A swarm of robots can carry out simple fetching and carrying tasks.
At the Sheffield Center for Robotics, jointly established by the University of Sheffield and Sheffield Hallam University, researchers have been working to program a group of 40 robots, and say the ability to control robot swarms could prove hugely beneficial in a range of contexts, from military to medical.
Continue reading… “Swarms of small robots could be the servants of the future”
Urine-controlled video games.
There is a new hands-free gaming technology, according to Reuters’ Joe McDonald: “Play doesn’t need to stop for sports fans taking a bathroom break at a Pennsylvania minor-league baseball stadium that has installed video games in men’s room urinals.”
Continue reading… “Pennsylvania stadium installs urinal video games”
Futurist Thomas Frey: A couple years ago I was on a weekend outing in Vail, Colorado and ended up attending a kayaking tournament taking place on the Gore Creek in the heart of town.
We’re going to be able to put computers inside any living cell you want,” said lead researcher Drew Endy.
A team of engineers at Stanford University have made a simple computer inside a living cell, where it could detect disease, warn of toxic threats and, where danger lurked, even self-destruct cells gone rogue.
Continue reading… “Stanford engineers create biological computer”
Business are replacing traditional cash registers with such products as Square’s Business in a Box.
The cash register has reigned as an icon of American commerce ever since the Civil War era. It’s an American ritual to pay for your purchases at the cash register. But, the average point-of-sale (POS) system is expensive, inconvenient to set up and manage and not connected to the internet. Despite all of this, these types of transactions occur a million times every day. The last significant shift happened in the 1950’s when credit card terminals enter the scene.
Continue reading… “Startups usher in retail revolution by clearing out cash registers”
A little dirt never hurt anyone.
Scientific research suggests that all the antibacterial-wiping, germ-killing cleanliness of the developed world may actually be making us more prone to getting sick — and that a little more dirt might help us stay healthier in the long run.
Continue reading… “Excessive cleanliness may be making us sick”
Joe Landolina pictured on the far left created Veti-Gel.
Twenty-year-old New York University student Joe Landolina is working toward an MS in Biomedical Engineering and Biomaterials. While trying to get a degree, he has created a gel called “Veti-Gel” that instantly stops bleeding wounds and starts the healing process. (Video)
Continue reading… “College student creates Veti-Gel that instantly stops bleeding wounds”
Are you looking to increase commenting, social sharing, and other user engagement on your site? Billions of user actions with partners like Pepsi, Nike, and Dell, adding gamification to your site boosts engagement by almost a third, according to a Gigya study.
Wearable health devices are playing an enormous role in this revolution by helping track your metrics passively.
Swissnex San Francisco explored the topic of Big Data and Health Devices together with The Hive, a Silicon Valley Big Data incubator on March 6th. Roger Magoulas (Director of Research at O’Reilly Media), Ian Blumenfeld (Data Scientist and Co-Founder of InSample), and Rachel Kalmar (Data Scientist at Misfit Wearables) talked about how data science is transforming healthcare, and how we can improve our health by using devices and better analyzing the metrics we track. (videos)
.
People are really bad at anticipating events that don’t conform to a very narrow idea of what the future will be, which is why we’re often caught off guard by the unexpected. In the recording of an online conversation above with Andrew Zolli, executive director of PopTech and the author of Resilience, they discuss what about our psyches makes future thinking hard, and how we can recognize major changes–before they happen.
Electric cars carrying receiving coils could charge themselves with embedded transmitting coils in the roadways.
When you think of an all-electric car you may picture it cruising down the highway, emitting little noise and no noxious fumes. It’s such an improvement that you have to wonder why only a handful of all-electric vehicles are now available on the mass market.
Continue reading… “An all-electric vehicle that never needs to be plugged in”
Fabsie stool
Thanks to 3-D printers one day custom furniture can be turned into something for the masses, but for now, James McBennett is more concerned with an older, perhaps less sexy, machine, that essentially does to wood what 3-D printing does to concrete or plastic. It’s called a computer numerical control (CNC) router, and “It’s 60 years old,” McBennett says.
Continue reading… “Fabsie – a library for printed furniture”
By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.
Learn More about this exciting program.