Ralph Bond, Science/Tech Trends Correspondent
Story 1: Nissan Develops Self-Steering Golf Ball for ‘Stress-Free’ Perfect Putts
Source: ExtremeTech Story by: Bill Howard
Link: https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/297519-nissan-develops-golf-ball-for-stress-free-perfect-putts
See video here: https://youtu.be/ZWtoDRsWgkk
- Nissan is finding new uses for its Skyline ProPilot 2.0 Assist self-driving technology used in the Infiniti Q50 in the US.
- Nissan-Infiniti used the Skyline ProPilot technology to develop a ProPilot golf ball with self-guiding technology system embedded.
- On the green, you putt the ball more or less in the direction of the hole, and it finds the way.
- The intelligent golf ball also makes use of a camera in a drone overhead that tracks the ball’s progress and issues corrections to an internal motor that can change the ball’s path of progress.
- Similar to the Skyline’s ProPilot 2.0 advanced technology, the ProPilot golf ball supports golfers by following a predefined route to its goal.
- Goofy stunt, or does this have other more serious applications?
Story 2: Pentagon shelves research into particle beam weapons – for now
Source: Popular Mechanics Story by Kyle Mizokami
Link: https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/research/a28942057/neutral-particle-beam/
- The Department of Defense is pushing hard into directed energy technologies, particularly lasers, but there’s one weapon that won’t be deployed in the field anytime soon: neutral particle beams (NPBs).
- What are neutral particle beams: they are basically “death rays” from science fiction. [e.g. Flash Gordon]
- Neutral particle beams involve accelerating streams of atomic or subatomic particles to nearly light speed and shooting them downrange at a target.
- The Pentagon wanted to use it to destroy enemy ballistic missiles shortly after takeoff.
- Just over a year after announcing a renewed interest into the tech the Pentagon has decided to shelve research into Neutral particle beams, stating that they were “not near term enough.”
- Orginally the Pentagon had hoped to conduct a particle beam test in space sometime in 2023.
- However, as the article notes, the Pentagon is still forging ahead with research into lasers and microwave weapons, for use by ground forces, air forces, and in space.
Story 3: Intel to use Tokyo Olympics to show off 3D tracking, and other new technology
Source: Reuters News Service
Link: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-olympics-2020-intel-idUSKCN1VW0TD
- Tech giant Intel Corp has announced it will use the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games to show off a portfolio of new technology including artificial intelligence driven 3D tracking of athletes to augment broadcasts of events during the Games.
- The tracking technology will use mobile cameras to capture video of Olympic events that will be used to create visual overlays and analysis
- Intel also said it would use virtual reality to recreate images of venues to help train staff. Live virtual broadcasts will be available for track events, boxing, beach volleyball and the opening and closing ceremonies.
- Intel said its chips would also be used in facial recognition systems, tracking some 300,000 people including athletes, volunteers, journalists and staff entering and exiting Olympic venues.
- The company will also host a four-day esport gaming tournament in Tokyo just before the Olympic opening with a $500,000 prize pool.
- My note: Esports is a form of competition using video games.
Story 4: You might be talking to robots at McDonald’s drive-throughs soon
Source: C/Net Story by Sean Keane
Link: https://www.cnet.com/news/you-might-be-talking-to-robots-at-mcdonalds-drive-thrus-soon/
- McDonald’s recently took a step toward automating how it handles your order when it acquired artificial intelligence company Apprente.
- The Silicon Valley-based startup was founded in 2017 to create voice-based platforms for “complex, multilingual, multi-accent and multi-item conversational ordering,” which McDonald’s plans to incorporate in its drive-thrus initially.
- The system has already been tested at a few restaurants.
- McDonald’s said it hopes to add the technology to its mobile ordering and kiosks later.
- On a related note: The fast-food giant previously acquired Dynamic Yield, a machine-learning company whose “decision logic technology” subtly tweaks menu displays based on outside factors such as the time of day, weather and traffic, as well as suggesting extra stuff for you to add to your order.
Story 5: ‘Flying fish’ drone actually explodes out of the water
Source: Engadget Story by Amrita Khalid
- My note – when you say “drone” most of us think only of drones in the air
- The Aerial Robotics Lab team at the Imperial College in London has built a concept for multimodal swimming robot it calls AquaMAV that can jump out of water.
