Ever heard of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) ? Well, UAV (or commonly known as Drone) is basically an aircraft vehicle without using human pilot to control the flight, but instead, the pilot controls it by using a remote control. Drones are often used in military applications despite the use of them could save lives from unpredictable attacks.

We rarely see UAVs flying around. Some may think that this is just a propaganda made by government or military department to “scare” people. But it is NOT. Some countries at war have seen hundreds of these drones.

Most games like Call of Duty : Modern Warfare and Call of Duty : Black Ops have include UAVs in their games. Movies like Bourne Legacy(2012) starring Jeremy Renner also had a movie scene where he was attacked by the UAV.

But don’t get pumped up yet, this post is not about UAV.

Now this is what we call the future. This tiny little airplane is called Autonomous Agile Aerial Robots. This robot is invented by KMel Robotics, a company owned by two graduates from University of Pennsylvania, Alex Kushleyev and Daniel Mellinger. So far, they’ve already built 5 types of robots:

NanoQuad


Nano+


kQuad500


kiloQuad


megaQuad

What’s the differences between Autonomous Agile Aerial Robots and Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)?

Autonomous Agile Aerial Robots is basically related with UAV. However, the UAVs are big, they even weighed thousands of pounds, and of course are not agile. They’re not even autonomous and in fact as mentioned before, these vehicles are operated by flight crews, that include multiple pilots and mission coordinates.

Whereas for these tiny robots, the name “Autonomous Agile Aerial Robots” already given the picture of what these robots could do. There is no need for flight crew, just a computer operations to fly them. their sizes are also small, giving them the ability to move quick. They don’t require GPS coordinates at all.

What can these robots do?

Robots like these have many applications. you can send them to side buildings as first responses, to look for intruders, maybe look for gas leak. They also can be used to search victims who are trapped inside small space, making the work for the rescue teams become easier.

These robots can also be used to pickup payloads and build structure. All these can be done without the helps from the pilot.

One special feature that can be seen in these robots is that their ability to “figure out things on their own”.

You see, this autonomous robot only understand how to go from point A to point B without the GPS coordinates. But with the help from the camera and laser scanner attached to it, this robot can figure out what the best point B is without crashing at all. Surprisingly, it can even create a map. This is very helpful in case if you lost in some places.

There are many applications that these robots can do. In the future, people might really need this kind of help.

Source: KMel Robotics

The dream of having flying cars has been existed since the 1980s. We saw a flying car in the movie Back to The Future starring Michael J Fox and his DeLorean supercar. We all dream that someday there is a technology that can make flying cars. But now we’re already in the year 2013, the movie was almost 30 years back, where are the flying cars?

Let us just stop dreaming about flying cars. Because there will be NO such thing as flying cars, flying cars will NEVER get invented.

Why?

Because you just cannot defy gravity. When we talk about flying cars, we usually think about cars that can easily lift off, fly away from busy traffics and go wherever they want. That is called a flying car.

There are many projects on flying cars but none of them can really be called flying cars because they are actually airplanes.

Here’s the deal… anything powered by a motor or engine that flies with the use of fixed wings is called Airplane. It doesn’t matter if the wings can be folded up, it is still an airplane. It’s the laws of gravity and physics, where you need wings to control the movement and the unpredictable air flows coming your way. So basically these “flying car” projects are just small airplanes that can be ride on roads.

These are some “flying car” projects:

Moller Skycar

Volante Flying Car

Cool right? But these are not flying cars. For example, just give these “flying cars” to ten drivers and see how they test drive the cars. It is impossible to drive these type of cars on the road because you need to open the wings and maybe some distance so that these “flying cars” could fly. So they are just the same as airplanes.

Unless if you really want to have flying cars without the wings, then there should be some drastic changes in technology.

The new technology invented was the Maglev Train, “floating train” that uses magnetic force to lift it.

This video shows how the Maglev Train works:

If someday all the roads in the world are change to magnetic roads and all the cars have the magnetic technology, maybe we can have our flying cars like the one in Total Recall movie.

Source: Google+, Techcrunch

Imagine Cup by Microsoft is the world’s premier student technology competition. It gives the opportunity for students to enhance their unique ideas and turn them into reality. Students also get to solve challenges and problems provided to them. In turn, Microsoft offers lucrative prizes and even a chance to meet with the big wigs in Microsoft.

Over the past 10 years, more than 1.65 million students from all over the world have participated in this competition and for this year, the final competition will be held in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Each year, the theme for the competition would be different. The purpose is to enhance the capability of the students’ creative thinking and their ability to come out with innovative products, system and applications.

Imagine Cup 2012 Champion. Category: Software Design

This is Team QuadSquad from Ukraine. They are the champion for the Software Design category.

Their project was called Enable Talk. The innovation meant that mute people can transmit their sign language through their mobile phones, recognize the patterns and then transfer the signs into audio.

Below is their introduction video.

What can I get if I enter this competition?

Well, the prize for this year is the biggest in the history of Imagine Cup. Microsoft is giving away USD$300,000 in prizes for the winners…. a lot if you are a student.

If you get to the finals, you also get the chance to visit the historic landmark of St Petersburg… all paid for by Microsoft.

In addition, if you are the winner, you might get to meet with the world’s top investors and with people who are interested with your project. Thinking of wooing some venture caps for your next big idea?

What do you need to do to get into this competition?

Well, first thing first, you must be a student and at least 16 years old. Create a team of your own, develop your own interesting software/games/apps and compete with other teams in your country. There will only be one winner in each country and the winner will represent their country and compete at the finals in St Petersburg.

Imagine Cup by Microsoft is a good way to explore students’ creativity as well as learn what is inside their mind. After all, creative students are the future of technology.

So what are you waiting for? Grab this chance and you could be the next champion!

For further information, feel free to visit Imagine Cup.

Yu, a 25-year-old female loggerhead turtle was found and pulled from a fishing net that washed ashore on the southern part of Shikoku Japan in 2008. This poor turtle had lost one third of her right limb and half her left limb by the time she was rescued. It was believed to be a shark attack that caused the loss.

For the past 5 years, researches have been developing artificial limbs that would allow Yu to swim back to normal. She was fitted with 26 kinds of prosthetics over the years, but none ever fit. They either fell off quickly or caused the pain for the turtle.

But recently on 11 Feb 2013, a new rubber limb technology was used and attached perfectly to the turtle. Since then, the turtle has been able to swim smoothly and normally like before.

The latest artificial flippers were made from rubber and wet suit material. The aquarium curator, Naoki Kamezaki, said that they have worked hard to design the vest in a way that prevents the turtle from taking the artificial limbs off unwittingly. It can flutter its limbs freely as the vest is soft.

Isn’t this animal-friendly technology at its best?

Source: inhabitat, circa