Landmines and unexploded shells transform tracts of terrain into silent time bombs, slowing armies and claiming lives long after the conflict has ended. The British have begun employing small drones to undertake reconnaissance work for them first, allowing the computer to identify the threats so that soldiers can stay back and complete the job more quickly.
Scientists from MIT’s Media Lab have developed extremely thin strands that wrap and unravel at the flip of an electric switch. They strikingly resemble your own muscles. When grouped together, they can generate significant force and movement, all while remaining completely silent and hidden.
Starting next month, UK shoppers can order the Honda Super-N for less than £20,000 ($26,910). This cool electric vehicle pays homage to a famous 1980s Honda model and injects some joy back into daily travels. Honda constructed the Super-N on a lightweight architecture derived from their popular kei cars in Japan, where it was initially known as the Super-One. The end result is a low-slung car that’s easy to drive in traffic, feels agile, and saves money without compromising any of the necessities.
Soiboi Soft set out to build a four-digit display out of nothing but air pressure. The finished product is an impressive design, with 3D printed pieces and ultra thin silicone sheets, without cables running directly to the section. Instead, vacuum lines pull on flexible membranes to create luminous bars, which remain in place long after the signal is turned off.
A brief video showed a pair of arms slithering out from an ultra slim floor lamp, reaching out to pick up a rumpled blanket, and then nimbly transforming it into a clean rectangle in the blink of an eye. That lamp is called Lume, the creation of a Palo Alto-based company, and they had a rather basic idea: what if house robots looked more like furniture than machinery?
Hyundai took the risk and launched IONIQ in China as its own specialized brand for electric vehicles. Today, executives convened in Beijing to unveil not one, but two concept cars that signify the brand’s new path in this market. These vehicles have some bizarre and fascinating names and appear unlike anything else in the global IONIQ fleet, but in a good way.
Joe Barnard is the man behind several rockets that do far more than just launch and crash. What set him apart is his ability to take ideas typically designated for full-fledged space initiatives and scale them back down to considerably smaller sizes. His most recent creation is a little camera pod that pops out of the rocket’s side at its highest altitude and records the entire scene.
Engineers have managed to compress an incredible amount of audio power into a speaker that is small enough to be held with one hand. Listeners who attach the Bose SoundLink Flex 2nd Gen, priced at $119 (was $149), to a backpack or throw it in a beach bag are in for a surprise: sound that fills a patio or campsite so convincingly that you forget it’s a compact device, with no distortion or muddiness to worry about.
News surfaced earlier this week about a collaboration that will make electric vehicle charging a seamless part of people’s daily trips in China. BYD collaborated with Yum China, the company that runs all of the KFC restaurants there, to install high-speed Flash Charging stations at select drive-thrus. Owners can now get a snack and charge their battery all at once, taking less than ten minutes from walking in the door to driving away.
Way down in the belly of the Orion spacecraft is a large cylindrical module built in Europe that provides almost everything the crew requires to safely return to Earth after a voyage to the Moon. The European Service Module houses all of the propulsion systems that maintain the crew safe and comfortable until splashdown, including power, water, air, and temperature control for all four astronauts. It was manufactured by Airbus for the European Space Agency, weighs a whopping thirteen tons and measures roughly four meters across and tall.