims and second for the cost effects of military forces by the loss of his men in combat.”
SaveOneLife is still a concept design for now, but here’s to hoping it becomes a reality.
We know that 3D printers can print objects out of plastic, food, animal tissue and metal. Now a company called Mark Forged claims that its upcoming Mark One 3D printer can print using carbon fiber, the wonder material known for its high strength-to-weight ratio and cool looks. Something tells me this printer will hit a high money-to-ink ratio as well.
The Mark One can print objects with carbon fiber at up to 200 microns thick. It can also print using PLA, fiberglass and nylon at up to 100 microns, so you can make objects mainly out of those cheaper materials then reinforce or decorate them a bit with carbon fiber. You can check out the printer’s other specifications on Mark Forged’s website.
The Mark One will be available this March for $5,000 (USD). Some of Gizmag’s commenters have two major criticisms about the Mark One though. First is that you can already buy carbon fiber-reinforced PLA filament. Which means you can start printing carbon fiber objects now and with your existing 3D printer.
The second criticism is that although carbon fiber is strong in itself, in high-end applications the material is molded – i.e. the fibers are aligned and woven – in ways that maximize certain properties, one of which is strength. In other words, a 3D printed carbon fiber object may not turn out to be as strong or durable as other carbon fiber products.
For my part, I’m worried that future customers will be able to buy the Mark One’s carbon fiber filament only from Mark Forged. And also that folks are more excited about this than the one that prints pizza. Folks. THIS ONE PRINTS PIZZA. Why is that not receiving funding from all living organisms in the universe?
We’ve seen a hexacopter with six legs, but this quadcopter takes after birds instead of spiders. This particular quadcopter is Vishwa Robotics’ test unit. New Scientist reports that the company is developing leg add-ons for “small US air force drones.” The legs will allow drones to perch on branches, wires and other objects in order to survey and conserve energy.
Vishwa Robotics founder Bhargav Gajjar modeled the legs after those of the American kestrel. A computer controls the drone’s landing based on footage from a camera mounted on the drone: “Just like a real bird, the drone has to brake sharply just above its landing site and perform a controlled stall in order to touch down.” The legs’ strong claws allow a drone to stay upright without using any power. In addition, drones can also use the legs to walk short distances.
Vishwa Robotics is also testing its legs on fixed-wing drones, bringing us that much closer to seeing tiny Valkyries.
Disney’s Touché concept can turn many ordinary objects into touch sensors. But what if you could buy materials such as wood, foil or paper that were already touch-sensitive off the shelf? That’s one of the dreams of a group called Embodied Interaction. To prove that the idea is applicable, the group made sheets of flexible and cuttable multi-touch sensors.
According to researchers Simon Olberding, Nan-Wei Gong, John Tiab, Joseph A. Paradiso, and Dr. Jürgen Steimle, their multi-touch sensor works even when parts of it are cut because of two main factors: how the electrodes – the points that sense touch – are wired to their connectors and where the connectors are located.
As the group claimed in their research paper (pdf), in conventional touch sensors electrodes are arranged in a flat grid and are wired to the connectors and to each other, as seen above. This presents two problems. First, several electrodes are dependent on one wire. Also, because the connectors are located at the edges of the sensor, you can’t damage or cut out those edges or you’ll leave the whole sheet useless. That won’t cut it for a cuttable sensor. In addition, conventional touch sensors are not made of materials that are hard to cut using ordinary tools.
What the research team did is to come up used circuit printing technology to make flexible multi-touch sensor sheets, in which the connectors are at the center of each sheet and the wires connect to as few electrodes as possible. In what they call the star topology, each electrode has its own wire to the connector. A second arrangement called the tree topology there are a few central wires that branch out and handle their own batch of electrodes.
The end result is a multi-touch sensor that can be cut into a variety of shapes, although obviously they couldn’t cut a hole in the middle of the sheet.
Of course, the challenge of wiring these touch-sensing sheets to a microcomputer is another matter altogether. Still, it would be nice if you could build your own touch-sensitive furniture, gadget or tools. Haed to Embodied Interaction’s website for more information on the concept.
Robotics is a fast-growing industry, and in the next couple of decades, could be responsible for producing a large portion of the Army’s soldiers. Said General Robert Cone in an … Continue reading
Harry Potter has gillyweed, while non-magical folks like you and me have the Triton respirator. The concept device is a contraption that lets a person “breathe” underwater by functioning as gills.
If you read Harry Potter, then you’ll know how crucial gillyweed was for him during the Twi-Wizard cup tournament. If you didn’t, well, it’s basically a magical plant that gave the person who ate it temporary gills.
While Triton won’t make gills sprout out of your neck, it works in a similar fashion.
The concept design was thought up by Korean industrial designer Jeabyun Yeon and it essentially would work like the gills on a fish. Its wearer simply has to bite down on the device’s mouthpiece. It will then strip oxygen from the surrounding water and let you breathe as if you were on land and not underwater.
The Triton uses a series of filters woven together so water molecules can’t pass through. It’s also fitted with a micro-compressor that, in theory, will be able to pull dissolved oxygen out of the water and into its wearer’s breathing tank.
This concept might seem far off now, but who knows? It might turn into a reality in the future.
At first glance, this rockabilly Batmobile looks like a retro-fetishist’s pet project. It’s not. In fact, this freak machine, hand-built by a ragtag team in an Illinois town of 1,200, is the deepest look into the future of cars you’ve ever clapped eyes on. One frigid day in Brooklyn, Gizmodo buckled in for a ride.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
