Dec 12

Researchers build world’s smallest steam engine that could

Posted in: concept, germany, laser, research, Today's Chili
Wanna create your very own microscopic steam engine? Just take a colloid particle, put it in water, and add a laser. That’s a CliffsNotes version of what a group of German researchers recently did to create the world’s smallest steam engine. To pull it off, engineers from the University of Stuttgart and Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems tweaked the traditional approach introduced by Robert Stirling nearly 200 years ago. In Stirling’s model, gas within a cylindrical tube is alternately heated and cooled, allowing it to expand and push an attached piston. Professor Clemens Bechinger and his team, however, decided to downsize this system by replacing the piston with a laser beam, and the cylinder’s working gas with a single colloid bead that floats in water and measures just three thousandths of a millimeter in size. The laser’s optical field limits the bead’s range of motion, which can be easily observed with a microscope, since the plastic particle is about 10,000 times larger than an atom. Because the beam varies in intensity, it effectively acts upon the particle in the same way that heat compresses and expands gas molecules in Stirling’s model. The bead, in turn, does work on the optical field, with its effects balanced by an outside heat source. The system’s architects admit that their engine tends to “sputter” at times, but insist that its mere development shows that “there are no thermodynamic obstacles” to production. Read more about the invention and its potential implications in the full press release, after the break.

Continue reading Researchers build world’s smallest steam engine that could

Researchers build world’s smallest steam engine that could originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 12 Dec 2011 13:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Dec 12

NASA looks to send landers to Europa in 2020, wants to break the ice

Posted in: camera, concept, NASA, research, robot, space, Today's Chili
There’s still a lot of mystery surrounding Jupiter’s moon Europa, but researchers at NASA seem fairly certain that there’s a watery ocean lurking beneath its icy exterior. Their theories may finally be put to the test later this decade, thanks to a concept mission crafted by astronomers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. According to Space.com, JPL researchers have come up with a plan that would send a pair of landers to Europa by 2026, in the hopes of finding out whether the rock has ever supported life forms. The endeavor certainly wouldn’t be easy, since Jupiter blankets its moon in heavy radiation, but researchers think they can mitigate these risks by sending in an extra lander as backup, and by keeping the mission short and sweet. Under the plan, each 700-pound robot would use a mass spectrometer, seismometers and a slew of cameras to search for any organic chemicals that may be lodged within the moon’s ice. Neither craft will sport a protective shield, so they’ll only stay around the planet for about seven days, so as to avoid any radiation damage. At this point, the mission is still in the concept phase, though the JPL is hoping to launch both landers by 2020. JPL researcher Kevin Hand was quick to point out, however, that this would be a “habitability mission,” and that NASA doesn’t expect to find any signs of current life on Europa. Lars von Trier was unavailable for comment.

NASA looks to send landers to Europa in 2020, wants to break the ice originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 12 Dec 2011 08:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Oct 28

Bendy Nokia Phone Prototype and 8 Other Bizarro Cell Phone Concepts

Posted in: concept, HTC, nokia, Phones, R&D and Inventions, Today's Chili

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Today’s smartphones all seem to share the same silhouette. You’ll find a large, flat touchscreen on the front, and maybe a few buttons across the bottom. The form factor will be thin enough to fit in your pocket, and it might include a slide-out QWERTY keyboard. Snooze. But it doesn’t have to be that way, as futuristic cell phone concepts constantly remind us.

At the Nokia World Conference in London — the location where Nokia’s Windows Phone handsets made their debut — a new flexible handset was being demoed. It’s called the Nokia Kinetic Device and, yes, the entire phone is being flexed in the photo above.

The entire device is made of plastic, right down to the AMOLED display on the front. Rather than using swipes and pinches to navigate the UI, you would use bends and twists. To zoom into a page, you bend the phone so its center buckles towards you; zoom out by doing the opposite. A twisting action is used to scroll through photos or adjust the volume.

