AI, Analysis, Artificial Intelligence, brain-computer interfaces, Breakthrough Thinking, Internet of Things

How the Internet of Things is transforming industries you never imagined

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Growing up, computers were mainly tools for automating secretarial tasks, not for professional work. Economist Robert Solow observed around that time, “You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics.”

But in the late 1990’s information technology became truly transformative. Combined with the commercial Internet and email, they became conduits to a continuous flow of information that could be processed, analyzed and turned into action. It’s likely that we’re in the early days of a similar productivity boom today, as connectivity begins to transform physical machines.

Continue reading… “How the Internet of Things is transforming industries you never imagined”

Breakthrough Thinking, Business, Energy, Engineering, Hot Issues, Solar Energy, Solar Power

How graphene is going to transform the way we get power

Graphene Power Grid 1T

Futurist Thomas Frey:  In 2002, when Dr. Bor Jang, a little-known researcher in Akron, Ohio, filed his patent for graphene, few people had a clue as to how revolutionary it would be. Certainly not the people at the Nobel Foundation who forgot to check the patent registry and instead awarded the Nobel Prize for graphene to scientists Andre Geim and Kostya Novoselov from the University of Manchester.

As the poster child for the emerging new super materials industry, graphene is a form of ultra thin carbon just one atom thick. If you can imagine something a million times thinner than a single sheet of paper, you get the picture.

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3D Printer, Architecture, Breakthrough Thinking, Business, Engineering, Futurist, Great New Product

Japan’s 3D Printed Pod Skyscrapers set to Revolutionize Highrise Living

Pod Skyscraper 1

Could the skyscraper of the future dispense homes like a vending machine?

Growing and adapting to Tokyo’s housing demand, this Pod Skyscraper is constantly under construction. Residents can order a ready-to-use modular dwelling manufactured by 3D printers on the top floor of the building, and then cranes lower it into place.

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3D Printer, cutting edge, Engineering, Future, Science & Technology News

MIT’s Color-changing Robot ‘skin’ Was Inspired by the Golden Tortoise Beetle

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have created a 3D-printed robot “skin” capable of changing color according to the physical stimuli that it receives. The work was inspired by the so-called “goldbug,” a golden tortoise beetle, which changes color in the wild.

“I was googling online about two and a half years ago, looking for creatures that change their color, and found out about this beetle,” project leader, Subramanian Sundaram, an MIT graduate student in electrical engineering and computer science, told Digital Trends. “The golden tortoise beetle is incredibly interesting. One of the things it does is that, when it’s disturbed or scared, it drains out the fluid in its shell which is normally golden in color, but becomes a reddish-brown. I was interested by the idea that this beetle was able to respond to mechanical disturbances by changing the color and transparency of its outer shell. I thought we might be able to replicate that.”

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AI, Artificial Intelligence, Automobiles, Driverless cars, Driverless vehicles, Electric Automobile, Electric Vehicles, Engineering, Future, Futurist, Science & Technology News, Self-driving Cars, Tom Frey

The first self-driving car will debut in three years, but will you want to buy one?

Right now, you can head over to a local Volvo dealership and test drive a 2017 Volvo S90. With the push of a button, drivers can watch the car take over steering to stay within a lane, slow itself down in rush-hour traffic and accelerate — up to 80 mph — on the highway. It’s the first Volvo to include the second-generation Pilot Assist as a standard feature.

But, even equipped with radar and a 360-degree camera that can distinguish humans from deer, bicyclists and other cars, the $47,000 S90 sedan is not an autonomous vehicle. A driver must be in the seat and frequently touch the steering wheel. Otherwise, the car slows down.

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Energy, Engineering, Nanotechnology, Robotics, Robots, Science & Technology News, Solar Energy, Solar Power

Scientists just made electronic skin that’s better than human skin

Scientists at the University of Glasgow have invented a robot skin that surpasses human flesh.

Professor Ravinder Dahiya and his team created a silicone and graphine skin which provides haptic feedback to the user. The thin layer of graphine acts as a sensor, making the electronic skin (e-skin) very sensitive to touch. It’s also flexible and cheap to manufacture.

