Posts tagged tech

‘Invisible’ helmet is like an air bag for your bike.

Swedish design firm Hövding have created a motion sensor activated ‘airbag bicycle helmet’.

In an accident an array of motion sensors detect abnormal motion and inflate the air bag from a collar worn around the neck. The microcontroller used in the device is programmed with information from a database of simulated accidents and normal cycling movements, so the device shouldn’t activate in the wrong situation.

The device conforms to EU safety regulations and are CE marked, so if you’re tired of getting helmet hair head over to their website and pick one up for yourself - the complete set of a collar and a shell (cover) is around US$550.

Japanese ‘shoulder mounted robot’ demoed.

A Japanese University team has shown off their ‘20-DOF Miniature Humanoid MH-2: a Wearable Communication System’ project at a robotics conference this month. The shoulder mounted robot works as a telepresence bot, able to be controlled via the internet from anyone of your choosing.

here’s the idea: you’ve got a friend or a relative that you want to share an experience with. Like, you’re traveling or something, and you want some company. Instead of having said friend come along with you (we’ll assume that they’re busy as opposed to just antisocial), you can bring along an MH-2 instead. Back home, your friend puts on a 360-degree immersive 3D display and stands in front of some sort of motion capture environment (like a Kinect, for example). Then, they get to see whatever the MH-2 sees. Meanwhile, the robot on your shoulder acts like an avatar, duplicating the speech and gestures of your friend right there for you to interact with directly.

All this technology isn’t without a price though: the robot is actually controlled by a stupid looking backpack, with 22 actuators on top pulling strings to control the robot.

Intel spending more than $1 billion on new CPU manufacturing plants.

With the latest range of Ivy Bridge CPU’s from Intel only recently hitting the market, the company is wasting no time investing in new technology for the next generation of processors.

Where Ivy Bridge used a 22nm manufacturing process, the next CPU will move that down to 14nm, which will be produced at 3 new ‘Fabs’ - one in Ireland and two in the US.

The 14nm process technology is expected to start being used in 2013.

Useless at watering plants? There’s an app for that. 

The Koubachi Wi-Fi plant sensor seems to cater for quite a specific market - wealthy and inept gardeners.

The sensor measures moisture, light intensity and temperature, and uses built in Wi-Fi to transmit analysis to an iPhone or Web app to alert the user to the plants needs.

The sensor costs a huge €122 (US$153) but the makers point out that once you’ve used it for a while on one plant and established a ‘care plan’ it can be transferred to another troubled plant. If you can’t spare the Euros for the sensor you could still download the app here to get some helpful watering tips. Or you could just water your plants every now and then like a normal person.

US Police considering arming UAV’s.

Texas law enforcement have revealed they are considering using rubber bullets and tear gas on their Unmanned Aerial Vehicle. 

“Those are things that law enforcement utilizes day in and day out and in certain situations it might be advantageous to have this type of system on the UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle),” McDaniel told The Daily.

The American Civil Liberties Union also claim tasers are being considered on the drones.

New FAA rules mean US Police departments are allowed to operate drones weighing up to 25 pounds (11kg) in US airspace.

Russia eyeing up a lunar base.

Russia and Japan both revealed hopes of achieving manned exploration of the Moon at this months Global Space Exploration Conference in Washington DC.

According to an executive from the Japanese Space Agency, Japan claims to be “looking at the moon as our next target for human exploration” at this stage.

Russia has higher hopes, with the head of Russian space agency Roscosmos saying “We’re not talking about repeating what mankind achieved 40 years ago. We’re talking about establishing permanent bases”.

‘Vacuum Tube’ processor 12x faster than silicone based transistors.

Vacuum tubes were used in computers until around 50 years ago, when transistors were found to be able to be mass produced onto silicon more cheaply and effectively. Now vacuum tube techniques have been used again to create a device able to operate at up to 0.46 terahertz - more than 12 times faster than the latest Ivy Bridge range of processors from Intel which operate up to 3.8Ghz. 

…it is created by etching a tiny cavity in phosphorous-doped silicon. The cavity is bordered by three electrodes: a source, a gate, and a drain. The source and drain are separated by just 150 nanometers, while the gate sits on top. Electrons are emitted from the source thanks to a voltage applied across it and the drain, while the gate controls the electron flow across the cavity.

Because the device is so small in size, the team found they didn’t need a true vacuum to make it work, as the risk of electrons colliding with any atoms in the air is so low at the nanometre scale. This means they would be more suited to cheaper mass production.

This work is of particular interest to NASA and other space agencies, as traditional computers need to be radiation-proofed before leaving Earth’s atmosphere - this wouldn’t be a problem for the new device, potentially saving them time and money by enabling space-ready computers.

New technique developed to predict volcanic eruptions.

British researchers have discovered a way to more accurately predict when a volcano is about to erupt. Previously volcanologists could use models of earthquake activity and vented gasses to say a volcano was more likely to erupt, but the new method could be used to make more accurate predictions.

By analysing samples from past eruptions, the team discovered that a mineral crystal called orthopyroxene starts to build up in magma around a year before an eruption, peaking just before it erupts.

It’s likely that this technique could be refined and used to predict eruptions for any volcano in the world, however more work will be needed analysing the exact chemical fingerprints of eruption sequences to determine the timeline of events.

Internet penetration rate stats released.

[Insert dirty joke here]

The chart shows the percentage of population with internet access. Iceland and Norway both have incredible rates of over 97% - almost the entire country is online.

The UK ranks number 14 at 84.1%, with the US number 27 at 78.3%.

Check out the full chart here at Internet World Stats.