Since it is all plastic, and all bendy, the prototype lacks a number of features that would allow it to be a true smartphone — or even a cell phone, if we’re being honest. The touchscreen isn’t capacitive, there’s no camera, no GPS and no actual phone functionality. We said it was a prototype, right?

So it clearly has a way to go before it starts landing in consumer hands. Here’s a collection of eight other concepts and protypes that push cell phone design to the limit.

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Oct 27

Microsoft cracks open a window to the future, anticipates our laziness (video)

Posted in: concept, Microsoft, Today's Chili, video

In the future, we’ll all be slaves to rectangles. No, really. Well, at least that’s the prognosis, albeit sanitized, Microsoft has slickly pieced together in its Productivity Future Vision concept video. It’s a mostly seamless world where all of our interactions are made to be mobile, virtual, efficient and white-washed, but it actually just reads as too darn fussy and overcomplicated. Sure, we could get behind contactless payment, tablets with holographic displays and eyeglasses that translate conversations when you’ve just stepped off a red eye into some foreign destination — that’s all incredibly useful. But car windows with agenda overlays and transparent refrigerator door displays? Some things are better left lo-tech. For Redmond’s part, the company’s merely aiming to project ways these various implementations of “real technology” will intersect and “actively assist” us with our harried lives. Take a peek at MS’ sanctioned tomorrow land and its sparse piano soundtrack after the break.

Continue reading Microsoft cracks open a window to the future, anticipates our laziness (video)

Microsoft cracks open a window to the future, anticipates our laziness (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 27 Oct 2011 21:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Oct 27

Nature Valley creating Street View-style tour of National Parks, chews through countless granola bars to do so

Posted in: concept, maps, Today's Chili, Travel, us, usa

“There’s a good reason why Street View is done in cars.” That’s a quote from Mat Bisher, associate creative director at McCann, who is teaming up with granola connoisseur Nature Valley in order to deliver a “Street View-style tour” of America’s National Parks. Fast Company reports that the two have embarked on quite the ambitious initiative (dubbed Trail View), sending a cadre of well-trained hikers to some of America’s most gorgeous locales with specially-rigged camera setups in tow. The goal? To capture views from near-limitless hiking trails, and bring them to your web browser starting in February 2012. Sadly, it won’t be integrated into any of the platforms already in existence; it’ll be its own standalone thing, but hopefully the likes of Microsoft or Google will take notice and either contribute or convert it. We’re told that “layers for user-generated content, social networking and mobility, and perhaps form partnerships with travel sites” are on tap, and yes, Woodrow Wilson’s ghost has purportedly approved.

Update: We’ve added a few shots of the actual capturing in the gallery below.

Gallery: Nature Valley Street View-style capturing of National Parks

Nature Valley creating Street View-style tour of National Parks, chews through countless granola bars to do so originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 27 Oct 2011 09:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Oct 22

Brand Table concept revolutionizes fast food, NFC still won’t make it good for you (video)

Posted in: concept, mobilepostcross, nexus s, NexusS, nfc, Today's Chili, video

Jersey girls and boys can now tap and pay their way around, but for the Garden State’s myriad of malls, cash’ll still have to do. Not so for the Ozzies Down Under who may soon never have to leave the comfort of food court chairs — if they’re packing a Nexus S, that is. Designed as a concept by University of Sydney start-up SDigital, special coaster-like “brand stickers” affixed to eatery “brand tables” would relay fast-food menus to mobile phones via NFC. Hungry, hungry humans would then make their selections, order up and receive a vibrating notification when the food’s ready. It’s a contactless payment solution not unlike the QkR platform MasterCard demoed for us last month. And given our ever-increasing crawl towards the bleak adult baby form factor of our potential Wall-E futures, we’d say this tech’s right around the public release corner. Head on past the break for a video demo of the tukkis-numbing, Foodcourtia tech.

