Toyota is introducing a new robotic leg brace called the Welwalk WW-1000 that can help patients with partial paralysis affecting one side of their body walk again. The robotic exoframe is worn on the affected leg, with a large motor component at the knee joint that provides just enough assistance to the patient, letting them recover their own walking ability therapeutically over time.
Continue reading… “Toyota’s new robot leg brace can help those with partial paralysis walk again”
Some farmers already use drones to monitor their crops, but a team of researchers from Georgia Tech have created a far more interesting alternative. Instead of designing yet another drone, they created a robot inspired by Kristen Bell’s favorite animal: the sloth. However, they named it “Tarzan” after the most recognizable character who moves by swinging from vine to vine.
Their machine was designed to move like the fictional jungle dweller. Tarzan will be able to swing over crops using its 3D-printed claws and parallel guy-wires stretched over fields. It will then take measurements and pictures of each plant with its built-in camera while suspended.
Continue reading… “Tarzan the swinging robot could be the future of farming”
From rural strip-malls to Manhattan’s avenues, it has been a disastrous two years for retail.
There have been nine retail bankruptcies in 2017—as many as all of 2016. J.C. Penney, RadioShack, Macy’s, and Sears have each announced more than 100 store closures. Sports Authority has liquidated, and Payless has filed for bankruptcy. Last week, several apparel companies’ stocks hit new multi-year lows, including Lululemon, Urban Outfitters, and American Eagle, and Ralph Lauren announced that it is closing its flagship Polo store on Fifth Avenue, one of several brands to abandon that iconic thoroughfare.
Continue reading… “What in the World Is Causing the Retail Meltdown of 2017?”
Glancing around school classrooms in 2016, it’s easy to miss just how far technology has transformed learning over the last decade. The desks, whiteboards and rows of chairs are the same, but so much else has changed that can’t be seen.
A third of Britain’s schools are asking students to bring their own tablets and laptops into the classroom now, coding has been on the national curriculum for three years, and more and more education is happening outside school through apps and digital services.
Continue reading… “Artificial intelligence is the next giant leap in education”
The digital revolution has not escaped the courts. The courtroom of tomorrow may no longer involve litigants and their lawyers pitching up armed with reams of papers to do battle before robed, bewigged judges. In fact, for many it may not involve a court at all. Judges could be replaced by computers and the courtroom with the internet to meet the needs of the 21st-century litigants.
Last month Lord Chancellor and Justice Secretary Liz Truss unveiled the Prisons and Courts Bill. Aside from wide-ranging plans to reform prisons, the Bill contained proposals to enable people and businesses with claims worth up to £25,000 to use an online digital process instead of going to court.
Continue reading… “The rise of the online courtroom”
Elon Musk’s new Boring Company tunnels look pretty, well, not boring.
The company on Friday published an animated concept video on YouTube that shows how tunnels underneath a city could work. In the video, a car drives onto a metal platform that then lowers itself underground. The platform, with the car on top of it, speeds along at 124 mph, while other platforms carrying cars do the same. When the car reaches its destination, the platform lifts it back to the earth’s surface.
Continue reading… “Elon Musk’s boring tunnels don’t look boring at all”
After Facebook’s Aquila internet-beaming drone crashed during a test flight last year, the company’s engineers realized it would take years before its key strength—the ability to beam internet signals via millimeter wave technology—would be ready.
The reasons for the delay are as much regulatory as they are technical, according to Yael Maguire, the head of Facebook’s Connectivity Lab. Speaking at the company’s annual f8 developers conference here on Wednesday, he explained that it could take up to 10 years before Facebook can realize the full potential of the drone, which has the wingspan of a Boeing 737 but weighs less than a Toyota Prius. Besides building a reliable plane, the company also has to secure the permits to use the millimeter wave spectrum that will connect it to the ground.
Continue reading… “Facebook wants to beam Internet from planes”
Not since the drilling of the Russia’s Kola Borehole have scientists ventured this deep.
Japanese scientists have announced a plan to drill through the Earth’s crust and reach the mantle. The major initiative would be a first for humankind. Despite multiple previous attempts and multiple boreholes of significant depth, we’ve never managed to drill far enough to see what lies beneath the Earth’s rocky crust. Instead, our knowledge of the mantle is mostly based on indirect observations, like the speed at which seismic waves propagate through the planet’s internal geometry.
Continue reading… “Japan’s massive new borehole project to reach Earth’s mantle”
The ability to regenerate body parts has always been a fascinating prospect, inspiring characters like Wolverine who can instantly heal themselves and regrow body parts they’ve lost — and now regeneration has inspired scientific research.
Many species in the animal kingdom can regenerate: arthropods (like scorpions) can regrow appendages, some annelids (like worms) can regenerate from only a few segments of their body, echinoderms (like starfish) can both self-amputate and re-grow limbs, amphibians (like salamanders and newts) can regenerate a limb in as little as a month, and some reptiles can regenerate their tails.
Continue reading… “Regrowing our own body parts”
Cory Doctorow: In the Foundation series, Isaac Asimov posited three rules to protect humans from robots. As our own technology advances exponentially every day, how can will we make technology that frees us, rather than enslaving us?
Let us begin by cleaving this problem into two pieces, only one of which I am qualified to address:
I only know about #2.
Continue reading… “When computers refuse to obey: Will this be our terrifying future?”
“When I was young, my idol was Wolverine from the X-Men…He could save the world, but only because he could heal himself,” researcher Chao Wang recently said in a press release from the American Chemical Society (ACS). Wang began working on a self-healing material that could stitch itself back together after damage, and came up with a game-changing polymer.
The key to the the material’s crucial new powers? Chemical bonds. Check out this video.
Continue reading… “How long before we have self-healing smartphone screens?”
Being a kid, flying cars were the norm, not the exception and you always assumed that your parents will definitely get such a thing the next time they’re shopping for a family car. Although different companies told us, that it’s just around the corner, it never materialized and Back To The Future never happened.
Continue reading… “Introducing the Tesla self-flying electric car”
By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.
Learn More about this exciting program.