Over the years, Hollywood films have immortalized future. Nothing seemed to capture sci-fi geeks’ imaginations like the hoverboard. The concept seems simple enough yet a working model as remained tantalizingly out of reach. Until now. The Lexus hoverboard is a real thing.
An industrial carbon dioxide recycling plant is being developed by Canadian scientists that could one day suck CO2 out of the atmosphere and convert it into a zero-carbon e-diesel fuel. Developed by tech start-up Carbon Engineering and partly funded by Bill Gates, the system will essentially do the job of trees, but in places unable to host them, such as icy plains and deserts. (Video)
Whether it’s the birds and the bees, the fish, or even slime molds, it goes back to all social creatures that use their collective intelligence to form real-time synchronous systems. We have many names for these natural assemblages, including flocks, schools, shoals, blooms, colonies, herds, and swarms. Whatever we call them, one thing is clear – millions of years of evolution produced these highly coordinated behaviors because of the survival benefits they provide to a great many species. (Video)
Continue reading… “The future of human swarming and collective intelligence”
What is wearable technology? Who invented wearable technology? What is the future of wearable technology? These are just a few questions that are asked every day about wearable tecnhnology.. “Wearable technology” makes most people imagine a fitness tracker, a smartwatch or google glasses.
Continue reading… “An illustrated history of wearable technology”
Stephen Hawking, Russian billionaire Yuri Milner, Martin Rees, Frank Drake and others have announced at The Royal Society a $100 million funding for Breakthrough Listen. It is the “most powerful, comprehensive, and intensive scientific search ever undertaken for signs of intelligent life beyond Earth.”
Continue reading… “Stephen Hawking and Russian billionaire Yuri Milner announce $100M search for ET”
Izzy Swan, a retired furniture maker has built a drill-powered walking machine in his garage. He shows off the machine in action around his neighborhood and breaks down the construction process in this video he posted online.
Continue reading… “Izzy Swan builds a walking machine powered by a hand drill”
Israel’s ReWalk Robotics unveiled the ReWalk Personal 6.0 this month as Robert Woo, a paraplegic, demonstrated the new exoskeleton by walking down the streets of New York City.
Continue reading… “ReWalk Robotics unveils faster, sleeker exoskeleton”
The Volocopter is somewhat of a cross between a quadcopter drone and a helicopter. It is a novel mode of transportation built by the German company e-Volo.
Continue reading… “The Volocopter is a personal helicopter that could replace your car”
Japan got serious about investing in renewable energy after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster by becoming one of the world leaders in solar power. But the nation faced a problem in its solar efforts: a lack of suitable land.
Continue reading… “Japan’s giant floating solar power stations”
Dutch designer Joris Laarman will build a bridge in 2017 by wheeling a robot to the brink of a canal in Amsterdam. He will push an “on” button and then walk away. When he returns in two months, the Netherlands will have a new, one-of-a-kind bridge, 3-D printed in a steel arc over the waters. This isn’t some proof-of-concept, either: when it’s done, it will be as strong and as any other bridge. People will be able to walk back and forth over it for decades.
Continue reading… “Dutch designer plans to 3-D print a steel bridge in mid-air”
By samim23: Recently, I experimented with Recurrent Neural Networks as applied to political speech writing. The result, Obama-RNN generated a fair amount of buzz and fuelled a productive debate, including speculation that Sara Palin is a bot. For the next experiment I decided to apply the system to TED.
EXACTO self-steering bullet.
The Extreme Accuracy Tasked Ordnance (EXACTO) is a self-steering bullet program announced by DARPA that passed a developmental milestone this past February. According to DARPA, and the video below, experienced and novice shooters alike were able to strike moving targets. And, in the case of expert shooters, able to hit actively evading targets as well.
Continue reading… “Self-steering bullet proves it can hit moving targets: DARPA”