The swordplay is cool, but even cooler is the fact that this is the first demonstration of truly “real-time kinodynamic planning” on a quadrotor system navigating an obstructed environment.
via IEEE Spectrum

… Read More → "Quadrotors that have learned to dodge swords"

NASA announced today that the Kepler mission has verified 1,284 new planets — the single largest finding of planets to date.

“This announcement more than doubles the number of confirmed planets from Kepler,” said Ellen Stofan, chief scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “This gives us hope that somewhere out there, around a star much like … Read More → "NASA’s Kepler mission announces largest collection of planets ever discovered"

Brazilian researchers have developed a wheelchair that can be controlled through small facial, head or iris movements. The team at Faculdade de Engenharia Elétrica e de Computação da Universidade Estadual de Campinas (FEEC/Unicamp) says the technology could help people with cerebral palsy, those who have suffered a stroke or live with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and other conditions that prevent precise hand movements.
… Read More → "Wheelchair controlled by facial expressions to hit the market within 2 years"

Another company has jumped into the fray with a vertical take-off plane called the Lilium that can soar at 400 km/h (250 mph). We’d normally say they’re dreaming with the specs: A 10,000 foot ceiling, 500 km (310 mile) range and helicopter-like takeoffs, all on battery power. However, it’s hosted by a European Space Agency (ESA) incubator and the team from the Technical University of Munich … Read More → "Personal electric plane won’t need an airport"

El Capitan, the new six-string from Blackbird Guitars, provides the look, sound, and beauty of a hardwood instrument without the fuss or ecological concerns. It’s made of Ekoa, a proprietary composite of flax linen and bio-resin made from industrial waste. The company claims the material is lighter than carbon fiber and stiffer than Sitka spruce, the preferred material for the best soundboards. “We like … Read More → "$3,000 guitar made of ‘solid linen’ looks and plays like wood"

Although electronic devices are shrinking all the time, the idea of a smart contact lens still seems wildly ambitious. Now Sony has reached even further into the realm of the hypothetical and yanked out something that trumps all the efforts we have seen before. A patent filing by the Japanese company reveals its vision for a contact lens that not only records video and images with a simple blink, but manages … Read More → "Sony files patent for contact lens that records what you see"

Futurity summarizes research from a Duke University doctoral student named Sparky Samantha Deffler. She explains that it’s because dog names have greater significance in families:

In addition to mixing up sibling for sibling and daughter for son, study participants frequently called other family members by the … Read More → "Why you accidentally call your relatives by your dog’s name, but not your cat’s"

One of the biggest challenges with smartwatches is trying to navigate through apps on a relatively tiny screen. While smartphones and tablets have gotten bigger over the years, the gadgets we wear on our wrists need to stay small to avoid looking terribly unfashionable. Today a team at the Future Interfaces Group, a research lab within Carnegie Mellon University, released … Read More → "New tech turns your skin into a touchscreen for your smartwatch"

In a robotic surgery breakthrough, a bot stitched up a pig’s small intestines using its own vision, tools, and intelligence to carry out the procedure. What’s more, the Smart Tissue Autonomous Robot (STAR) did a better job on the operation than human surgeons who were given the same task.

STAR’s inventors … Read More → "Autonomous robot surgeon bests humans in world first"

Computer vision is so hot right now. Companies like Microsoft and Google and Facebook use it to help the blind, sort your photos and do many other cool things. It’s as hot as bots, which everyone is integrating into everything and Microsoft boss Satya Nadella calls “the new apps.”

Sketch … Read More → "The ‘WTF Is That’ bot tells you what’s in your photos (sometimes)"