Jack Obusek, a former colonel now with the Army’s Soldier Research Development and Engineering Center in the Boston suburb of Natick, foresees robot-suited soldiers unloading heavy ammunition boxes from helicopters, lugging hundreds of pounds of gear over rough terrain or even relying on the suit’s strength-enhancing capabilities to make repairs to tanks that break down in inconvenient locations.
Sarcos’ Jacobsen envisions factory workers someday using the technology to perform manual labor more easily, and firefighters more quickly carrying heavy gear up stairwells of burning buildings. Disabled people also may find uses for the technology, he said.
“We see the value being realized when these suits can be built in great numbers for both military and commercial uses, and they start coming down in cost to within the range of the price of a small car,” said Jacobsen. He declined to estimate how much the suit might cost in mass production.
But cost isn’t the only obstacle. For example, developers eventually hope to lengthen the suit’s backpack battery’s life and tinker with the suit’s design to use less energy. Meanwhile, the suit can draw power from a generator, a tank or helicopter. And there are gas engines that, while noisy, small enough to fit into the suit’s backpack.
I’ll skip the obvious reference to Iron Man (although now I can’t get the Black Sabbath song out of my head). Link
By mimicking the antics of a child using a magnifying glass to burn a leaf or a camper to start a fire, IBM scientists are using a large lens to concentrate the Sun’s power, capturing a record 230 watts onto a centimeter square solar cell, in a technology known as concentrator photovoltaics, or CPV. That energy is then converted into 70 watts of usable electrical power, about five times the electrical power density generated by typical cells using CPV technology in solar farms.
If it can overcome additional challenges to move this project from the lab to the fab, IBM believes it can significantly reduce the cost of a typical CPV based system. By using a much lower number of photovoltaic cells in a solar farm and concentrating more light onto each cell using larger lenses, IBM’s system enables a significant cost advantage in terms of a lesser number of total components.
Steering only with his body, Rossy dived, turned and soared again, flying what appeared to be effortless loops from one side of the Rhone valley to the other. At times he rose 2,600 feet before descending again with a trail of special-effects smoke in his wake.
“It’s like a second skin,” he later told reporters. “If I turn to the left, I fly left. If I nudge to the right, I go right.”
Rossy then performed a stunt he had never before tried.
After one last wave to the crowd the rocket man tipped his wings, flipped onto his back and leveled out again, executing a perfect 360-degree roll that most birds would find impossible.
“That was to impress the girls,” he later admitted.
Check out the guys at VGL! This video from YouTube is amazing, and there are a ton more. I’m planning a trip to see these guys in San Diego on July 24th, which coincides with the Comic Con.
Apple is in discussions with the big music companies about a radical new business model that would give customers free access to its entire iTunes music library in exchange for paying a premium for its iPod and iPhone devices.
The “all you can eat” model, a replica of Nokia’s “comes with music” deal with Universal Music last December, could provide the struggling recorded music industry with a much-needed fillip, and drive demand for a new generation of Apple’s hardware.
This seems inevitable to me. With the advent of the Amazon.com MP3 music store which sells DRM free, high-bitrate music at prices on par with Apple’s iTunes store, the company must realize that it’s near monopoly control on digital music distribution is threatened. Additionally, once you can load your own applications on the iPhone/iPod Touch, what is to stop someone like Amazon.com from writing an application that interfaces directly with their store? By bundling an all-you-can-eat option in with the hardware, Apples neatly sidesteps this issue (and avoids any potential anti-trust battles if it were to block competitors’ music stores).
A neckband that translates thought into speech by picking up nerve signals has been used to demonstrate a “voiceless” phone call for the first time.
With careful training a person can send nerve signals to their vocal cords without making a sound. These signals are picked up by the neckband and relayed wirelessly to a computer that converts them into words spoken by a computerised voice.
So far the device can only recognize about 150 words and phrases and there is quite a delay between thought and spoken word - still, one can easily envision the near future where entire conversations will be held between two individuals who are consciously sub-vocalizing their speech. And no need to worry about the device broadcasting every random thought that goes through your head -users must think specifically about voicing words for them to be picked up by the equipment.
The Karma plug-in hybrid [was] unveiled at the Detroit Auto Show earlier this month. Its curvaceous, aggressive design combined with its ability to go 50 miles without using any gas seems like a bargain at the projected starting price of $80,000. Fisker is hoping to deliver its first Karma to customers in the fourth quarter of 2009, but to do that they will first need to find a place to build the cars (and get the drivetrain sorted and figure out that batteries and…). Vic Doolan, director of retail development for Fisker, says the company is considering metro Detroit to handle production. The combination of unused capacity, close proximity of suppliers, and availability of experienced workers make Detroit an ideal location.
Great design, great economics, the right price and built in America? Sounds like a winner to me.
