Ideatrotter

Future 3.0

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Birth of a Star

In galactic nurseries like the Orion Nebula, clouds of gas and dust mingle, birthing new stars and planetary systems. The ALMA radio telescope made a recent observation of possible planets being born.

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Hunt for Philae comet lander goes on

The landing of the Philae craft on a comet some 500 million kilometers away from Earth was one of the greatest scientific achievements of recent times. However, to continue to make the most of the success, scientists now have to find where the lander is on the 67P comet. 

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Is it a phone? Is it a drone? No, it's a flone!

The artist Lot Amorós, and engineers Cristina Navarro  and Alexandre Oliver won the Next Things award in 2013 for the Flone invention, an H-shaped airframe which transforms smartphones into airborne apparatus. It is able to fly up to 20 metres, and take photographs and video from above. Flone has been designed to be cheap and simple to make. The airframe is wooden, and is powered by a standalone battery and four propellers. 

"We tried to simplify all the technology of our drones , and also the way of controlling," Amorós told the BBC  at the Sonar+D event in Barcelona. An interesting feature of Flone is that the smartphone in the air is remotely controlled from a smartphone on the ground using the accompanying Android app and a Bluetooth connection. "What we are seeking is to change a little bit the concept that drones are something that only people with money can afford," said Oliver.

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Environmental Stewardship via Bioelectricity

Fueled initially by a NASA grant to explore how recent advances in bioelectricity can enhance water management in space, Cambrian Innovation is dedicated to global leadership in the development of environmental solutions based on newly discovered electrically active microbes, starting at the intersection of energy and water.

Since 2006, they have developed, scaled, and validated a pipeline of solutions that can recover resources from wastewater, eliminate energy input for wastewater treatment, radically reduce the cost of nitrate nitrogen treatment, and help agricultural operations monitoring their inputs more easily and efficiently.

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Rethinking the 2014 Biking Technology

Muc-Off has always looked to push the boundaries of innovation. This is the story of the long road to innovation - in the quest for chain efficiency perfection.

Muc-Off’s whole development process involves rigorous testing of each product with the professional teams it supports. The development with these teams ensures each product is tested in the fastest and toughest conditions for road cycling.

This testing process was an integral part of the development of the C4 Chain Wax that Team Sky used in this year’s Tour de France TT. The Muc-Off C4 Chain Wax is the first of its kind; the long and rigorous process to produce the wax and its application to the chain can help produce savings of 7.5 seconds over a 55mile time trial. In a discipline where seconds can be the difference between 1st and 10th place, it is a marginal gain that can help steer a rider to victory.

The C4 Wax was tested and developed using Muc-Off’s Chain Lube Efficiency Dynamometer. This machine has the ability to test any lubricant and chain to provide quantitative data, efficiency and performance durability. The C4 Wax was strenuously tested on the chain efficiency dynamometer until the perfect formula was produced. This process also involved live testing with Team Sky riders, such as Bradley Wiggins, Chris Froome and Richie Porte to ensure the wax was fit for race conditions.

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How Can Digital Innovation Help Us Care For Our Families?

Digital technologies provide new and powerful ways to deliver meaningful innovation that matters to people. So how can we use them to help us care for our families and live healthily?

Responding to people’s needs and expectation for greater connectivity, personalization, control and convenience, we're embracing a digital philosophy at Philips, offering digital innovations that empower people to be in control of their own personal health and well-being. 

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World's Largest Private Tank Fleet Up For Auction

Want to buy a tank? On July 11, a portion of the world's largest private collection of tanks and historic military vehicles will be up for auction. Former Silicon Valley engineer, Jacques Littlefield, bought his first tanks in the 1980's and by the time of his death in 2009, he had acquired more than 200 vehicles. Sam Grobart shows off several that are on the block. 

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Snake Robot Ready for Search and Rescue Missions

Israel has earned itself an enviable reputation in the field of high-tech startups. But when it comes to robots, it's got some catching up to do. Bloomberg Middle East Editor Elliott Gotkine has been to the south of Israel to meet the man putting Israeli bots on the map.

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Self Optimizing Network Technology

Learn about Self Optimizing Network technology, from AT&T and Intucell, used to create a better customer experience. This product helps to ease the overcrowding of users on one tower, expanding the network coverage area. 

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Design Innovation in Mature Industries

Sometimes innovative designs in mature industries comes from a repetitive series of incremental enhancements, but design tools can make the entire process more effective.

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MOOCs Don't Cannabalize Traditional Education

The question keeps educators up at night: Do free, massive open online courses cannibalize enrollment at traditional schools? The results are finally in, part of a new study co-authored by Wharton professor Ezekiel J. Emanuel. Rather than poaching traditional students, MOOCs reach new audiences that business schools, at least, want to target.

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The Single Most Important Habit of Successful Entrepreneurs

Find out how the presence or absence of just one critical habit can determine your business success or failure.

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Every Robot Has a Name

Trossen Robotics is proud to announce the first robot platform to come from the 21st Century Robot Project, Jimmy the Research Humanoid. Jimmy is powered by Intel inside, which provides an extraordinary amount of CPU horsepower on a mobile walking platform.

The 21st Century Robot project is the brainchild of Intel's Futurist Brian David Johnson and is the result of the collaboration of developers from USC, Olin College, and Trossen Robotics.

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Extreme-environment robotics under development at Keio University

At Keio University, the Ishigami Laboratory, in the department of mechanical engineering, is investigating robotic mobility systems. The main mission of this group is to perform fundamental and applied research for application to extreme environments, notably lunar and planetary rovers.

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LASA Robotics Arm Ultra-Fast Can Catch Objects on The Fly

At the Learning Algorithms and System Laboratory (LASA) at Switzerland's EPFL (one of two Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology), researchers combined parts from two robots to make a remarkable robotic arm that catches objects.

In the video above, the somewhat oversized, four-fingered hand is able to catch anything from a tennis racket to a partially-filled water bottle. "I think the main novelty we bring to object-catching is the way we transfer information from a human to the robot," said LASA researcher Ashwini Shukla in the video.

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How Cameroon Fixed Its Schools

For years, Cameroon's education sector was in disrepair - teachers didn't receive salaries as more and more children crowded into classrooms. But Cameroon has managed a turnaround with support from the Global Partnership for Education.

Teachers now receive a regular paycheck, which has attracted better and more reliable applicants to the profession. Hiring more teachers has also led to smaller classroom sizes.

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Stanford engineer invents safe way to transfer energy to medical chips in the body

Electrical engineer Ada Poon has invented a way to wirelessly transfer power deep inside the body. The technology could provide a path toward new medical devices.