- The AquaMAV drone combines combustible power and water in order to propel itself.
- The drone contains calcium carbide powder.
- When mixed with water, the drone creates acetylene gas, which then gets funneled into a combustion chamber along with air and water.
- When ignited, the mixture then explodes, forcing the water out of the combustion chamber and propelling the drone into air.
- The AquaMAV can fly up to 85 feet in the air. It creates so much force it can even propel itself out of choppy waters.
- Scientists believe it can be used to collect water samples during natural disasters such as floods or to monitor ocean pollution.
- See video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJU8EL61NgA
Story 6: First-ever successful mind-controlled robotic arm without brain implants
Source: Science Daily
Link: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/06/190619142542.htm
- A team of researchers from Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Minnesota, has made a breakthrough in the field of noninvasive robotic device control.
- Using a noninvasive brain-computer interface, researchers have developed the first-ever successful mind-controlled robotic arm exhibiting the ability to continuously track and follow a computer cursor.
- Being able to noninvasively control robotic devices using only thoughts will have broad applications. For example, benefiting the lives of paralyzed patients and those with movement disorders.
- How does it work: Using novel sensing and machine learning techniques the team has been able to access signals deep within the brain, achieving a high resolution of control over a robotic arm.
- Think the movement, and the arm follows along!
- Until now, however, brain-computer interfaces that have been successful in controlling robotic arms have used surgically implanted invasive brain implants.
- These implants require a substantial amount of medical and surgical expertise to correctly install and operate, not to mention cost and potential risks to subjects
- As such, their use has been limited to just a few clinical cases.
Story 7: Laser printing tech produces waterproof e-textiles in minutes
Source: Science Daily Announcement from RMIT University
Link: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/08/190827101603.htm
- The next generation of waterproof smart fabrics will be laser printed and made in minutes. That’s the future imagined by the researchers behind new e-textile technology.
- Scientists from RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, have developed a cost-efficient and scaleable method for rapidly fabricating textiles that are embedded with energy storage devices.
- In just three minutes, the method can produce a 10x10cm [about 4 square inches] smart textile patch that’s waterproof, stretchable and readily integrated with energy harvesting technologies. – such as solar
- The technology enables graphene supercapacitors — powerful and long-lasting energy storage devices that are easily combined with solar or other sources of power — to be laser printed directly onto textiles.
- My note: these energy storage devices could power smart wearable tech gadgets
- The growing smart fabrics industry has diverse applications in wearable devices for the consumer, health care and military sectors –
- From monitoring vital signs of patients, to tracking the location and health status of soldiers in the field, and monitoring pilots or drivers for fatigue.
Story 8: Toyota tests solar-powered Prius in quest for plugless electric car
Source: Reuters News Service Story by Kevin Buckland
Link: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-autos-solar-electric-idUSKCN1VX0D7
- Inspired by new ultra-thin solar panels developed for satellites, a project led by Toyota Motor Corp is experimenting with a sun-powered Prius that it hopes will one day require no plugging in.
- Toyota engineers fitted solar panels designed by Sharp Corp to the hood, roof, rear window and spoiler to see how much juice the sun can generate.
- The solar cells are super-slim – just 0.03 millimeters, making them malleable enough to form-fit to the body of a car.
- The electricity from the panels goes directly to the drive battery, so the Prius can charge while moving or when parked.
- On a good day, the charge can be sufficient for up to 35 miles of travel, more than the 29 miles driven a day by the average American, according to a study by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety.
- But the performance drops off quickly if it is cloudy or even when it’s too hot. If used in real-world driving in those conditions, the Prius would have to be plugged in to recharge.
Story 9: NASA’s Air Traffic Control System for Drones Nearing Completion
Source: Discovery Magazine Story by Sarah White
Link: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2019/08/15/nasa-drones-air-traffic-control/#.XXvLNHdFybg
- Last month NASA conducted the final planned tests of its traffic management system for unmanned drones in Corpus Christi, Texas.
- The system acts like air traffic control for drones, tracking them to help avoid collisions and ensure smooth flight paths.
- Testing the cloud-based system’s capabilities in windy urban areas like Corpus Christi is one of the biggest remaining obstacles before drone traffic oversight can be transferred from the aeronautics division of NASA to the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration).
