‘Surface,’ the New Microsoft Tablet
The Microsoft Surface tablet was officially unveiled in Los Angeles to compete with the iPad. The Apple tablet has been hugely successful, selling 55 million by the end of 2012, so Microsoft must be desperately hoping for a share of this booming market.
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Cosmic Quilt by The Principals
The Principals, a studio focuses on industrial design, interactive environments and the influence of new technologies on traditional craftsmanship sent us their latest project: ‘Cosmic Quilt,’ a quilt suspended from on the ceiling, that interacts with users as they approach. Cosmic Quilt was created with the help of 20 students from the Art Institute of New York, a prototype combining technology, sensors, micro controllers and motors, with traditional craft in the form of quilt making.
Water Display by Koei Industry
This Printer fountain created by Koei Industry located at the Osaka Station City in a shopping mall shows a digital-style time readout, spitting out numbers three times, as well as scrolling patterns including floral motifs in 2D. Read More…
Bulavkus USB Flash Drive by Art Lebedev Studio
This USB flash drive called Bulavkus and designed by Moscow-based Art Lebedev Studio combines a safety pin with and a 4GB storage unit. This USB flash drive is both aesthetically pleasing and extremely functional.
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Flyboard, Propels You Into the Air
For fans of strong sensations, here is the arrival of a new sport; the ‘Flyboard’. Flyboard can send you flying in and out of the water. Built by water sports enthusiast Franky Zapata, from Marseille, the wearer straps his or her feet into shoes that are attached to powerful water jets, providing lift, with hand-guided nozzles stabilizing the flight.
The flyboard is powered by jets of water that are generated by a Sea-Doo watercraft and forced through a tube connected to a platform that Zapata straps his feet into. Zapata, a native of France, pilots the board by using his legs to alter the direction of the pressurized water jets, which allow him to perform a variety of aerial maneuvers, including flips, spins and a series of dives where he imitates a dolphin.
Google Unveils Their Latest Glass Project
On Wednesday, Google gave people a clearer picture of its secret initiative called Project Glass. The glasses are the company’s first venture into wearable computing.
The glasses will use the same Android software that powers Android smartphones and tablets. Like smartphones and tablets, the glasses will be equipped with GPS and motion sensors. They will also contain a camera and audio inputs and outputs. They can stream information to the lenses and allow the wearer to send and receive messages through voice commands. There is also a built-in camera to record video and take pictures. Read More…
‘Treachery of Sanctuary,’ Transforms You Into a Bird-Like by Chris Milk
At The Creators Project Technology and art came together this past weekend. Treachery of Sanctuary installation by Chris Milk is one of the standout works at Fort Mason.
At once beautifully serene and violently foreboding, the interactive work took visitors through three different experiences of flight. The series of 16-foot by 22-foot tall projections had visitors take center stage—transforming their shadows with a succession of Hitchcockian poetic gestures using motion-sensing Kinects. The first panel saw the shadow decompose into a flock of birds, the second had birds swooping down to tear the shadow apart in a scene straight out of Birds (and our worst nightmares), and the third transformed visitors into bird-like creatures with impressive-looking wings.
‘Clap Your Hands,’ Digital Camera USB Key
‘Clap Your Hands,’is Mini Digital Camera that you simply plug into your computer for easy file transfers and quick charging. Be sure to stock up on your ink cartridges.The little device sports two megapixels, takes 1280 × 1024 quality videos, and supports JPEG/AVI formats. Read More…
Immersive Movie Experience
A group of filmmakers create a 3D experience using what they call “immersive imaging.” The the 3-video series feature a guy in his living room while experiencing the ultimate movie experience with PlayStation, once he turns the movie on, the whole room becomes the movie.According to the production company, it was all shot in one take, no post production, no SFX, frankly it’s one of the coolest projects I’ve seen, and I wish I was in that room to live this experience!
The World’s Lightest Material Developed
A team of researchers from UC Irvine, HRL Laboratories and the California Institute of Technology have developed the world’s lightest material – with a density of 0.9 mg / cc, making it around 100 times lighter than Styrofoam . Despite being 99.99 percent open volume, the new material boasts impressive strength and energy absorption, making it potentially useful for a range of applications.
The 0.01 percent of the material that isn’t air consists of a micro-lattice of interconnected hollow nickel-phosphorous tubes with a wall thickness of 100 nanometers – or 1,000 times thinner than a human hair. These tubes are angled to connect at nodes to form repeating, three-dimensional asterisk-like cells.
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Passive Walking Robot Propelled by Its Own Weight
“This robot is walking down a slope, and its only source of power is potential energy. It doesn’t use any kind of motor or control, so we think it’s very environmentally friendly.”
“The robot has three main parts: thighs, lower legs, and ankles. It’s made of aluminum, and it contains only mechanical components, which have been adjusted so that the robot has the same thigh and leg lengths as a person, and weighs the same.”
In a walking test last year, this robot walked continuously for 13 hours, taking 100,000 steps and going 15 km. That achievement has been listed in the Guinness Book of Records.
