Mobius Bionics and the University of Utah have built a revolutionary prosthesis that returns the sense of touch to amputees.The prosthetic is named “LUKE” in a nod to Star Wars’ Luke Skywalker, who lost a hand to Darth Vader.While the sense of touch users experience is artificial, the feeling is wholly inspired by the mechanics of the human brain and the electrical signals it sends to activate muscles and sensory nerves....
Tesla Motors is no longer part of the official investigation in the March fatal crash of one of its Model X crossovers, which was reportedly using the Autopilot driver assist at the time. The National Transportation Safety Board sent Elon Musk a letter yesterday telling him Tesla was off the case. According to Bloomberg, Tesla made public statements that blamed the driver, Walter Huang, who died in the wreck. They continue: The NTSB guards the integrity of its investigations closely, demanding that participants adhere to rules about what information they can release and their expected cooperation....
The U.S. Air Force is planning make precision-guided weapons semi-autonomous, capable of communicating and cooperating with one another after launch to maximize their potential on the battlefield. The effort, called Golden Horde, would also allow weapons like the Tomahawk cruise missile to communicate with one another to choose which targets next to destroy. A person in the loop would still have final say over target destruction, however, ensuring these robotic weapons couldn’t make life or death decisions on their own....
Whether you’re talking about robot dogs, robot fish, or robot octopus arms, mimicking and adapting nature’s designs often leads to the best design. Industrial automation company Festo has learned this lesson well. It has designed robotic butterflies, kangaroos, ants, and now, a robotic flying bat:View full post on YoutubeThe robot is officially called the Bionic Flying Fox. It features a lightweight frame, a custom membrane for the wings, and uses machine learning to fly semi-autonomously....
In 2009, Norwegian journalist Peter Refsdal embedded with the Taliban in Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom, the United States’ attempt to uproot al-Qaeda and remove the Taliban from power. One of his most interesting observations: The Taliban do not fear fighter jets.“All the time there’s jets, the sound of jets flying around, and the Taliban, they don’t care about it,” Refsdal told Anderson Cooper in a 2010 interview for CNN. “But there’s one plane that scares them....
Meet SAFFiR, the firefighting robot. Fresh out of the Naval Research Lab, the bot is ready to take on rescue operations on ships that are in trouble.The Shipboard Autonomous Firefighting Robot (the government loves its acronyms) is designed to go into confined spaces. It won’t make the mistakes a human could when deploying a hose or other firefighting tool, and could go places a person cannot. The robot was tested on the USS Shadwell, along with miniature rotor drones to pinpoint fires....
Virgin Galactic’s ambitions to make space tourism a reality were given a great boost when the company successfully reached space, or something like it, during a test flight on Thursday. SpaceShipTwo, the company’s suborbital space plane, was ferried to an altitude of 50,000 feet by WhiteKnightTwo, a twin-fuselage carrier aircraft. Once released from its mothership, SpaceShipTwo activated its rocket motor and soared to an altitude of about 50 miles above the Earth’s surface....
A pair of Dutch history enthusiasts are documenting their unusual “catches” on YouTube: artifacts from World War II. The self-proclaimed “magnet fishermen” have recovered a wide variety of historical artifacts left behind by both the Axis and Allies, including dog tags, rifles, hand grenades, and even machine guns. In their latest video, the two reveal their discovery of a Sturmgewehr 44, one of the first assault rifles ever made.The two anonymous “fishermen” live in the Netherlands, a country full of canals, ponds, and other bodies of water....
Media Platforms Design TeamSebastian Alvarez is getting really good at eye-popping, pants-endangering wingsuit videos. Here, rather than taking an ordinary BASE jump off a cliff or peak, Alvarez opts for the more action-film jumping-off point: a helicopter hovering above Chile. He even blasts right through a model of the Chilean flag atop a mountain on his way down.It’s at that point you realize something even more terrifying about the prevalence of these wingsuit videos: The version you see is slowed down; the real thing is even more fast and more dangerous than it looks....
Cyclones, Hurricanes, and Typhoons wreak havoc on coastal communities around the world, bringing severe winds, torrential rains and perilous storm surges.These destructive storms are the most powerful weather events on Earth. They form along the equator over regions of warm seawater. As that warm, moist air rises, cold air rushes in along the surface of the ocean. This cycle repeats as more cool air is pulled in, warmed, and then rises up in a circular motion....
