The hummingbird-spy of DARPA

Spybot

At first glance (and perhaps not too closely) it might seem like a real hummingbird, but it is the new spybot created by DARPA: this flying robot is equipped with a video camera capable of transmitting images remotely. The dimensions are still excessive (but I am very demanding): 16 cm of wingspan and 19 grams of weight. Yes, it's not a Boeing, and No, that's not all. We'll see them fly, guys: and one fine day, we won't even see them... Read more

Titan Arm, 50 times cheaper: the first real mass exoskeleton was born.

titan arm

Molluscs of the world, rejoice! The strength of an unyielding beast is now at your disposal thanks to a new exoskeleton model created by a group of university students. The Titan Arm is a multi-award winning project at the "James Dyson Awards", prizes for the most innovative technological achievements which takes the name of its creator and financier (if you don't know him here is something about him). The prototype, developed with the help of the now ubiquitous 3D printers, cost the equivalent of… Read more

A bionic leg guided by thought and chasing a record.

gambabionics1

Zac Vawter lost a leg in an accident 3 years ago and since then he has been through an ordeal looking for a prosthesis (he calls it a 'fake leg') which for him had satisfactory answers close to those of a real leg. So the thirty-one-year-old software engineer from Washington signed up in 2010 as a volunteer tester in a research program with the aim of creating a thought-guided bionic leg. The Rehabilitation Institute of the Medical Center… Read more

In nanomachine towards the future

It's not the first and it won't be the last. Scientists from the University of Groningen (Holland) and the Empa research center (Switzerland) have created a nanometric transport system equipped with four motor units (translation: a “namomachine”). It's electric, four nanometers long and every half turn of the wheels has to fill up... It works thanks to a scanning tunneling microscope positioned above it, which transmits a tiny electric charge that causes reversible structural changes in the wheels (translation: … Read more

Jobs of the near future: 26 jobs of tomorrow

Future Of Work i1140

In the days that mark the fall of the Berlusconi government and the Italian economic crisis (remember? we predicted it on the old site) I am as disheartened as all of you. The moment is difficult: we can only get out of it if all levels of our country change by looking to the future more than to the past. Some jobs will still survive in the future, let's be clear: but there is a whole series of jobs that don't exist today and which could be useful in the near future. Let's go with common sense: 60%... Read more

New bionic arm guided by thought: real.

arm

Time passes, technologies and methods improve, and things that recently seemed impossible are surprisingly within reach: this is exactly the case, given the incredible new bionic arm born from the collaboration between the American Universities of Pittsburgh and John Hopkins. This is a notable leap forward: the robotic arm has the ability to accurately sense vibrations, temperatures, contact with objects and degree of pressure: in other words it is equipped with touch and... Read more