World’s First Manned Flight Aboard an Electric Multicopter [Video]

At the end of October 2011, Thomas Senkel of e-volo made the first manned flight with an electric multicopter at an airstrip in the southwest of Germany. The flight lasted one minute and 30 seconds, after which the constructor and test pilot stated: “The flight characteristics are good natured. Without any steering input it would […]



Boston Dynamic’s PETMAN Moves Frighteningly Like You and Me [Video]

Hey, This guy can even strut haters gonna hate-style. PETMAN is an anthropomorphic robot developed by Boston Dynamics for testing special clothing used by the US Army. PETMAN balances itself as it walks, squats and does simple calisthenics. PETMAN simulates human physiology by controlling temperature, humidity and sweating inside the clothing to provide realistic test […]

OmniTouch: How to Turn Any Surface Into a Multi-Touch Screen [Video]

OmniTouch is a wearable depth-sensing and projection system that enables interactive multitouch applications on everyday surfaces. Beyond the shoulder-worn system, there is no instrumentation of the user or environment. Foremost, the system allows the wearer to use their hands, arms and legs as graphical, interactive surfaces. Users can also transiently appropriate surfaces from the environment […]

How to See Through Concrete Walls [Video]

Like almost all interesting technology, the radar array presented by the MIT students below is being developed for warfare situations–specifically those in urban areas where concrete or stone walls are commonplace. It works well enough to offer a count of people on the other side of a wall, but it can’t show you (yet?) whether […]