Important Innovations

Massive Solar Panels on Lakes to Soak Up the Sun A number of nations including China are chasing this idea...placing massive solar panels on bodies of water to maximize absorption of solar energy and allow the solar panels to operate with greater efficiency. Chinese Solar Leadership:  Largest Floating Solar Farm China is leading the way in emerging solar technology.  It opened the world's largest floating solar farm in 2017. It's on top of a lake that formed after an abandoned coal mine collapsed.  The system's 166,000-panel array generates 40 megawatts of power which is enough to power 15,000 homes.  A larger solar farm in the same locale is opening.  That will generate 150 megawatts and power 94,000 homes.  Overall, China installed 2 times more gigawatts of solar capacity than the US last year. It contributes almost half of the world's total solar capacity. Benefits of Floating Solar Farms Floating the solar panels on water protects farmland and wildlife

Brand New Material thru New Tech Treatment Process  University of Maryland Engineers and Their Breakthrough Wood  Researchers at the University of Maryland have produced a type of wood that's as tough and strong as steel. And, it's inexpensive.  The wood is 12 times stronger than natural wood and 10 times tougher.  It's a strong competitor to steel.  A new tech treatment process developed by UMD engineers created this brand new material. Super Wood Steel Replacement This treated wood can replace steel and titanium alloys.  It's comparable to carbon fiber but much less expensive. The potential uses are big and commercial scale. For Buildings, Cars and Airplanes The engineers say this natural wood substance is strong and tough enough to construct cars, airplanes and buildings.  It's as strong as steel but 6 times lighter.  The wood takes 10 times more energy to fracture than natural wood.  And it can be bent and molded at the beginning of the treatment pro

Boston Dynamics SpotMini Grabbing a Soda   Cranking Out Thousands of SpotMinis & Practical Robots Boston Dynamics is ready to produce a lot of SpotMinis.  You can purchase it in 2019.  It's an all-electric nimble robot that the company says is good at home, the office and outdoors.  The robot can wash the dishes, open the door, climb stairs and carry & handle packages and other objects. Productify The company is expanding its focus.  Since its founding it has been viewed as a leading R&D robotic innovation center.  Now, it's ready to also "productify"  meaning create and sell practical robots on a commercial scale.  SpotMini is a great example.  Word is they're going to unleash thousands of robots with different applications onto the market over the next few years. Uses According to the company, primary uses for SpotMini right now are as an assistant at the office, home and outdoors.  Also for emergency response, security and entertai

Harvard Robot to Do Surgery It's a tiny, soft robot, inspired by spiders, that may operate on humans someday.  Harvard and Boston University engineers and scientists developed it.  Their goal is to enable the robot to get to areas inside the human body that surgeons can't reach. This is the 1st time a flexible soft robot with an extensive range of capabilities has been created on such a small scale.  The process is called MORPH. Robots One Millimeter in Size Boston University and Harvard's Wyss Institute have developed a process to create millimeter-sized, flexible robots.  It's a hybrid technology that merges 3 different fabrication techniques.  With the process, the team created a soft robot spider made of silicone rubber.  It has 18 degrees of "freedom", meaning changes in structure, motion and color.  These devices are at the micrometer scale level, meaning they can operate in small, inaccessible places. Many Applications The soft robotic devices

University of Colorado at Boulder Breakthru Technology E-Skin This e-skin is self-healing, malleable and fully re-cyclable.  It can be used for robotics, prosthetics and for better medical devices. E-skin is a thin, translucent material that mimics the function and mechanical properties of real human skin. University of Colorado's e-skin also has sensors embedded in the skin for critical measurements. Awesome Tech Loaded with Sensors The e-skin has sensors embedded to measure pressure, temperature, humidity and air flow.  The tech has several unique properties including a polymer called polyimine.  It's also laced with silver nanoparticles to provide strong mechanical strength, chemical stability and electrical connectivity. The e-skin can be easily fitted to curved surfaces like a human arm or hand and even a robot's finger for a sense of touch. Polyimine Does It According to University of Colorado scientist Jianliang Xiao, what's unique is the chemical bond

Wednesday Series:  Innovation Addressing Pressing World Needs like Air Pollution Honeycomb Structures Inspired by Bees Scientists at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology have created a 3D structure inspired by the honeycomb of bees to control air pollution.  It's a flexible, 3D porous material that helps filter air to remove pollutants and viruses. Large Structure, Quick Build The King Abdullah University team developed a simple method that in 5 minutes produces a flexible film with a complex, hierarchical structure that has repeating patterns of interconnected regularly shaped pores. It's a honeycomb structure with a very large surface and the ability to selectively extract material like pollutants. Latticework and Symmetry Both the lattice of a honeycomb and the symmetry of a diatom are complex living structures with patterns and shapes that have long inspired scientists.  The research team says they've developed an important platform to design a

Power Beaming is an Emerging Disruptive Technology Source: Silent Falcon UAS Technologies -Silent Falcon California-based Silent Falcon UAS Technologies is partnering with the Pentagon's Advanced Research Projects Agency -DARPA -  to implement laser power beaming for its solar-electric powered drones.  Silent Falcon drones can fly non-stop 6 hours using batteries and solar energy. They are the world's first solar electric, long range, long endurance unmanned aircraft system or UAS. DARPA wants to make the flight time much longer by topping off the batteries via laser beams from the ground.  DARPA officials say they're right on the brink of delivering this disruptive technology. Endless Uses for Endless Flights What DARPA wants is drones capable of indefinite flight.  The drones would engage in sequences of flying and flying while charging from a high powered laser beam directed from the ground.  There would be no need to land and refuel.  This emerging technology

