Quadrator Bots’ Aggressive Flying Formations

GRASP Lab’s Quadrator flying bots are back, and this time, they’ve started training them in modern warfare tactics. The result is pretty scary. The University of Pennsylvania’s GRASP Lab, famous for those crazy quadrotors that can fly through windows and hula hoops, has been working on getting groups of the robots to fly together in […]

Paperphone: A Phone with a Flexible Electronic Paper Display

PaperPhone is the world’s first nextgen, thin film smartphone and interactive paper computer. It is based on a 3.7″ flexible electrophoretic (E Ink) display that does not consume electricity when it is not refreshed. Thinfilm sensors allow the phone to respond to bending of the screen to navigate pages in ebooks, play or pause mp3s, […]



Cheap New Sensor Diagnoses Infection by Smell

And in even more medical sensor news, researchers at the University of Illinois have developed a low-cost method of detecting bacterial infection using an artificial nose. To sniff out the particular strain of bacterium, a broad-sensitivity array is attached to the underside of a Petri dish lid and a sample of the patient’s blood is […]

Beetle Inspires Clean Water Tech

Science mimics nature once again as developers at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) work out a new water-collecting device based on the Namib Desert Beetle (Stenocara gracilipes), which collects condensation from coastal fog on the bumpy surface of its back. It then tips its back and lets the water roll down into its mouth, an […]

New Graphene Paper: Light, Strong, and Crazy Flexible

We need planes and cars that are lighter so they burn less fuel, stronger so we’re safer aboard them, and less pollutive to produce. The University of Technology Sydney claims to have an answer in a recent breakthrough in graphene nanotech. The synthesized graphene paper (GP) samples produced at UTS are composite materials made from […]

Kindle titles on library shelves

In another crossover between the physical and virtual worlds, it will soon be possible for American owners to “borrow” Kindle books from their local library. The service has been made possible through an agreement between Amazon and Overdrive, an existing service for such e-book borrowing. The service already has apps for devices such as the […]