Media Platforms Design TeamAn unexpected passenger aboard the International Space Station is sick and could die. “I am afraid that if something is not done we are going to lose Sunflower,” U.S. astronaut and ISS resident Don Pettit wrote on his blog on May 5. “Our spacecraft is designed for animals so life can be a struggle for plants.“The sunflower in question, which Pettit has been trying to grow in the ISS, is afflicted with a fungal blight that has spotted its leaves....
NASA is sending a drone-style quadcopter to Titan, Saturn’s largest moon.The quadcopter, named Dragonfly, will launch in 2026 and arrive at Titan in 2034.In under an hour, Dragonfly can cover tens of miles or kilometers, farther than any planetary rover has traveled.Yesterday, NASA announced it was sending a drone-style quadcopter named Dragonfly to Titan. Saturn’s largest moon, the body has intrigued scientists ever since it was discovered centuries ago. Dragonfly is expected to launch in 2026 and arrive at Titan eight years later in 2034....
Should you use your old VHS collection to insulate your home? Researchers at the U.K.’s University to Brighton are about to find out.They’ve created a “Waste House”—a building made of 85 percent trash. The house is partially constructed from discarded traditional home building materials such as plywood and bricks, but the project also uses materials you might not typically associate with building a house. You know those vinyl banners people hang from light posts to advertise a local fair or event?...
Media Platforms Design Team3D-printed biobots might one day roam the insides of our bodies, sensing and neutralizing toxins, targeting tumors and releasing drugs, and acting as cellular repairmen. Research published today in Scientific Reports takes a first step toward that goal.Engineers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign used a 3D printer to build several designs for a wormy biobot. They started by printing 5- to 10-millimeter-long a flexible gel scaffold, and seeded it with heart cells from rats....
Silicon Valley is known for its cutthroat big business. That’s what makes the curious case of Eric Swildens so surprising. Motivated not by greed or self interest, Swildens stepped headfirst into one of the hottest Silicon Valley fights of the last decade, Waymo v. Uber, and won. Not involved with either party, he stepped into a patent fight, now that the USPTO has weighed in, he’s come out on top.Waymo, a subsidiary of Alphabet focused on self-driving cars, first sued Uber back in February 2017 when the company claimed that three ex-employees of another Alphabet subsidiary, Google, had taken 14,000 confidential documents with them when they went to work for the Uber subsidiary Otto, which had similar goals....
Media Platforms Design TeamThe explosion over Chelyabinsk, Russia this past February made the danger of asteroids loud and clear. Although it is only 17 meters (56 feet) in diameter, the injured 1000 people and shattered nearly every window in the Russian city. And humans know of merely one percent of dangerous near-Earth objects, so there are many more asteroids out there that could potentially strike the planet.asteroid’s explosionThis week, the United Nations adopted measures to create an international decision-making mechanism for planetary asteroid defense....
Arguing that they face a wide spectrum of threats, the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps will buy nearly as many aircraft as the Air Force in 2017, plus more than half a dozen large combatant ships. The Sea Services are requesting $152.9 billion in funding for the coming year, $7 billion less than they received in 2016. In a budget presentation uploaded by U.S. Naval Institute News, the service identifies five threats it is working to counter: China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, and the Islamic State....
Formula One announced concrete plans to be carbon neutral by 2030.The organization has innovated over time in ways that improve the sport and help consumer car design.The move to carbon neutrality is an ambitious but natural extension of F1’s existing philosophy.Engadget reports that Formula One (F1) will achieve carbon neutrality by 2030. In its own press release, F1 says its current hybrid power unit, plus some extras, will allow it to move toward total carbon neutrality and, in turn, help upgrade the world’s one billion combustion-engine vehicles....
Airbus has set a world record for the longest continuously-flying aircraft, thanks to their new solar-powered drone. That drone recently spent just three minutes shy of 26 days in the air without taking a single break for refueling. Airbus wants its solar drones to eventually be used as a cheaper replacement for satellites.Airbus has been working on its Zephyr S drone since at least 2015, with the goal of providing a cheaper and more versatile replacement for satellites....
Media Platforms Design TeamQ: I have a large collection of imported DVDs. However, my laptop DVD player only allows me to switch “regions” a fixed number of times. Is there any way around this?A: Most commercial DVDs use encryption that keeps them locked to one or more “region codes,” meaning the discs you pick up in other continents usually won’t play on an American DVD player. If you believe the movie studios, this encryption is a necessary tool in the ongoing war against piracy....
