From Festo: Flying fox as inspiration: thanks to its intelligent kinematics, the BionicFlyFox can master the agile flying manoeuvres of its natural role model. In order to be able to move in a defined space semi-autonomously, it communicates constantly with a motion-tracking system. [FestoHQ]
‘Ridehailing’ services such as Uber are making traffic congestion worse rather than more efficient according to a newly-published study. The results contradict previous studies and forecasts. Bruce Schaller explored data from New York streets over the past four years. He notes that the number of licensed ‘ride-sharing’ drivers is around five times the number of […]
If you bought an original ‘Fat’ model PS3, you could get up to $65 from a class action lawsuit. The damages are compensation for Sony withdrawing the ability to easily run Linux on the system. The ‘OtherOS’ feature let users partition the hard drive and install Linux on the spare space. Sony withdrew the option […]
A man who implanted a transport card’s contactless payment chip into his hand has been fined for fare evasion. The man, whose legal name is Meow-Ludo Disco Gamma Meow-Meow, had cut the chip out of an Opal Card, which works in New South Wales, the Australian state that includes Sydney. Passengers can pre-load the card […]
From Austin Mcconnell: Printer companies are ripping us off, and it’s high time we did something about it. Join me in starting the revolution. [austinmcconnell]
Donald Trump has blocked Singapore’s Broadcom from taking over American’ chipmaker Qualcomm. He says it’s for security reasons rather than a business matter. As well as manufacturing a huge range of semiconductors, processors and communications devices, Qualcomm has played a key role in the development of several mobile data standards. Broadcom operates in similar areas […]
A burger-flipping robot is on a break from work after it appeared to be too slow to meet demand. But ‘Flippy’ might not be to blame. The robot, made by Miso Robotics, was set to work at a Cali Burger restaurant in Pasadena. It uses image recognition to keep track of the burgers on a […]
California is to consider a law that would give customers the right to get gadgets fixed by somebody other than the manufacturer. The Right to Repair Act would mean repair guides and any proprietary tools would have to be publicly available. While similar measures are already under consideration in 17 other states, California could be […]
A robot that solves a Rubik’s cube in 0.38 seconds. That’s way faster than the previous world record of 0.637 seconds, and according to the robot’s creator, there’s still plenty of room for improvement. That was a Rubik’s cube being solved in 0.38 seconds. The time is from the moment the keypress is registered on […]
Trevor Baylis, the inventor of the wind-up radio, has died aged 80. His invention not only helped fight HIV but is credited with inspiring engineers and technology experts to think about products for the developing world. After a professional life that included stuntwork and underwater escapology, he began his inventing career by producing modified household […]