Photo credit: David Baillot/UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering
Engineers at the University of California, San Diego have managed to create a thin layer of material that turns your run of the mill soft robots into agile explorers. These vine robots can stretch and twist through spaces that would be way too small and fiddly for bigger machines, just like a snake slithering through grass.
Beats Flex Wireless earbuds don’t just put up a fight against Apple’s AirPods – they make you seriously wonder if it’s even worth splurging on a set of those pricey, completely wireless ones. At $30.01 (down from $65.99) these earbuds serve up a winning combination of ease of use, decent sound quality and comfort that you can’t ignore, especially if you’ve spent all your time fiddling with tiny lost earbuds or wincing at the price tag.
ANBERNIC’s upcoming RG DS handheld has a clamshell design that folds out to give you two screens – just like the original Nintendo DS – but packs a lot more grunt than you’d expect for a device that’s under $100. It fits in your pocket and won’t break the bank (or your nostalgia) with early footage showing it handling everything from quick sketches in Kirby: Canvas Curse to the meatier stuff of Pokémon Black Version 2 with ease.
Palmer Luckey stands in a Washington, D.C. conference room getting some sunlight, fiddling with a couple of high-tech glasses that look a lot like something you’d expect to see a fighter pilot or mechanic wearing . These are prototypes for EagleEye, the latest foray into wearable battlefield tech from Anduril Industries. Now the guy who kickstarted the whole virtual reality thing with Oculus in his parents’ garage way back in the day, Luckey has been circling around to this exact point for years.
October 18th 1985 was a pretty ordinary autumn day in New York City but the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) was about to start something big – 200 unassuming grey boxes placed alongside cartridges of plumbing adventures on shelves. Four decades later, that simple launch remains the foundation of what we consider entertainment today.
NGC 7496, a spiral galaxy in the constellation Grus located about 24 million light years away, has recently been imaged in high detail by the Hubble Space Telescope. This latest image reveals what it looks like to view a galaxy that is a true hub of activity, with blazing groupings of stars and nebulae cradling the entire star birth and death process.
Aamir Khollam stepped out of his weather-beaten SUV into the blinding snowy vastness of Svalbard, where the biting wind lashed through his parka like a fresh shave. He yanked open the trunk and pulled out a black duffel bag, a bit bigger than the one he’d toss into the back of the car for a quick weekend getaway. With a few yanks of the zipper, the bag came apart… and out spilled Janus-I, a folding helicopter that had already conquered the Himalayas.
Jake Carlini literally wore an electric bike on his body for this latest stunt. Yes, he built a wearable machine that’s cool to watch and terrifying to ride by using his own frame as the backbone of a disassembled e-bike.
Evan Monsma’s studio in Indianapolis is where broken gadgets are reborn into something incredible, rather than tossed out into the trash. His latest project – turning a smashed iPhone into a seriously capable cinema-grade camera by slapping on some old C-mount lenses – is pure proof that imagination really can meet DIY skills head on.
