Forty one tiny robot submarines is a lot of tiny robot submarines. It’s so many, in fact, that controlling them individually doesn’t make sense, and the only way to go is to give them levels of swarm intelligence, so that each individual robot can take care of itself while the swarm as a whole completes an objective.

The CoCoRo (Collective Cognitive Robotics) Project, sponsored by the European Commission, has been … Read More → "World’s largest swarm of miniature robot submarines"

Katia Apalategui, a 52-year-old who works in insurance sales, is teaming up with researchers from the University of Le Havre in northwestern France to develop a technique to bottle a person’s unique scent into a perfume, she told The Guardian.

The smell-ologists would collect a person’s clothing and extract the odor using an unspecified process, according … Read More → "A French company will turn your dead relatives into perfume"

Meet the PancakeBot, a new cooking tool that will revolutionize your breakfast routine. Invented by Miguel Valenzuela, the PancakeBot allows you to design your pancakes, upload the image on an SD card, and print your pancakes onto a heated griddle to cook! Once you have uploaded your image, select which parts of the drawings you would like outlined (these are the sections that will be printed first) and which parts your will like shaded in. Because the outline … Read More → "The PancakeBot will print your pancakes for breakfast, in any shape you can draw"

You like your vinyl records but don’t like the fact that you’re killing them? The new EIP Laser Turntable plays records without touching them… The catch: a $15,000 price tag.

“The Laser Turntable employs patented technology that produces phenomenal fidelity while never physically touching the record, thus eliminating the deterioration to the album’s surface inflicted by conventional turntables. The laser’s precision allows you … Read More → "The EIP Laser Turntable plays records without touching them"

In honor of Albert Einstein’s innovative style of thinking and penmanship that was as beautiful as his equations, a font has been designed based on Einstein’s handwriting. 

Developed by Harald Geisler and Elizabeth Waterhouse, a German typographer and an American dancer/theorist respectively, they hope to immortalize the legacy of the genius who pioneered the general theory of relativity by introducing the font into most digital devices soon. < … Read More → "New font based on Albert Einstein’s handwriting"

Printed Nest, an open-source community of bird lovers and designers, has created a range of 3D printed birdhouses that the company hopes will provide habitats for winged friends in urban areas. (Cities are home to some 20 percent of bird species.) The brightly-colored mesh nests feature antlers for birds to land on and ample space inside.  
via Mental Floss

< … Read More → "These 3D printed nests make homes for city birds"

Like any vehicle, Curiosity’s wheels have to roll over whatever lies in its path. Sadly, that path isn’t always smooth: now, the rover’s got a chunk of rock wedged in one of the grooves of its wheels.

According to New Scientist, NASA scientists aren’t too concerned about the stone. They don’t … Read More → "Curiosity rover has a rock wedged in its wheel"

When it comes to choosing a meal, mosquitoes may see some people as a bland bowl of whole grain cereal, while a select number of unlucky folks stand out like a giant, cheese-oozing pizza. The difference is in how you smell: Certain body odors are just more attractive to a mosquito on the prowl. But new research, published in PLOS ONE, suggests that your likelihood of getting bitten by a … Read More → "Do mosquitoes love you? It could be genetic"

Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) have built a cheap 3D-printed attachment able to turn smartphones into sophisticated microscopes. Armed with the new device, a smartphone would be able to detect single DNA strands and analyze them to diagnose diseases including cancer and Alzheimer’s without bulky and expensive equipment.

Cheap and portable medical diagnostics could make a real difference in assisting patients in third-world countries or remote areas, and microscopes are an … Read More → "3D-printed attachment turns any smartphone into a DNA-scanning microscope"

The European Union has approved plans to install an emergency call feature in all cars and light vans from March 31st, 2018. The system, known as eCall, automatically contacts emergency services in the event of a crash, as determined by in-car sensors, such as those triggering the vehicle’s airbags. eCall establishes an audio connection with emergency operators and automatically transmits basic data including the vehicle’s type, location, and the time of the crash. Passengers and witnesses will also be able to activate eCall manually by pressing an in-car button.
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