Daily Tech News

Harvard engineers have come up with a robot octopus that is made entirely of soft materials, is autonomous, and requires no tether to operate. The Octobot combines 3D printing, mechanical engineering, and microfluidics to create what could be the first in a new generation of soft, autonomous machines. If you're going to make a  soft robot , you could do worse than choose an octopus as inspiration. The most intelligent of the molluscs and one of the most advanced invertebrates, its dexterity and ability to manipulate are all combined with a body completely without hard parts save for its beak, which robots don't need. This makes it an ideal model for soft robots that strive to go beyond  mechanical worms , but there's more to making a soft robot than choosing an animal to mimic. The current generation of soft robots are limited in that they aren't entirely soft. Many of them include hard components, such as  heating wires , batteries, and circuit boards for c...

China  has started  a test with a possibly revolutionary straddling bus, also known as  the Transit Elevated Bus. The basic idea is that the vehicle straddles multiple lanes of traffic, moving over cars without any worries about traffic jams or other delays. The test track is 300 meters long, from a factory building to an elevated station. The track is located in the great beach town of Beidaihe , Qinhuangdao City, in Hebei Province. The fully electric test vehicle is called TEB-1, 巴铁1号 in Chinese, best translated as ‘Rail Bus Number 1’. It measures 22 meters long, 7.8 meters wide, and 4.8 meters high. The passenger deck has space for 300 people; 245 standing and 55 seated. The height of the ‘tunnel’ under the bus is two meters, and it straddles two lanes. There are traffic lights on each side. The eventual production vehicles will be much bigger, able to straddle four lanes and to carry 1200 passengers. The test vehicle is piloted but the real thing will be aut...

Small Intro About Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Based on an original new story by J.K. Rowling, Jack Thorne and John Tiffany, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is a new play by Jack Thorne. It is the eighth story in the Harry Potter series and the first official Harry Potter story to be presented on stage. It was always difficult being Harry Potter and it isn’t much easier now that he is an overworked employee of the Ministry of Magic, a husband and father of three school-age children. While Harry grapples with the past that refuses to stay where it belongs, his youngest son Albus must struggle with the weight of a family legacy he never wanted. As past and present fuse ominously, both father and son learn the uncomfortable truth: sometimes, darkness comes from unexpected places. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is one play presented in two Parts, which are intended to be seen in order on the same day (matinee and evening) or on two consecutive evenings. ...

MAJOR BREAKTHROUGH? AI has been making great strides in the past few years, beating humans at our  own game , as well as augmenting and even replacing human controlled systems. However, some are still not impressed with these developments and feel more should be done. Such is the view of Professor Alexi Samsonovich, who announced that Russia “is on the verge” of a  major AI milestone —robots that can feel human emotion! The announcement was made during the 2016 Annual International Conference on Biologically Inspired Cognitive Architectures (BICA) in New York City. Specifically, Samsonovich pointed to free thinking machines capable of feeling and understanding human emotions, understanding narratives and thinking in those narratives, as well as being capable to actively learn on their own. However, Samsonovich did not go into the specifics of the Russian AI advances, merely saying that the breakthrough will come in several years ...

AeroMobil  unveiled its latest version of its (rather remarkably) futuristic vehicle, which is designed to be both driven on the road and flown through the air. Yes, that’s right—a flying car. The  AeroMobil 3.0  is one of several new experimental prototypes that the company hopes to launch by the end of the year. The current prototypes are all two-seated vehicles, but it could undergo some changes and may be able to quickly accommodate more passengers, as the AeroMobil 3.0 is only the “first product in a series of  innovative vehicles ,” according its CEO Juraj Vaculik. The AeroMobil team says their vehicles are not frivolous or unrealistic fabrications, but assert that it can do far more than cut commuters’ travel time. Most notably, it could be used by first responders and law enforcement in areas with poor road infrastructure. The company plans to commercialize the AeroMobil 3.0 car by 2017. Source: Inhabitat

Dear friends,Let me present to you an excellent Hindi Image Editor app made by a few friends. They are the same Android developer team from Thrissur,Kerala namely ‘Four Big Brothers’ who developed the application WhatsTools last year and received huge media attention. Click Here To Download From Play Store Main Features Of this App 200+ Downloadable Hindi And English Fonts Pick Images from your Album to Generate Trolls and Greetings 5 Greetings Templates  Collection of Stickers, Memes, Clip arts, Frames Can draw your own pencil sketch Easy share in WhatsApp, Facebook, email, and other installed apps Share your trolls and greetings as public Mark your favorite trolls and greetings Water mark option Adjust text color and size Easily create complex Trolls and Greetings Move Images, captions anywhere you want and add your own Image Cropping Choose background as Patterns Add and adjust color of borders for texts  SEARCH / Filter – you can find y...

Engineers from South Korea developed very thin, flexible solar cells that can wrap around an average pencil.  Photovoltaics  like this could be used to power wearable electronics such as fitness trackers and similar products. The photovoltaic cell they created is 1 micrometer thick, or just about a millionth of a meter. It is thinner than the average human hair. The engineers from the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology in South Korea used the semiconductor  gallium arsenide . They directly stamped the cells into a flexible substrate without addition of any adhesive. It was then “cold welded” to the electrode on the substrate. Then the photoresist was removed to have direct metal to metal bond. The metal bottom also serves as a reflector for stray photons. Tests show that it is as efficient as thicker solar cells and that it could wrap around objects with radii up to 1.4 millimeters small, and are comparably less fragile. ...