Continue reading Brand Table concept revolutionizes fast food, NFC still won’t make it good for you (video)

Brand Table concept revolutionizes fast food, NFC still won’t make it good for you (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 22 Oct 2011 13:50:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Oct 17

Wireless bike brake system has the highest GPA ever

Posted in: bike, concept, germany, prototype, Today's Chili

Color us a yellow shade of mendacious, but if we designed something that works 99.999999999997 percent of the time, we’d probably round off and give ourselves a big ol’ 100 percent A+. We’d probably throw in a smiley faced sticker, too. Computer scientist Holger Hermanns, however, is a much more honest man, which is why he’s willing to admit that his new wireless bike brake system is susceptible to outright failure on about three out of every trillion occasions. Hermanns’ concept bike, pictured above, may look pretty standard at first glance, but take a closer look at the right handlebar. There, you’ll find a rubber grip with a pressure sensor nestled inside. Whenever a rider squeezes this grip, that blue plastic box sitting next to it will send out a signal to a receiver, attached to the bike’s fork. From there, the message will be sent on to an actuator that converts the signal into mechanical energy, and activates the brake. Best of all, this entire process happens will take just 250 milliseconds of your life. No wires, no brakes, no mind control. Hermanns and his colleagues at Saarland University are now working on improving their system’s traction and are still looking for engineers to turn their concept into a commercial reality, but you can wheel past the break for more information, in the full PR.

Continue reading Wireless bike brake system has the highest GPA ever

Wireless bike brake system has the highest GPA ever originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 17 Oct 2011 06:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Oct 10

The Faraday electric bike shows us all how retro the future will be

Posted in: concept, Today's Chili
This ain’t no fixie with a minty fresh paint job, this is the Faraday. Built for the Oregon Manifest design competition, ideas factory Ideo teamed up with bike builders Rock Lobster Cycles to produce this retro-technotastic electric bike. Everything futuristic has been hidden inside the frame: those parallel top tubes hold a series of lithium-ion batteries which juice up the front-hub motor — all controlled from the green box tucked beneath the seat cluster. Those two prongs up front serve as built-in headlights and the base of a modular racking system, letting you swap out various carrying mechanisms like a trunk or child seat with the pop of a bolt. Tragically, the bike is just a concept — so unless the teams responsible cave into peer pressure and get it into production, you’ll have to use old-fashioned leg power to get you over those steep hills.

Gallery: Faraday electric bike

The Faraday electric bike shows us all how retro the future will be originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 10 Oct 2011 16:17:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Oct 09

This concept wants you to smell it, smell it, Smellit

Posted in: concept, Today's Chili

We admit it: this could just be another highfalutin gadget render that’ll never breathe the polluted whiff of day. But it’s a nice render, which demonstrates a concept called the Smellit: a miniature olfactory factory that’s meant to connect to your PC and bring a “fourth dimension” to video and gaming. Its creator, Nuno Teixeira, even claims he’s found a French company to build the device and show it off at the Lisbon Design Show next week. Now, the principle of a practically-sized scent generator has already been demonstrated by others, but we won’t be convinced until we have to open a window.

This concept wants you to smell it, smell it, Smellit originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 09 Oct 2011 04:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Oct 04

KDDI shows off sensory enhancements for smartphone users, throws a free-viewpoint virtual concert

Posted in: Android, ceatec, concept, demo, Features, hands-on, Japan, research, smartphone, tablet, Today's Chili, video
KDDI shows off sensory enhancements for smartphone users, throws a free-viewpoint virtual concert

Japanese carrier KDDI’s never been shy about showing off its latest and greatest from its lab, and here at CEATEC 2011 we got to lay our fingers on a couple of its in-development smartphone sensory enhancements, along with a free-viewpoint concert concept that’s being researched on. The first demo we saw was actually the same haptic smartphone prototype that was unveiled back in May, but we thought it’d be nice to give it a go with our very own hands — read on to find out how well it performed.

Gallery: KDDI shows off sensory enhancements for smartphone users, throws a free-viewpoint virtual concert

Continue reading KDDI shows off sensory enhancements for smartphone users, throws a free-viewpoint virtual concert

KDDI shows off sensory enhancements for smartphone users, throws a free-viewpoint virtual concert originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 04 Oct 2011 06:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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