Printing this car took just 44 hours our out of 44 parts. Just bolt on some electronics and wheels are you are ready to drive! Love the design but up close it doesn’t look polished like a metal vehicle but you can see that it goes together in thick levels. What will we see in the future? Instead of customizing your new car by picking a color, interior trim option and accessories are we going to be able to push and pull some of the body features? It sure does open things up for some interesting thoughts.

Apple is famous for making nice looking products that are practically sealed for life even though many of us consider the internal battery a serviceable part. Having to access batteries for occasional replacement might be a thing of the past. Also planning to charge items is currently something that revolves around many things, you probably plan to charge your phone while you sleep, your electric car gets topped up when you are at work, you have a few sets of batteries for your cordless power tools. Wouldn’t it be nice it charging took a few minutes instead of many hours? How about a battery that lasts 20 years, which is typically more than the entire usable life of the device? This might not be science fiction for much longer. Scientists at Nanyang Technology University have developed fast charging batteries that can be recharged up to 70 per cent in only two minutes!

Thanks for the tip John.

“In the new NTU-developed battery, the traditional graphite used for the anode (negative pole) in lithium-ion batteries is replaced with a new gel material made from titanium dioxide.

Titanium dioxide is an abundant, cheap and safe material found in soil. It is commonly used as a food additive or in sunscreen lotions to absorb harmful ultraviolet rays.

Naturally found in spherical shape, the NTU team has found a way to transform the titanium dioxide into tiny nanotubes, which is a thousand times thinner than the diameter of a human hair. This speeds up the chemical reactions taking place in the new battery, allowing for superfast charging.”

The U.S. Navy is developing Autonomous Swarm Robot Boats. These boats are outfitted with Control Architecture for Robotic Agent Command and Sensing (CARACaS), this technology was developed by NASA for the Mars rover. 

“Navy researchers installed the system on regular 7-foot and 11-foot boats and put them through a series of exercises designed to test behaviors such as escort and swarming attack. The boats escorted a manned Navy ship before breaking off to encircle a vessel acting as a possible intruder. The five autonomous boats then formed a protective line between the intruder and the ship they were protecting.”

Check out this crazy internal baffle structure of this cool Fostex FE206En Back-Loaded Horn Loudspeaker.

 “The back-loaded or rear-loaded horn loudspeaker system is like bass-reflex and double bass-reflex speaker types in that the sound radiated from the back of speaker transducer is utilized to enhance the bass response. The difference however is that back-loaded horn (BLH) speaker enclosures make among the most efficient use of the back wave from the speaker driver. The back-loaded horn speaker enclosure operates by developing the bass response using the back wave from the speaker driver and an expanding horn section. The remainder of sound spectrum (mid and high-frequency ranges) is radiated directly from the front wave produced by the speaker driver. Back-loaded horn speaker enclosures are generally amongst the most efficient enclosure systems and respond well to the subtlest components of music signals. For “tighter” sound reproduction, you can reduce the interior volume of the horn speaker cabinet using fill material. Sound absorbing material should be used directly behind the driver and also at the mouth of the horn to smooth out the frequency response.”

Murata is always pushing the envelope when it comes to demonstrating their technology in action. You probably remember the close up look we got of the technology behind Murata Girl and Murata Boy. This time they have made an entire group of robotic cheerleaders who dance in formation. They sit on top of a ball and balance as they are moving around. We have seen balancing ball robots before but the complexity of moving all of these balancing robots in unison must be quite challenging.

You need to see them in action. Click here to see the video, scroll down to see how the technology comes together.

Thanks to Amy from Murata for the info.

The MIT Biomimetic Robotics Laboratory has been working hard on the MIT Cheetah Robot. Deborah Ajilo, Negin Abdolrahim Poorheravi,John Patrick Mayo,Justin Cheung, Sangbae Kim, Shinsuk Park, Kathryn L. Evans, Matt Angle, Will Bosworth, Joao Luiz Almeida Souza Ramos, Sehyuk Yim, Albert Wang, Meng Yee Chuah, and Hae Won Park are members of the huge development team. Why so many team members? This is not a simply problem to tackle, as you read through their post you will see that there were a number of challenges that they needed to overcome in the development of the system.

Via: Evan Ackerman at IEEE Spectrum

“Now MIT researchers have developed an algorithm for bounding that they’ve successfully implemented in a robotic cheetah — a sleek, four-legged assemblage of gears, batteries, and electric motors that weighs about as much as its feline counterpart. The team recently took the robot for a test run on MIT’s Killian Court, where it bounded across the grass at a steady clip.

In experiments on an indoor track, the robot sprinted up to 10 mph, even continuing to run after clearing a hurdle. The MIT researchers estimate that the current version of the robot may eventually reach speeds of up to 30 mph.

The key to the bounding algorithm is in programming each of the robot’s legs to exert a certain amount of force in the split second during which it hits the ground, in order to maintain a given speed: In general, the faster the desired speed, the more force must be applied to propel the robot forward. Sangbae Kim, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at MIT, hypothesizes that this force-control approach to robotic running is similar, in principle, to the way world-class sprinters race.”

Our friend Dave from the EEVBlog took apart this Vintage Precision Power Supply. With a quick look at the front panel you might think this is something that you would have got from Radio Shack 40 or 50 years ago for your hobby kit but this is a 0.001% precision power supply! It was designed by Power Designs Inc of New York back in 1964. When you see the internals you will see lots of point to point wiring which was popular back in the day, these days you only generally see point to point components bodged onto cheap Chinese equipment. The condition of the internals is very clean considering the age of the device! Unfortunately a simple adjustment of the trim pots wasn’t enough to calibrate it. I am assuming that some of the crusty old caps are desperately needing replacement.