Google has hired a lobbyist to promote proposed laws that would allow cars without drivers to operate in Nevada. The company has already developed vehicles using the technology and tested them extensively in California. The new laws would make Nevada the first state where such vehicles are formally allowed on public roads. (The company believes […]
A Topshop store in Moscow is offering shoppers the possibility of trying clothes on virtually via Microsoft’s Kinect technology. The Kinect starts by scanning your body and then it overlays the 3D model of an outfit over you, giving you a general idea of how the outfit will look on you. [Via TDWG]
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 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, […]
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I guess if I had all damn day this would be awesome. It’s cute, but unless I’d already had a significant amount of coffee I don’t think I would be patient enough for this. Definitely cuter than an automated Mr. Coffee with a timer, though.
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 […]
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 […]
You knew it was going to happen: angry that their language has been held hostage by humans obsessed with communicating in 140 characters or less, Internet denizens of the avian variety are taking it back. Yep… birds are reclaiming Tweets. OK, so maybe that’s not exactly how it went down, but birds really are sending […]
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 […]