Now Microrobots can Propel Themselves Through your Body
As much progress as we’ve made with minuscule micro machines, we’ve long suffered the problem of not being able to propel them through our bodies. Sure, we now have tiny robots capable of targeting cancer cells, manipulate building blocks, etc, but they haven’t been able to actually move, rendering them all but useless.
Until now. At the International Solid State Circuit Conference, engineer Ada Poon, an assistant professor at Stanford, demonstrated a remote controlled micro machine navigating through a liquid, specifically blood. Power was delivered wirelessly. Basically this means that we finally have a method for driving...
Hercule Exoskeleton Sets the bar for Human Assistance Devices
Okay, so we’ve had exoskeletons for years, devices letting humans carry heavy weights and walk under the load with ease. But until now they all had incredibly short battery lives, so most stayed tethered. Basically, they were great tech demos, but not good for much more.
A new exoskeleton, called Hercule, doesn’t have this problem. It can help someone (for example, a soldier) carry 220 pounds (99 Kilograms) for up to 12.4 miles, at a ordinary walking speed. And the motion is completely driven by your leg, so it feels like you’re walking as usual.
The Hercule is...
We've Found a Gene that May Let us Live Longer
Humans hate dying. Its ingrained into our very makeup that we hate death. and yet, for the entire span of our existence, we’ve been able to do little more than preventive maintenance to keep us running. That might be changing though.
A gene found in humans proves to lengthen the lives of mice by 15%. And while mice are a long way from humans, they’re much closer than worms, where another gene was found that (falsely) was thought to lengthen life span, sirtuin 2.
The new gene comes from the sirtuin family again, this time sirtuin 6. ...
Microsoft Office Spotted Running on iPad
In what can only be described as a case of hell freezing over and pigs flying, Microsoft’s premier document editing suite has been spotted running on Apple’s portable future computer, the iPad.
The photos, leaked by the Apple and News Inc. crossbreed digital newspaper The Daily, the photos don’t show much more than a Microsoft Office logo on an iPad. Further, no one seems to be able to confirm whether this photo is real or not, but The Daily isn’t just some rumour rag. It’s run by veteran reporters and staffed with knowledgeable, connected researchers
I the photo proves to...
Augment Reality with cool new Lightbeam Pico Projector
The Lightbeam projector is a pico projector. While just a few years ago that might have been cool enough, these days you need something truly epic to be noticed. And the Lightbeam has it.
It includes object tracking, for augmented reality.
Say you want to use a sheet of paper as a screen to show some info. Just hold it up in front of the projector, and the projector will project onto it. As you move the sheet around, the projector will keep track of it, continuing to project onto it for as long as it is in...
Ubuntu For Android Brings Full Linux to your Phone
Smartphones operating systems are great, but they lack quite a few of the essential apps that make desktops indispensable. Several companies have come out with nifty docking systems to circumvent this, turning your phone into a full-fledged computer. But they invariably end up using their own proprietary platform that can do little more than browse the web and check mail. Things that you can already do on your phone.
Ubuntu for Android aims to fix this. The project is a replacement to existing “webtops,” something designed to make turning your phone into a computer actually useful. ...
Single Atom Transistor Demolishes Moore's Law
In 1965 Gordon E. Moore coined ‘Moore’s Law’ in what proved to be an amazing bout of prognostication. His law stated that the number of components on a semiconducting circuit would double every year. He originally expected his formulation to hold for around 10 years, but it has been nearly constant for most of the history of computing since. That, however, is changing.
We’ve been approaching the edges of what it is possible to achieve with our technology for years, exploiting more and more clever workarounds to keep boosting speed. But you can only shrink a circuit...
Nintendo 3DS Now Fastest Selling Console Ever in Japan
Despite an uncharacteristically slow start, the Nintendo 3DS has taken off like a veritable rocket reaching the 5 million units sold mark in just under a year. Which is 2 months quicker than the Nintendo DS, previously the best selling console ever.
When the 3DS was first released, many questioned whether the device could ever achieve the level of success of its predecessor.
With decent specs but an awkwark glasses free 3D display, a large build, horrible battery life, increased competition from phones and a predecessor that shared many of its characteristics, it seemed destined to failure. And when the sales...
By Making Phones 'Sprint', We Could Make Them Run Faster
Sprinting is a concept pretty familiar to us. For a short period of time, a runner can go at extraordinary speeds--but only for a few moments. Now, some scientists want to apply the same principle to mobile phone processors, to give them the muscle to conquer difficult tasks without nuking your battery.
The basic idea is that next generation mobile processors would have dozens of cores, far more than the 5 in the state of the art Tegra 3. Most of the time, the device would use a single core. When you are checking your mail, after...
Future Micro-robots Could be made like Pop-up Books
A clever new building technique inspired by pop-up books for children could lead to the mass production of teeny tiny robots with, usually, are much too hard to build in large quantities. That means that building a robotic dragonfly can now be done cheaply and easily.
The technique is functionally similar to how they make plywood. Laser cutters burn away a sheets of plastic, metal and paper as needed, cutting out different shapes. Then those layers are stacked and laminated together, so that they are a single, unified whole. The finished product is a hexagonal chunk of...
Nanotechnology could have one fatal flaw - Explosions
Nanotechnology promises to make the future much more interesting, quite possibly more amazing, too. But it seems like there might be one serious flaw to the tech: that smaller particles means bigger booms.
Dust blows up more than more solid objects do. This is why a fuel air bomb is so effective: because they make the gas molecules as small as possible. The reason this works is all down to surface area. If you have a big chunk of explosive material, only part of it can combust at any given time. If you break if up,...
New USB Stick Sequences DNA in Moments
The human genome was first mapped in 2003 for the low, low sum of $3 billion. It took 15 years to complete. Now, 9 years later we’re able to stick the technology into a USB stick. Granted, sequencing a human genome would take many hours, but the device is more than capable of handling simple genomes. And it is a harbinger of the future to come.
Built by UK firm Nanopore, the small device--called the minION--can sequence the genomes of viruses and bacteria in seconds. The data is relayed directly to your computer, since it is,...
China Launching Astronauts to Space Laboratory in March
China is on a space warpath, having managed to go from not having any space-faring capability to having a space station in mere years. Now the nation has announced that it will launching 3 astronauts to their newly minted space laboratory by August.
China has dreams of conquering space, and they haven’t been shy about it. They’ve been throwing money at the problem for years, but recently things have really been picking up. In the span of a year, China has demonstrated space docking and long-term atmospheric stability. They are moving at the pace we did during...
DARPA wants Avatar-esque Robot Surrogates
Who says Avatar wasn’t good scifi? DARPA, of the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency, the government group dedicated to strange, far fetched science ideas that have a spooky record of becoming realized, wants robotic surrogates.
Proposed in DARPA’s 2013 budget is $7 million for what they refer to as the “Avatar” project, a program that would aim to "develop interfaces and algorithms to enable a soldier to effectively partner with a semi-autonomous bi-pedal machine and allow it to act as the soldier’s surrogate." Basically, think terminator robots controlled by humans. Scared yet?
As out there as this may seem,...
Google Builds Dart Programming Language, into Chrome
Google’s undying desire is to make the web easier to build. The more site and services are out there, after all, the more useful Google is. Its to this end that Google released the Dart programming language last year. Meant to simplify web coding into something slightly easier to deal with, Dart had one fundamental flaw: in order to use it, you had to compile your code back into Javascript.
Until now. Google has decided to make the move of embedding a Dart virtual machine, running natively instead of through Javascript, into its Chrome browser. This...
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