- Since 2015, researchers at NASA, together with industry partners, have been developing a cloud-based software system to ensure safe drone flights.
- The new system, called UTM for short, is designed to automatize air traffic control below 400 feet
- The goal is to ultimately manage package and person delivery by drone at low altitude
Story 10: Hypersonic ‘space plane’ promises four-hour London to Sydney flights by 2030s
Source: CNN Story by Jack Guy and Maureen O’Hare
- Flight times from London to Sydney could be 80% shorter by the 2030s, should a hypersonic rocket engine being developed in the UK get off the ground.
- The UK Space Agency will be working with the Australian Space Agency to develop a Synergetic Air-Breathing Rocket Engine engine to be built by Oxfordshire-based Reaction Engines
- In April 2019, Reaction Engines announced successful tests of a precooler, simulating conditions at Mach 3.3, or more than three times the speed of sound.
- That’s more than 50% faster than the cruising speed of Concorde
- How it works: It “breathes” air from the atmosphere, allowing greater fuel efficiency and lower weight than existing rocket engines that need to carry their own oxygen supply.
- Think of it as a hybrid of a rocket engine with a jet engine
- The Synergetic Air-Breathing Rocket Engine is designed to reach speeds above Mach 5 in the Earth’s atmosphere [that’s a little over 3,800 miles an hour!]
- and will then be able to turn into a rocket that can fly through space at up to Mach 25 [a bit over 19,000 miles per hour!]
- The technology could also be used in hybrid electric aviation as well as very high-speed flight.
Story 11: New Research Promises Electric Car Batteries That Last for a Million Miles
Source: Gizmodo Story by Andrew Liszewski
Link: https://gizmodo.com/new-research-promises-electric-car-batteries-that-last-1838357663
- The power cells used in electric vehicles, like Tesla cars, have an expected lifespan of around 300,000 to 500,000 miles
- a team of battery researchers at Halifax, Nova Scotia’s Dalhousie University believes it has come up with a recipe that can double that.
- This team, by the way, has been doing research on improving lithium-ion batteries exclusively for Tesla
- It’s a new lithium-ion battery that could potentially power an electric vehicle for more than one million miles and more than 4,000 charging cycles while only losing about 10 percent of its charging capacity
- The new battery tech could be especially useful in vehicles that are on the road around the clock like taxis, shuttles, and even delivery trucks.
Story 12: Ancestors is a video game that reveals how the first humans evolved
Source: The Next Web Story by “The Conversation”
Link: https://tinyurl.com/y3ep2glk
Game site link: https://ancestorsgame.com/en/about/
My note: beautiful graphics, super realistic animation. From the creator of the game “Assassin’s Creed”
From the game’s official site:
- Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey is a third-person, open world survival game where you EXPLORE, EXPAND, and EVOLVE to advance your clan to the next generation in this new adventure from Panache Digital Games
- Begin your journey “Before Us”, 10 million years ago, and see if you have what it takes to survive your evolution.
- Explore the never-before-experienced world of Africa at the dawn of humankind.
- Grow your clan and find strength in numbers. Control different clan members, form bonds, and work together.
- Evolve through multiple generations as you make new discoveries.
- Sold by Epic Games, $39.99 for Windows PC, Xbox, PS4
- See video here: https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-US/product/ancestors/home
Story 13: Could A Scalp-Zapping Cap Help Reverse Male Balding?
Source: Slashdot
Link: https://m.slashdot.org/story/361174
- Today, men who don’t want to go bald can treat hair loss using minoxidil lotion, finasteride pills or hair transplant surgery.
- Stimulating the scalp with electric pulses has also been shown to restore hair growth.
- However, it isn’t a very practical treatment because it involves being hooked up to a machine or battery pack for several hours a day.
- To overcome this hurdle researches at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have developed a wireless patch that sticks to the scalp and generates electric pulses by harnessing energy from random body movements.
- The 1-millimetre-thick plastic patch contains layers of differently-charged materials that produce electricity when they come into contact and separate again — a phenomenon known as the triboelectric effect.
- When the flexible patch was attached to the backs of rats, their movements caused it to bend and stretch, activating the triboelectric effect.
- The resulting electric pulses stimulated faster hair re-growth in shaved rats compared with minoxidil lotion and inert saline solution.
- The idea could lead to a ball cap with the patches incorporated