It’s been a dream of science fiction for decades: a car where you just climb in and the computer takes care of the rest. It’s more than just neat: most accidents are caused by human error, so take the human out of the equation, and cars suddenly become much, much safer.
But what does it take to make the safest self-driving car? About $500,000 worth of gear.
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It looks like the job of mob goons is going to get much harder in the future. MIT has recently developed an experimental fabric that is capable of sensing and playing sound. The fabric is crafted from a conductive plastic ordinarily used for microphones. The fibers change shape when sound waves or electricity are applied and can be used to convert one to the other. The material can also work in reverse, creating electricity from fabric movement.
Although we’re big fans of DSLRs, compact cameras have their place. After all, lugging around five lens, a camera body, and some battery packs is an aggravating job and sometimes, you just want to have fun. That’s where Sigma comes in; their latest compact, fixed-lens camera looks ready to take great pictures while actually being portable.
How do you make skiing more extreme than straightlining 60-degree, three-foot-wide chutes atop serrated ridgelines? You add a jet pack, of course!
At least that’s what you do if you’re a stunt man and extreme sports junkie. Troy Hartman recently designed his own pack built with two Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) jet engines. The engines kick out a 12:1 thrust-weight ratio and provide land speeds of around 47 mph at 50 percent throttle, as tested by Hartman.
Hartman’s first phase of testing included tearing across snow-covered flats and up hills with the jet pack. According to his account, the pack is enough to power a skier up black-diamond-graded hills. And, as you’ll see in the video below, it just shreds on flat terrain.
While integrated, rechargeable batteries have become standard in devices like MP3 players and cell phones, there are still plenty of portable gadgets that use good, old fashioned AAs–some cameras and GPS units, for instance. So if you run out of juice on the road, you’re pretty much $#!* out of luck–unless you happened to bring spares with you.
Or if you have these non-existent but still awesome self-charging Ni-mH batteries. Like watches of old, all it takes is a twist to recharge these puppies. There’s an integrated generator inside that produces electricity from movement of the spiral spring. When your wrist is tired, you can also use a traditional charger to juice these up.
Over the years here at GadgetCrave, we’ve seen a lot of robot concepts. And one of the main themes of those concepts is something that could only be described as “beer butler.” But maybe they’ve been thinking about it all wrong. I mean, why trust your cold brew to a robotic servant that could turn on you at any moment when you could rely on a motorized couch to transport you to and from the kitchen instead? That’s more like it.
Suzuki has this motorized couch on display at the Chicago Auto Show as we speak. The couch is the star of a new advertising campaign, but more importantly, it’s just awesome.
![superstrongmetallicglass 4 Tough as [Steel] Nails: Scientists Create Ultra Rugged Metal Glass](http://gadgetcrave.frsucrave.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/superstrongmetallicglass-4.jpg "Tough as [Steel] Nails: Scientists Create Ultra Rugged Metal Glass")
Imagine glass that’s as strong and durable as steel. That’s what a group of scientists from Berkeley Lab and the California Institute of Technology have recently created. Sure to supplant Gorilla Glass as manufacturers’ go-to for glass displays and pieces–assuming it gets out of the lab and onto the market–the new glass is a metal-mixed glass that is flexible and bends instead of cracking. According to Gizmag, this means that it has “a fracture toughness that goes beyond the limits of some of the strongest and toughest materials known.”
Imagine being able to slide your cell phone or media player into your wallet. Or being able to roll it up like a piece of paper and fit it into the smallest compartment of your backpack. Yes, that day is in the future, but a new AMOLED shown by Samsung shows that the future is coming.
The prototype screen is 4.5-inches and measures a scant .3 mm in depth–so thin that you can barely see it when staring at the edge straight on. It packs WVGA resolution, and according to reports, it can roll up into a cylinder with about a centimeter radius. Samsung already has a working media player prototype with the display and plans to use it in cell phones and tablets once mass production gets underway.
Are you getting the idea that Google is like a hyperactive child with ADD? Sure, they’re good at search, but that doesn’t mean they do everything well. Take Buzz. Or Wave. Or the Nexus One. Or Google TV. Slow your role, Google!
But like any hyperactive child, Google won’t sit still long enough for anyone to discipline it. So it’s on to yet another venture.
According to BusinessWeek, Google is considering getting into the finance business with a new payment service. Like other similar offerings, Google’s system would let your phone tap into the payment infrastructure with near-field communications (NFC). Drop the credit card and swipe your phone.