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Augmented Reality, Game Development, Games, Science & Technology News, Virtual Reality, VR

Disney Researchers Catch a Real Ball in Virtual Reality

The resurgence of virtual reality is still in its infancy, and while we do have very good VR headsets such as the Oculus Rift and PlayStation VR, in other areas the tech is still severely lacking. Take interaction, for example, it’s very difficult to convey touching something in the virtual world with physical feedback. But what if you could interact with real world objects that appear in the virtual world?

Disney Research decided to carry out just such an experiment by asking the question: can you catch a real ball in virtual reality? The good news is, yes you can, but there’s a number of prerequisites to achieving such a simple task.

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3D Printer, Science & Technology News

3D printing is tackling what may be its biggest challenge yet: the humble book

Thirty-four years ago, Chuck Hull developed stereolithography, the grandfather of additive manufacturing systems that rests under the now broad umbrella of 3D printing. In the intervening years, thousands of people have poured their creativity and ingenuity into 3D-printed body parts, bridges, and even a car.

But Ron Arad, a London based Israeli Industrial designer, is taking on a seemingly more banal challenge. He’s 3D printing a book.

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Agriculture, Biotech, Healthcare, Medical Breakthrough, Medicine, Plant Life, Science & Technology News

Researchers grow heart tissue on spinach leaves

In this sequence, a spinach leaf is stripped of its plant cells, a process called decellularization, using a detergent. The process leaves behind the leaf’s vasculature. Researchers at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) were able to culture beating human heart cells on such decelluralized leaves. Credit: Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Researchers face a fundamental challenge as they seek to scale up human tissue regeneration from small lab samples to full-size tissues, bones, even whole organs to implant in people to treat disease or traumatic injuries: how to establish a vascular system that delivers blood deep into the developing tissue.

Current bioengineering techniques, including 3-D printing, can’t fabricate the branching network of blood vessels down to the capillary scale that are required to deliver the oxygen, nutrients and essential molecules required for proper tissue growth. To solve this problem, a multidisciplinary research team at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Arkansas State University-Jonesboro have successfully turned to plants. They report their initial findings in the paper “Crossing kingdoms: Using decelluralized plants as perfusable tissue engineering scaffolds” published online in advance of the May 2017 issue of the journal Biomaterials.

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Automobiles, Electric Automobile, Electric Vehicles, Elon Musk, Record Breaker, Science & Technology News, Tesla

Tesla Model S P100D sets new real-world quarter-mile record: 10.723 seconds

Last month, Motor Trend managed to make a 10.5-second quarter mile run in a stock Tesla Model S P100D with the new ‘Ludicrous+’ software upgrade, but it has not been replicable in the real world, aka uncorrected time on the drag strip.

Before that, the best time recorded on the dragstrip since ‘Ludicrous+’ was 10.726 seconds, which was good enough to be a record for any stock production electric car or any stock 4-door sedan. There’s apparently room for improvements and the options on the vehicles can make a good difference since the record has now been broken with a 10.723-second run.

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AI, Artificial Intelligence, Big Problems, Hot Issues, Science & Technology News

Artificial intelligence is quickly becoming as biased as we are

When you perform a Google search for every day queries, you don’t typically expect systemic racism to rear its ugly head. Yet, if you’re a woman searching for a hairstyle, that’s exactly what you might find.

A simple Google image search for ‘women’s professional hairstyles’ returns the following:

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Alternative Transportation, cutting edge, Driverless vehicles, Engineering, Future, Hyperloop, Science & Technology News

Hyperloop tech company offers first look at futuristic travel pods

Building a new 700mph transport system sounds pretty tricky, so one Hyperloop company has decided to kick things off by building the passenger pods first.

Hyperloop is a proposed plan to transport people or cargo between cities at near-supersonic speed in vacuum-sealed pods.

The technology is just a pipedream at the moment, with rival companies Hyperloop One and Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT)at the forefront of developments.

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