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Archive for the ‘drones’ category: Page 145

Dec 21, 2016

Artificial leaf could make a medicinal mini-factory

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, drones, internet, sustainability

Leaves are kind of like nature’s power plants, converting incoming sunlight into energy for the plant to thrive on. Inspired by the real thing, scientists have previously created artificial leaves that function in much the same way as their natural counterparts to produce electricity and even liquid fuels. Now a team at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) is using a similar system to produce chemicals, which could one day lead to solar-powered “mini-factories” that can produce drugs, pesticides and other chemicals almost anywhere.

To mimic the light-capturing molecules in leaves, the researchers turned to luminescent solar concentrators (LSCs), materials seen in solar-harvesting window technology and used to catch and amplify laser beams carrying data in Facebook’s drone-mounted internet projec t. These LSCs absorb incoming light, convert it to specific wavelengths and then guide the photons to the edges of the device.

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Dec 19, 2016

New Flying Robots Take Cues From Airborne Animals

Posted by in categories: drones, engineering, robotics/AI

From navigating turbulence, to sleeping midflight, to soaring without a sound, animals’ flight adaptations are helping scientists design better flying robots.

Airborne drones and the animals they mimic are featured in 18 new studies published online Dec. 15 in the journal Interface Focus. This special issue is intended “to inspire development of new aerial robots and to show the current status of animal flight studies,” said the issue’s editor, David Lentink, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Stanford University in California.

Though humans have been building flying machines since the 18th century, these new studies revealed that there is still much to be learned from looking closely at how birds, insects and bats take flight, keep themselves aloft and maneuver to safe landings. [Biomimicry: 7 Clever Technologies Inspired by Nature].

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Dec 15, 2016

The Military Wants To Control Killer Drone Swarms With Video Games

Posted by in categories: drones, entertainment, military

New DARPA project aims to build a universal remote for hundreds of tiny drones.

Robots

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Dec 15, 2016

Why we are still light years away from full artificial intelligence

Posted by in categories: drones, robotics/AI, singularity

The future is here… or is it?

With so many articles proliferating the media space on how humans are at the cusp of full AI (artificial intelligence), it’s no wonder that we believe that the future — which is full of robots and drones and self-driven vehicles, as well as diminishing human control over these machines — is right on our doorstep.

But are we really approaching the singularity as fast as we think we are?

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Dec 15, 2016

The future arrives? Amazon’s Prime Air completes its first drone delivery

Posted by in categories: drones, futurism

CEO Jeff Bezos said the company successfully delivered its first package to a customer in the Cambridge area of England in 13 minutes.

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Dec 14, 2016

Amazon Conducts First Commercial Drone Delivery

Posted by in category: drones

Amazon said Wednesday it made its first customer delivery by drone, putting the online retailer in the lead to use drones as a new delivery method.

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Dec 6, 2016

Tern Tailsitter Drone: Pilot Not Included

Posted by in categories: drones, military, robotics/AI

One of the oddest military drones aborning reinvents a stillborn technology from 1951. That’s because the unmanned aircraft revolution is resurrecting configurations that were tried more than a half century ago but proved impractical with a human pilot inside. The case in point: Northrop Grumman’s new Tern, a drone designed to do everything armed MQ-1 Predators or MQ-9 Reapers can, but to do it flying from small ships or rugged scraps of land – i.e., no runway needed.

“No one has flown a large, unmanned tailsitter before,” Brad Tousley, director of the Tactical Technology Office at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Tern’s primary funder, said in a news release. The key word there is “unmanned.”

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Dec 6, 2016

Futuristic Urban Droneport could act as a hub for drone deliveries

Posted by in categories: drones, sustainability

Architect Saúl Ajuria Fernández designed Urban Droneport, an hub for delivery drones, as part of his master’s degree at Universidad de Alcalá.

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Dec 4, 2016

Would you eat a pizza delivered by a drone?

Posted by in categories: drones, food

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Dec 3, 2016

Should tech grads pick defense over Silicon Valley?

Posted by in categories: cybercrime/malcode, drones, engineering, government, military, neuroscience

Hmmmm.


Sam Gussman arrived four years ago at Stanford University hoping to eventually parlay an engineering degree into a product manager job at Google or Facebook.

Working for the National Security Agency or other intelligence bureaus never crossed his mind. For Gussman, the government didn’t seem like the place for the most exciting, cutting-edge research in human computer interaction — his area of interest. Plus, it did no on-campus recruiting, unlike the many tech startups that e-mailed him daily about job opportunities and happy hours.

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