The U.S. Army is backing a project to develop robotic insects aimed at enhancing the military’s situational awareness capabilities. The autonomous, multifunctional miniature intelligence-gathering robots will be capable of operating in places too inaccessible or dangerous for humans.
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ASIMO, Honda’s amazing 51-inch tall humanoid robot, is preparing to conduct the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in a performance of “Impossible Dream.” Along with renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma, the mechanical marvel will open a special concert performance for young people in Detroit on May 13.
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Last time I wrote about the “Black Tower,” I had just installed Vista and Kubuntu 7.10 in a dual-boot setup. When version 8.04 of Kubuntu (”Hardy Heron”) hit the Web last week, I wasted no time upgrading to it.
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Researchers at the University of Glasgow claim to have created a molecule-sized switch that offers vast increases in solid-state storage for devices such as MP3 players. The “breakthrough” molecule-sized switch can theoretically increase the number of transistors per chip from today’s limit of around 200 million to “well over a billion,” the team says.
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Two competing stackable PCI Express standards are being unveiled this week at the Embedded Systems Conference in San Jose, Calif. Targeting slightly different slices of the market, the mutually incompatible standards threaten to disrupt next-generation embedded device design much as 4-track/8-track, Beta/VHS, and HD-DVD/Blu-ray rivalries impacted consumer electronics.
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The Linux Foundation will hold its second annual Collaboration Summit this week in Austin, Texas. The invitation-only Summit, which brings together many of the foremost minds in Linux server, desktop, and mobile software development, aims to “determine how to advance the operating system in the year ahead.”
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While nanotechnology promises to transform the fields of electronics, medicine, environmental remediation, and solar energy, the “nano boom” is not without substantial envirnmental risks, warns the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition (SVTC) in a newly published 30-page report.
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The Alliance for Climate Protection (founded by Al Gore) has kicked off a project that aims to “ignite a movement” in the U.S. to solve the Earth’s climate crisis. The campaign will employ advertising, online organizing, and grassroots partnerships to mobilize 10 million supporters to demand “real solutions” from their government.
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Eight “revolutionary” embedded technologies have been selected to be showcased in the “Disruption Zone” at the Embedded Systems Conference (ESC) April 14-18 in San Jose, Calif.
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Microvision will showcase a tiny laser projector — small enough to be embedded in a mobile phone — at the CTIA Wireless show next week in Las Vegas. The company claims its mobile pico-projector technology produces highly focused DVD-quality WVGA (848×480 pixels) images of up to 100 inches in size (depending on distance).
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Developers thinking of using Linux as an embedded operating system won’t want to miss the annual Embedded Linux Conference in Silicon Valley next month. The event features keynotes and technical sessions on topics such as Maemo, real-time performance, power management, embedded graphics and multimedia, mobile phone technologies, fast boot, and much more.
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Embedded chipmaker STMicroelectronics (ST) has announced commercial availability of a portable “lab-on-chip” claimed capable of detecting all major influenza types within two hours — including the Avian Flu strain H5N1.
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Five key trends are converging to make unified communications (UC) the “next significant frontier for technology growth,” according to IBM. The company expects the global UC market to be worth $17 billion by 2011, it said in a statement this week.
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MIT’s Technology Review magazine has just published its annual list of the top ten emerging technologies. Dubbed the TR10, these “revolutionary innovations” are “poised to have a dramatic impact” on computing, medicine, nanotechnology, our energy infrastructure, and more, say the magazine’s editors.
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Microsoft showcased “pseudo translucent” display technology last week at its annual TechFest conference. LucidTouch creates the illusion of a semi-transparent device by allowing users to interact with the display from the rear of the device.
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The EU will channel more than 2.5 billion Euros into Europe’s embedded computing industry over the next decade, to compete more effectively against the U.S. and Asia. More than 90 percent of all microprocessors are used in embedded — not desktop — applications, according to the European Commission.
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A Silicon Valley homebrew robotics club has released a video demonstrating its kitchen-cleaning robot. The robot scrapes dishes, loads a dishwasher, and scrubs a counter-top with “human-sized” arms and a few simple tools.
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Researchers at Georgia Tech are developing a “power shirt” capable of running portable electronic gadgets. Clothing woven with fibers containing microscopic “nanogenerators” will use piezoelectric effects to convert the wearer’s movements into electrical energy.
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Polymer Vision is demonstrating a 3G HSDPA tri-band phone with a unique, rollable e-paper display this week at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The “Readius” device combines normal feature phone functions along with e-reader capabilities.
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Using its Deep Space Network, NASA will beam the Beatles song, “Across the Universe,” into deep space today at 7 p.m. EST. The transmission commemorates both the agency’s 50th anniversary and the 40th anniversary of the song’s first recording.
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Intel and Micron Technology have unveiled a high-speed NAND flash memory technology claimed to offer up to five times the performance of conventional flash memory. The new high-speed flash reportedly can achieve read and write speeds of 200MB/sec and 100MB/sec, respectively.
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NXP Semiconductor and Purple Labs have announced a reference design aimed at enabling the manufacture of 3G Linux feature phones that could be sold to mobile operators at under $100. Touted features of the “Purple Magic” phone include video telephony, music playback, high-speed Internet browsing, and video streaming.
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The growth in mobile phone shipments will slow slightly this year due to a “tougher” economic environment, but will still increase by 10 percent, to 1.24 billion units, a leading market research firm forecasts.
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The unoccupied radio spectrum between broadcast TV channels may soon become a source of low-cost, ubiquitous broadband connectivity. Earlier this month, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission began Phase II testing of prototype “white space devices” (WSDs), to determine whether they can operate without interfering with the wireless devices commonly used in homes, offices, and public locations.
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Trolltech, the originator of Qt, which forms the basis of the Linux KDE desktop environment, is being acquired by Nokia, the world’s number-one mobile phone vendor. Nokia expects its acquisition of Trolltech to accelerate its cross-platform software strategy for mobile devices and desktop applications, and to enhance its Internet services business.
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