With the smartphone market flooding with 3G and 4G tagged phones you might be using your latest phone as a Wi-Fi hotspot least aware of the people around you often looking to peep in your data by connecting to the open Wi-Fi connection around. Even passwords are not safe enough and can be cracked by people having some level of expertise in hacking. France’s Grenoble Institut Polytechnique and Finnish materials company, Ahlstrom seem to offer a more futuristic and secure solution for securing Wi-Fi on your gadgets. Notably, the metapaper even works on the concrete walls in the interior of your house or on brick and mortar outside. You can also put a layer of paint over them and they would still not allow thy neighbor to intrude thou network.
We were awed by Vijay Kumar, a mechanical engineering professor at the University of Pennsylvania at his demonstration of quadrotors at TED that fly, take somersaults in the air, set up dummy buildings using blocks as well as play piano and guitar together in a group. Most things go well in the labs though and the real challenge comes when we have to deal with things in the real world.
sFly quadrotors to search and rescue victims in GPS-denied environments
These quadrotors collaborate with each other to determine the next line of action and don’t have the support of GPS or laser beams to ascertain their surroundings, instead a processing unit is used along with on-board cameras to do so. What assists them in their pursuit is the on board visual SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping) capability that helps them in taking images of the surroundings and the RF tags that help in locating the victim. Each helicopter builds a sparse local map while transmitting these images to the ground station to develop the 3D images. Computer Science comes into play as complex algorithms are deployed to determine the next possible position of each helicopter. A set of three such quadrotors can help to localize and rescue any victim. Who knows we might be driving one of these quadrotors in the coming future with the ability to maneuver it at any degree of freedom.
sFly quadrotors to search and rescue victims in GPS-denied environmentsThese quadrotors collaborate with each other to determine the next line of action and don’t have the support of GPS, laser beams to ascertain their surroundings, instead a processing unit is used along with on-board cameras to do so.
Yes, it is wise to carry your device chargers in your laptop bag so you don’t run out of battery in crucial situations. But what about when there is no plug around to employ your charger itself? How good it would have been if your backpack or your laptop bag boarded a battery itself, which could save you from searching plugs in foreign places? The idea seems to have been missed by many but Hammacher people seem to have embraced it. “Offering the Best,the Only, and the Unexpected for 164 years”, is the tagline for Hammacher Schlemmer products, which claims to be America’s longest running catalog. They have a wide range of products to offer, but what interests us this time is their device charging business case that would take care of the battery needs of your smartphones, tablets and laptop, in case their own battery ditches you in the middle of somewhere.
Remember Alfred Monila’s mechanical tentacles from Spider-Man 2 that made him climb up the buildings and kick the spiderman’s arse? The news is that 3 instructors and 15 of their students are scheming to do something similar in nature at Artisan’s Asylum in Somerville, Massachusetts, though at a larger scale.
“Stompy” to tantalize street walkers and compact cars with its monstrous six legs
In case you’re traveling to the snow-clad mountains of Alaska this year, you might get a look at one of these cute skiplanes that look like a huge moth you can ride up in the sky. Designed and manufactured by French luxury aircraft company, Lisa the high-end amphibious skiplane AKOYA is up for display for the first time in North America at the EAA AirVenture 2012 airshow. The show which is visited by more than 500,000 visitors every year seems to be the prime destination for aviation enthusiasts as well as the aircraft companies to showcase their designs.
Lisa’s cutie skiplane AKOYA put up for show at EAA AirVenture airshow
Army has realized the importance of technology to keep their soldiers connected on the battle field. It recently announced a Nett Warrior program consisting of a computer, display and radio to help the warriors stay connected to their team members. But what about charging of these gadgets on battle field itself? Just imagine a group of soldiers surrounded by a set of entangled wires in their vehicle. In case of an attack the last thing you want your soldier do is to search for the corresponding wire for their device. The army has realized the importance of wireless or inductive charging that would meet the battery needs of soldiers equipment.
Wireless charging stations inside military vehicles to power up soldiers gadgets
Researchers of Monash University have come up with a prototype sensor that could literally spell out your blood type. It is made up of a small piece of paper towel coated with water-repelling substance throughout, except the four areas in the shape of blood types A, B, AB and O. These areas are filled with antibodies that interact with specific blood antigens resulting in coagulation. As soon as you rinse the coating your blood group becomes evident as blood sticks to the paper. It can also tell if you’re Rhesus positive or negative.
Harry Potter inspired bioactive paper to spell out your blood type
The project was funded by Australian Research Council (ARC) and another commercial partner. The researcher was inspired by the movie Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, in which Tom Riddle’s Diary answers questions by writing on paper. If hospitals could tomorrow determine blood type using this technology it might reduce the amount of time as well as money spent in doing so. This could especially be a game changer in case of disasters in which cases each and every second counts. The set up though still needs a level of expertise and scientific knowledge to tell the blood type accurately. We hope that a layman tells out his blood type one day with such a simple experiment and you may no longer need to go to labs.
While some regard him as an eccentric, others beleive him to be a green traveler. No matter what it takes to shake people and make them aware about the environment, Andy Pag is ready to risk his life to spread his message. Last time he traveled around the world for 18,600 miles on his truck run by waste vegetable oil. This time we hear he’s gonna cross England on his microlight that would run on gasoline extracted from non-recyclable plastics.
Andy Pag to cross Britain on a microlight plane fueled by plastics
We have seen a number of stunning demonstrations of augmented reality implemented on a table. This time it is “bastianbroker” on YouTube who has uploaded a video in which he uses a homemade table to demonstrate a 3D display. The whole equipment comprises of a table, a beamer to throw light on the table, camera, sensors to respond to touch, and Microsoft’s Kinect. Seems like a pretty simple group of tools and in case you possess Kinect, you may go for a try yourself.
We have heard before that Googlers ought to have fun at office. Their new set up that combines Motorola Xoom tablet with an Android-shaped robot is a testimony to this. Developed by Paul Cariff and David Saint at Google, the set-up is named as “KegDroid” and serves beer on-the-go. But you cannot just break into the system as such, you need to have a Google Plus account for doing so. There is a NFC scanner integrated into it and you have to pass your badge through it for authentication. If accepted your Google+ profile pic is uploaded on KegDroid and you can go ahead to have your beer bash.
Googlers set up an Android robot that serves beer on demand
