The Argus, named after the all-seeing Greek god with 100 eyes, is a wearable computer that helps blind people see borders and boundaries at very low resolution. We first reported on the device some eight years ago, when it was still in testing. Now, at long last, the Food and Drug Administration has approved its use in the U.S. for people with Lloyd’s condition, and the … Read More → "New wearable device helps blind patients see shapes and colors"

If you tune in on Friday, here’s who you’ll get to see chatting about “the state of American robotics and the possibilities for robots to improve life on Earth,” or more specifically, “how robots can help transform everything from school classrooms to the factory floor and operating rooms to the way we explore the Solar System,” or even more specifically, “how the Obama Administration’s National Robotics Initiative … Read More → "White House to host robotics hangout on Friday"

In the mid-1930s, sci-fi legend Hugo Gernsback predicted that manned flame tanks would one day become a reality. A decade later, Gernsback would revisit his prediction with one important twist—the flame tanks of tomorrow would drive themselves.

Controlled by wireless signals, the “radio robot flametank” of the future was … Read More → "The robot tanks of WWII, both real and imagined"

Broccoli is one of those foods we’re told to eat as youngsters because it’s good for us. Unfortunately, researchers at the University of Illinois (U of I) found some of that goodness, namely the vegetable’s cancer-protective benefits, doesn’t survive the process its subjected to before reaching the freezers at supermarkets. Thankfully, the researchers followed up their initial research and found a simple way to preserve broccoli’s cancer-fighting properties.

Before broccoli is frozen and packaged, it is standard industry practice to first heat the vegetable … Read More → "Researchers preserve cancer-fighting properties in frozen broccoli"

Astronauts often have to deal with bone and muscle loss, vision issues, sleep difficulties, and increased risk of cancer. While such problems can be serious, they don’t necessarily occur in everyone. So when Scott Kelly was selected to be in the first year-long mission on the International Space Station, he and his brother Mark realized they were in a unique position to test just exactly how susceptible to health concerns a person in … Read More → "Twins in spaaace! NASA will perform tests on astronaut using identical twin as control"

… Read More → "Early footage shows a ride on the New York City subway in 1905 (video)"

KAIST’s online electric vehicle (OLEV) system has already demonstrated trams that recharge themselves while circling city parks. Today the OLEV system goes into operation on a regular commuter route in Gumi, a city in central South Korea. Two buses will ply the route, which has a roundtrip of 24 kilometers. By the end of the year, the city plans to add 10 more buses.
via Read More → "Korean bus charges itself while driving"

Google’s N-Gram Viewer is a wonderful and under-appreciated thing: At the click of a mouse, it lets you search Google Books’ huge corpus of material for specific words and combinations of words. This N-Gram analysis, for example, maps the mention of ten different cities in every book written between 1800 and 2000, charting the wax and wane of famous metropolises in the popular consciousness.
via Read More → "How often cities appear in books from the past 200 years, visualized"

Moving your hand makes this hexapod dance like a stringless marionette. Okay, so there’s obviously one string which is actually a wire but you know what we mean. The device on the floor is a Leap Motion sensor which is monitoring [Queron Williams’] hand gestures. This is done using a Processing library which leverages the Leap Motion API.
via Read More → "Leap motion controls hexapod with hand signals (video)"

Take a pleasure cruise up the Harlem River this month and you surely won’t miss the 24-ft (7.3-m) diameter Harvest Dome 2.0 which floats on the waters near Spuyten Duyvil Creek at the north tip of Manhattan, New York. Built to draw eyes to the city’s watercourses, the dome is built from 450 discarded and broken umbrellas support by a floating ring made from 128 2-liter drinks bottles.

The project is … Read More → "Dome of broken umbrellas takes to New York river"