Futurescope

a project about down-the-road-technology, weak signals, design and a lot of amazing visions of the future.

Swimming through the blood stream: Stanford engineers create wireless, self-propelled medical device

Stanford electrical engineers have created a tiny wireless chip, driven by magnetic currents, that’s small enough to travel inside the human body. They hope it will be used for a wide range of biomedical applications, from delivering drugs to cleaning arteries.

This week, at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference, before an audience of her peers, Ada Poon demonstrated a tiny, wirelessly powered, self-propelled medical device capable of controlled motion through a fluid – blood, to be exact. The era of swallow-the-surgeon medical care may no longer be the stuff of science fiction.

Poon, an assistant professor of electrical engineering, is developing a new class of medical devices that can be implanted or injected into the human body and powered wirelessly using electromagnetic radio waves. No batteries to wear out. No cables to provide power.

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Toray Fingerprint Resistant Film For Smartphone and Tablet Touchscreens

Toray has developed a finger-print resistant film using a unique wet coating technology. Marks from fingers don’t easily stick to this film, and even when they do, they’re hard to see.

The new film has a uniform layer of oil-repellent material, with a randomly wrinkled nanometer structure on the surface. This makes the film more resistant to fingerprints than previous technologies, while maintaining high transparency and gloss. […]

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Google to sell heads-up display glasses by year’s end

Google-made glasses that will be able to stream information to the wearer’s eyeballs in real time will go on sale to the public by the end of the year, according to unnamed Google employees, the New York Times Bits blog reports.

They will be Android-based and will include a small screen that will sit a few inches from someone’s eye. They will also have a 3G or 4G data connection and a number of sensors including motion and GPS. They are expected “to cost around the price of current smartphones,” or $250 to $600.

The glasses will have a low-resolution built-in camera that will be able to monitor the world in real time and overlay information about locations, surrounding buildings and friends who might be nearby.

The glasses will send data to the cloud and then use things like Google Latitude to share location, Google Goggles to search images and figure out what is being looked at, and Google Maps to show other things nearby, a Google employee said.

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Sebastian Thrun Will Teach You How to Build Your Own Self-Driving Car, For Free

Last August, Sebastian Thrun, the brains behind Google’s self-driving cars and one of the world’s top AI experts, offered an online version of Stanford’s Introduction to Artificial Intelligence course to absolutely anyone who wanted to take it, for free. It turned out to be just a little bit popular (over 150,000 students enrolled), and now Thrun is offering a new, totally free, seven-week online course called Programming a Robotic Car. I know, it sounds a little bit ambitious, but this is straight from the class FAQ:

Can I really learn how to build a self-driving car in 7 weeks?

Yes! In seven weeks, you will learn the basics of all the primary systems involved in programming a robotic car. […]

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Construction firm aims at space elevator in 2050

unexpectedtech:

It may be possible to travel to space in an elevator as early as 2050, a major construction company has announced.

Obayashi Corp., headquartered in Tokyo, on Monday unveiled a project to build a gigantic elevator that would transport passengers to a station 36,000 kilometers above the Earth.

For the envisaged project, the company would utilize carbon nanotubes, which are 20 times stronger than steel, to produce cables for the space elevator.

The idea of space elevators has been described in several science-fiction novels. Obayashi, however, believes it is possible to construct one in the real world thanks to carbon nanotubes, which were invented in the 1990s, the company said.

Some other organizations have also been studying the development of space elevators, such as the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

In Obayashi’s project, a cable would be stretched up to 96,000 kilometers, or about one-fourth of the distance between the Earth and the moon. One end of the cable would be anchored at a spaceport on the ground, while the other would be fitted with a counterweight.

The terminal station would house laboratories and living space. The car could carry up to 30 people to the station at 200 kilometers per hour, which would mean a 7-1/2 day trip to reach the station. Magnetic linear motors are one possible means of propulsion for the car, according to Obayashi.

Solar power generation facilities would also be set up around the terminal station to transmit power to the ground, the company added.

Whether carbon nanotubes can be mass-produced economically enough and whether various organizations from around the world can work together are two key issues facing the development of the space elevator, according to the company.

“At this moment, we cannot estimate the cost for the project,” an Obayashi official said. “However, we’ll try to make steady progress so that it won’t end just up as simply a dream.”

Organic TFT For Use In Foldable Displays Of The Future

A group at Osaka University, led by Professor Takeya, have successfully developed a high-speed organic TFT-driven display with world-class performance.

This achievement makes it possible to combine high-speed display performance with easy film fabrication, which has been an issue with organic TFT displays so far. It’s hoped that this will lead to the early development of high-performance, flexible displays. […]

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smarterplanet:

VertiCrop Processes 10,000 Plants Every 3 Days Using Vertical Hydroponic Farming

forget outdoor farming people, this is the future!!! skyscraper farms is the way to go…controlled environments, no heat, no cold, no bugs, no sprays!!!

Vertical farming is one of the most innovative solutions for lowering the amount of energy, space, and water needed to grow food, but Valcent Products has taken the practice to a whole new level with their revolutionary VertiCrop technology. By applying Henry Ford’s super-efficient assembly line concept to vertical hydroponic farming, the Vancouver-based firm can produce the same amount of produce on a standard sized residential lot that most farmers would be able to grow on a 16-acre plot. Their stacked, mechanized, produce-laden plastic trays are already a hot commodity, with orders coming in from every corner of the globe. Step in for a closer look at how this technology is completely changing the way we grow food.

The VertiCrop system consists of a series of mechanical 123 plastic trays stacked 8 high that can be placed on urban rooftops and other tight spaces. They contain vegetables and herbs that are grown hydroponically with just 8% of the water and 5% of the space required by standard farms. Energy efficient LED lights are on standby to supplement waning natural light when necessary.

VertiCrops are climate controlled and use absolutely no harmful herbicides or pesticides. What’s more, they are incredibly easy to manage. A staff of just 3 people can handle 4,000 square feet of plants and 2,000 square feet of germinating, harvesting, and packing space, and they can process as many as 10,000 plants every 3 days! Valcent’s COO Christopher Ng told the Global Commodities Report, “this is what farming has to develop into.”

via mattmeetstheinternet:  foreverdante:

(Source: thedantepath)

Pentagon’s Project ‘Avatar’: Same as the Movie, but With Robots Instead of Aliens

The Avatar program will develop interfaces and algorithms to enable a soldier to effectively partner with a semi-autonomous bi-pedal machine and allow it to act as the soldier’s surrogate. These robots should be smart and agile enough to do the dirty work of war, Darpa notes. That includes the “room clearing, sentry control [and] combat casualty recovery.” And all at the bidding of their human partner.

The “Avatar” project, notes “key advancements in telepresence and remote operation of a ground system,” it sounds like the agency’s after an even more sophisticated robot-soldier synergy. They don’t specify the means, but Darpa’s already funded successful investigations into robots that are controlled with mind power alone. Granted, that research was performed on monkeys. But it does raise the tantalizing prospect that soldiers might one day meld minds with their very own robotic alter egos.

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