4D Videos thru 4D Goggles University of California researchers have created 4D goggles that have the ability to make entertainment content 4-dimensional.  Meaning, more immersive through multi-sensory experience. UC San Diego Discovery UC San Diego neuroscientists developed 4D goggles. They can be synchronized with entertainment content like movies, music, games and virtual reality to greatly enhance the experience.  They bring immersive, multisensory effects near to the face to deliver the feeling of really being there. Ongoing Research This is fascinating research.  The 4D goggles allow viewers to feel, during a movie, a slight touch when an object like a spacecraft is approaching. To do this with the 4D goggles, the neuroscientists mapped brain areas that integrate the sight and touch of a looming object.  That aided their understanding of the perceptual and neural mechanisms of multisensory integration and how more than a dozen brain areas were found to respond more stron

Disappearing Act  ICARUS Mid-stage Disappearance MIT founded Morse Corporation of Cambridge, MA has developed a drone designed to self-destruct and disappear after its mission is accomplished.  It's called ICARUS or Inbound, Controlled, Air-Releasable, Unrecovered System project.   DARPA Funded DARPA, the Pentagon's Advanced Research Projects Agency, provided Morse $8million to create an aerial disappearing delivery system.  Essentially drones deployed from aircraft, deliver their payload and then self-destruct and disappear. ICARUS ICARUS can fly 100 miles, land within 30 feet of its target and dissolve within 4 hours or within 30 minutes of sunrise.  It's in a highly advanced research stage right now.  It's for the military in dangerous situations.  For instance, to deliver blood supplies without compromising their position. Components ICARUS is made of film with a guidance system smaller than a tennis ball. The polymers that comprise the rest of it

Facial Recognition via DNA Samples If Sherlock Holmes were real and around today, he would soon have a new technology tool to catch criminals.  Based on DNA retrieved at the crime scene, detectives may soon be able to accurately sketch the suspect's face.  That's because researchers have identified 15 genes that determine our facial features. 15 Key Genes Scientists have provided a database with 3D images of faces and the corresponding DNA.  Each face was subdivided into small modules.  Then it was determined if any locations in the DNA matched the modules. Unprecedented Accuracy The modular division technique made it possible to check for an unprecedented number of facial features, resulting in unprecedented facial recognition accuracy.  A team of university scientists from Stanford, Penn State and the University of Pittsburgh collaborated on this breakthrough technique to decode faces from retrieved DNA. Exciting Potential Uses This system not only paves the way

New LiveWire Electric Bikes to Debut in 2019 Source:  Harley-Davidson - LiveWire LiveWire Harley-Davidson is unleashing a slew of new products, with advanced technology, over the next 3 years to pull in a new generation of riders and $1 billion in additional revenues by 2022.  The most notable new entry is their electric motorcycle LiveWire. LiveWires for Young, Urban Commuters Who Prefer Electric Vehicles Harley is targeting young, urban commuters who care about the environment and like electric vehicles that save them money.  LiveWire is a no-clutch, "twist and go" electric powered bike. It's coming to market in 2019. Biking and Transportation Go Electric Electric vehicles are reshaping the transportation industry globally from cars to planes.  Electric motorcycles are cheaper to operate than gas-powered ones.  They're quieter and some don't have gears.  There are smaller electric motorcycle brands now on the market, including Zero Motorcycles.  Th

New, German Research Confirms Robotic Manipulation Humans can be emotionally manipulated by robots.  German scientists found that we humans have a strong tendency to give human-like attributes to machines.  The scientists say, based on their research, interactive robots can emotionally manipulate people.  It's robotic manipulation. Scientific Study Researchers from the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany asked 89 volunteers to interact with a human-like robot under the pretext of helping it to become more intelligent. Turn It Off At the end of the interaction, the humans were asked by the researchers to turn off the robot.  But the robot was programmed to beg the humans not to turn it off.  46 volunteers served as the control group and were aware of the set-up.  43 weren't aware.  Of that group, 13 compiled with the begging robot.  Many said they felt sorry for it.  And, the rest of the "unaware" were much slower than the control group to decide whether

What's New Under the Sun Source:  DARPA The Silent Falcon Laser Powered Drones DARPA, the US Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency, is ramping up a program to power drones solely by lasers.  It's part of the program that created The Silent Falcon, a solar electric, unmanned aircraft system that uses laser power. The Silent Falcon The Silent Falcon is designed for long range, long endurance military missions.  It uses solar arrays to charge its batteries and power its motors, avionics and payloads. Never Ending Flights DARPA is planning a test to demonstrate the feasibility of recharging Silent Falcon's batteries onboard, inflight by using a powerful laser.  The light energy transmitted by a ground based laser will be received by photovoltaic receiving arrays in the aircraft's vertical tail.  This will enable indefinitely long flights and eliminate the need to land to refuel.  DARPA expects to deliver this system to the US military in t