Hasta La Gadget!

BMW continues to fight the good fight: making sure you hit fewer people with its luxury vehicles. The German automaker is developing a vehicle warning system aimed at curbing collisions caused by drivers making left turns — a leading cause of accidents and motorcycle fatalities. The system, which can be enabled for vehicles making left or U-turns while traveling under 10mph, detects movements using the vehicle’s navigation system and a single camera. Once a left turn is recognized, three lasers are used to scan for hazards up to 328-feet away — if one is detected, the car will automatically brake and throw up corresponding alerts for the driver. The company is set to show off the system as part of INTERSAFE 2, this week in Wolfsburg, Germany. In the meantime, the rest of us will have to rely on things like mirrors and looking over our shoulders.

BMW left turn assistant uses lasers to help you avoid running people over originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 16 May 2011 21:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Continue reading Lasers prove you can’t hold a camera still (video)

Lasers prove you can’t hold a camera still (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 03 May 2011 15:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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To us, Prague will always be the Eastern European capital of roast duck, potato dumplings and tasty, cheap pilsner. But come 2015, the former Soviet Bloc city will also become home to the world’s most powerful laser, as part of the European Union’s Extreme Light Infrastructure project. According to plans released by the European Commission, the laser will produce peak power in the exawatt range (equivalent to one trillion megawatts). So, for a very small fraction of a second, the beam will generate one million times more power than the entire U.S. electric grid. Believe it or not, that’s plenty of time to conduct experiments that could reveal new cancer treatments and ways to deal with nuclear waste. Breakthroughs in either category would be incredible for the €700 million (about $1 billion) project, which also includes future plans to build two similar lasers, and a third that’s twice as powerful the Prague installation — roughly the same current draw as an HTC Thunderbolt.

[Image courtesy of Instructables]

Prague to host world’s most powerful laser originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 28 Apr 2011 21:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Anyone who’s ever picked a flea off a dog’s back with an automatic weapon knows there’s a fine line between a crushed bug and a bloody mutt. Fortunately for flea-bitten K9s, a team of researchers are working on a laser-packing fiber-optic sensor system to guarantee that your rifle’s crosshairs are always dead on. Known simply as the Reticle Compensating Rifle Barrel Reference Sensor, the setup enlists the exterior grooves, or flutes, on a typical rifle as a receptacle for glass optical fibers. These fibers direct beams of light along the top and side of the weapon to precisely measure just how far off the gun’s sights are from the barrel’s actual position. A set of algorithms and sensor inputs are then employed to adjust for distance and other factors that affect a bullet’s trajectory, providing the shooter with crosshairs that adjust to environmental changes in real time. Unsurprisingly, the system is being targeted at military and law enforcement, which means it probably won’t make it into the hands of anyone who uses firearms as an alternative to Advantage. Sorry, Rover. Full PR after the break.

Continue reading New laser sighting system enlists electronic sensors to make sure snipers hit their marks

New laser sighting system enlists electronic sensors to make sure snipers hit their marks originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 20 Apr 2011 05:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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See that flaming wreckage in the picture above? A laser did that, mounted on board a second vessel similarly bobbing on top of the ocean last week. Yes, even though the United States Navy told us that legitimate seafaring death rays might take another decade to materialize, basic weaponized lasers are ready today, as the 15-kilowatt gun attached to the USS Paul Foster happily demonstrates. Of course, as you’ll see in the video after the break, a beam of such minimal power takes a moment to burn through even an unshielded engine and ignite the fuel therein — once we get some 100+ kilowatt lasers up in there, we shouldn’t have such problems.

Continue reading US Navy’s solid-state laser sets boat ablaze (video)

US Navy’s solid-state laser sets boat ablaze (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 10 Apr 2011 21:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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