“We plan to develop a commercial version with System Instruments, which is exhibiting with us today. We’re thinking of applying the principle this robot uses to walk in sports equipment as well. Also, people who need care or find it hard to walk could wear this robot to help them walk. Right now, we’re at the prototyping stage, as we’d like to release a commercial version in 1-2 years.”
The Meissner Effect, Quantum Levitation
Tel-Aviv University shows the phenomenon of “Quantum Levitation“ using a track around which a superconductor can float. Superconductivity and magnetic fields are like oil and water, they don’t mix. When it can, the superconductor will push out any magnetic fields from the interior in a process called; the Meissner effect. It happens when a sample is cooled below its superconducting transition temperature, where it then cancels out its magnetic flux.
Because of electromagnetic induction (where an electric current is created when a conductor is moved through a magnetic field), a perfect conductor won’t change the magnetic flux when it cruises through at zero resistance. However, when cooled to the superconductor state the magnetic flux is expelled. Now we have perfect diamagnetism – where the interior magnetic field nears zero. At this point, if an external magnetic field is introduced, it will create an opposing magnetic field.
We start with a single crystal sapphire wafer and coat it with a thin (~1µm thick) ceramic material called yttrium barium copper oxide (YBa2Cu3O7-x ). The ceramic layer has no interesting magnetic or electrical properties at room temperature. However, when cooled below -185ºC (-301ºF) the material becomes a superconductor. It conducts electricity without resistance, with no energy loss. Zero.
Superconductivity and magnetic field do not like each other. When possible, the superconductor will expel all the magnetic field from inside. This is the Meissner effect. In our case, since the superconductor is extremely thin, the magnetic field DOES penetrates. However, it does that in discrete quantities (this is quantum physics after all! ) called flux tubes. Read More…
Delancey Underground, ‘Low Line’ Project, New York
A Lower East Side trolley tunnel could be transformed into the city’s first underground park. The high-tech, subterranean park called the ‘Delancey Underground’ is intended to replace a two-acre abandoned trolley terminal beneath the foot of the Williamsburg Bridge.
Entrepreneurs Dan Barasch, R. Boykin Curry IV and James Ramsey are working to build this community green space the size of Gramercy Park below ground. The project, which will be the size of Manhattan’s Gramercy Park, is the brainchild of NASA satellite engineer-turned-architect James Ramsey, who has developed a technology that can “harvest” sunlight and “channel” it elsewhere via fiber optic cables. Read More…
‘Da Vinci,’ Surgical Robot Peels a Grape
Da Vinci surgical robot requires no introduction.There are more than 1,000 Da Vinci robots worldwide, and this particular robot has performed 450 prostate cancer removals alone. In this video, surgeons at Southmead Hospital in the UK demonstrated its ability to make delicate cuts by peeling a grape.
Clay Dillow from POPSCI says:
No man wants to think of his grapes anywhere near the forceful hands of a massive multi-armed machine, but this demo shows just how magnificently precise and steady-handed our robot surgeons can be.
‘Sugru’ Fixes and Sticks to Pretty Much Everything by Jane ni Dhulchaointigh
Sugru is a brightly, colored, self-adhesive, silicone rubber bonding compound that cures overnight at room temperature to form permanent bonds. It has been fabricated by Jane ni Dhulchaointigh, who worked with scientists for five years to develop this material soft enough to mold yet durable enough to fix or “hack” things so they work better. Read More…
Sphero, the Smartphone-Controlled Robotic Cat Toy by Orbotix
Sphero is a robotic ball that you can control with your smartphone or with games that are downloadable on any iOS or Android device. Sphero comes with built-in LEDs, allowing you to change the colour of your robo-ball depending on your mood. The plan is to also develop augmented reality apps, which supplement the real world robot ball with augmented reality obstacles or gaming elements — for example picture Sphere as a wrecking ball crushing virtual objects in your sitting room.
+Orbotix
Driverless Shuttle Pod, the Future of Public Transport Unveiled at Heathrow Airport, Uk
The future of public transport has finally arrived with Heathrow Airport officially unveiling laser-guided travel pods.
The design was a joint effort between Heathrow’s owners DAA and Manufacturer ULTra PRT to prove the technology could be reliable, efficient, and most importantly, can work around complex existing infrastructure. The 22 electric pod cars replaced two diesel-powered buses that made 216 trips every day. They’re a sound solution for the endless loops that airport transportation must make. Plus, they’re not nearly as expensive as a monorail.
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Human Heart, Alive and Beating in a Box!
This is an impressive march in the medical field, heart transplantation team at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center is currently leading a national, multicenter phase 2 clinical study of an experimental organ-preservation system that allows donor hearts to continue functioning in a near-physiologic state outside the body during transport.
The Organ Care System (OCS), developed by medical device company TransMedics, works this way: After a heart is removed from a donor’s body, it is placed in a high-tech OCS box and is immediately revived to a beating state, perfused with oxygen and nutrient-rich blood, and maintained at an appropriate temperature. The device also features monitors that display how the heart is functioning during transport.
