Daily Tech News

Using cardboard, Fiction Factory has managed to create a  prototype of a modular home that can be assembled in a day . Dubbed  Wikkelhouse , which directly translates from Dutch to Wrap House, is made up of a series of interlocking cardboard pieces that each weigh 500 kilograms, with tubular components that can be used to extend or shorten the length of the building. To protect the material, the cardboard is waterproofed using breathable film and finished with wooden cladding boards. Sections include a kitchen, shower and bathroom, with additional options for other finishes such as glazed or opaque facades. “Wikkelhouse is what you get when an everyday material finds a groundbreaking purpose,”  said Fiction Factory , the group behind the project. Because the structure does not need a foundation, it can easily be built on any chosen site in just a day. But that’s not even the most remarkable part about this housing innovation. Despite being made from cardboard, whic...

Uber has announced  that it is testing its first self-driving car, a hybrid Ford Fusion, around Pittsburgh throughout the coming weeks. The car, developed by Uber’s  Advanced Technologies Center  (ATC), is outfitted with a variety of sensors. These include radars, laser scanners, and high-resolution cameras to map details of the environment. But the car isn’t going solo just yet. A human will be in the driver’s seat to monitor operations. Uber chose Steel City for its “world-class engineering talent and research facilities,” stating that Pittsburgh’s “wide variety of road types, traffic patterns and weather conditions” makes it an ideal testing ground. Pittsburgh Mayor William Peduto welcomes their choice: “We’re excited that Uber has chosen the Steel City as they explore new technologies that can improve people’s lives — through increased road safety, less congestion, and more efficient and smarter cities.” Uber is making the shift to self-driving ...

MIND OVER MATTER Driverless and self-driving cars are all the rage nowadays. Even governments are getting in on the action, working on relevant regulation and pledging to support development of the field or to encourage more driverless vehicles on their roads. But is driverless and self-driving really the  only  way to go? Maybe not. Chinese engineers have developed a system for reading brain signals and translating them into car movements. In short,  mind-controlled cars. Engineers from  Nankai University , located in China’s north-east port city of Tianjin, have created a headset consisting of 16 sensors that capture EEG (electroencephalogram) signals from the driver’s brain. They then created computer software that will allow the brain signal-reading equipment to control the car going forward, backwards, coming to a stop, and both locking and unlocking the vehicle. The core of the whole system is processing of the ...

Canadian researchers have developed what they are claiming is the world's first holographic flexible smartphone, with a bendable display that allows multiple people looking at the device to see different 3D images depending on their perspective. To view the device, called Holoflex, you don't need those dumb plastic glasses you have to wear in the cinema to watch 3D movies, and it doesn't employ head tracking to tailor the appearance to the viewer, as seen in devices like the newer Nintendo 3DS. Instead, the smartphone sports a Full HD LED display with 1,920 x 1,080 resolution – albeit one that's flexible, as you can see in the  video  below. So how does it actually work? Well, when the device displays images, it renders them into 12-pixel wide circular blocks. Over the top of the display is a thin 3D-printed microlens array, consisting of over 16,000 fisheye lenses. When the pixel blocks are viewed through the lens array, it makes the images look 3D to the viewer...

Scientists at the University of Southampton have made a major step forward in the development of digital data storage that is capable of surviving for billions of years. Using nanostructured glass, scientists from the University’s  Optoelectronics Research Centre  (ORC) have developed the recording and retrieval processes of five dimensional (5D) digital data by femtosecond laser writing. The storage allows unprecedented properties including 360 TB/disc data capacity, thermal stability up to 1,000°C and virtually unlimited lifetime at room temperature (13.8 billion years at 190°C ) opening a new era of eternal data archiving. As a very stable and safe form of portable memory, the technology could be highly useful for organisations with big archives, such as national archives, museums and libraries, to preserve their information and records. The technology was first experimentally demonstrated in 2013 when a 300 kb digital copy of a text file was successfully ...