Review » Green Power Island creates more land and energy

This Green Power Island is designed to combat two things that the Earth might be greatly lacking in the future: land and energy.

The architectural firm of Gottlieb Paludan from Copenhagen created a serious combination of eco-friendly power with the wind turbines near the shore, not to mention all of the solar panels taking up the landmass.

That’s pretty visible from this mock-up image, but what you don’t see is that the green space is for “biofuel crops”. Not only that, seawater is pumped into a lagoon-like reservoir, which is emptied by the turbine-powered pumps when it is low. These turbines also allow water to flow back into the reservoir during times when water is in demand.

I’m sure that you can tell that Green Power Island is nothing more than a concept for now, and it would probably take millions to make it a reality.

Still, if you had the money and the resources to create it, then you probably disprove the saying of “no man is an island”. Instead, you can say, “Dude, I’ve got biofuel crops and a bunch of renewable energy, and I am an island”.

Villainous masterminds, I would definitely try and put a pre-order for one of these. Just make certain that you have enough power for your deathtraps around the perimeter.

Review » The airport of 2050 could actually be more efficient

I think we all know that air travel is getting a little more uncomfortable every year, and I think we all know that is going to get worse.

In fact, a recent statistic has shown that it will increase from 6.5 million passengers per day to 44 million per day by the year 2050. Fortunately, aerospace giant EADS is teamed with a European tech consulting firm Altran to create a more efficient airport.

It was recently shown off at the Paris Air Show, and the video after the jump shows off the new system, the “friend-lean”. Yes, that seems to imply that we are leaning on each other, but this is not how they are hoping to resolve the coming problem of airport overcrowding.

The solution is re-creating airports and combining them with train stations. There is no more getting lost in between flights, as these miniature pods take passengers directly to the gate. Personalized schedules on mobile devices are also going to be big, and apparently, a passenger could arrive 10 to 15 minutes before the flight to the airport and get on board. I guess getting through airport security will be faster too.

In fact, there is even plans to have one of these mini-pods come to your house and take you to your plane. I suppose that we will see by the year 2050.

Review » Pedal Powered School Bus Ready to Combat Childhood Obesity

I believe that I have said it before, but children have all this energy that adults actually need. I figure that you might as well tap into that energy in this pedal powered school bus!

This bus, powered by Flintstones Kids technology, is made in the Netherlands by De Cafe Racer. It has room for about ten kids, and they will be put to work.

Oh man, this would solve so many problems with unruly kids on the schools bus! Just try and make those spitballs now, junior! Yeah, those kids should have both hands on the handlebars.

Of course, I think we all know that a pedal powered school bus might tire out most school children. Fortunately, there is an auxiliary electric motor for some power if needed. However, if you are the school bus driver, only use it in the case of an emergency!

Yeah, I’m not certain how practical this technology is either, especially if there is no roof on the bus. Still, I like the idea of using the energy of unruly children to power transportation to their school. Or does this seem like a violation of child labor laws? I suppose if the bus driver cracked a whip and yelled “faster”!

http://www.ohgizmo.com/2011/06/29/pedal-powered-school-bus-not-so-magic-now-huh-kids/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Ohgizmo+%28OhGizmo%21%29

Review » Shell to build massive floating juggernaut

So what do you do if you are Big Oil and need to get a little more oil before all the oil runs out? You build yourself the largest floating object in the seas!

This is the Prelude FLNG, and Shell Petroleum is building it off the coast of Australia, to be completed sometime in 2017. In case you are wondering about the materials that would be needed to build this, then let me start by telling you that it requires 260,000 tons of steel.

In comparison, the Sydney Harbor Bridge needed about one fourth that amount of steel to make. Dang. Just to let you know, the ship has a displacement of 600,000 tons.

Shell designed this vessel to sit above oceanic natural gas fields, and it can refine the gas and cool it down to -260 degrees Fahrenheit for storage. I wonder if other oil companies will be trying to get in on this type of technology.

In other words, we could be looking at an interesting future where Shell, Exxon, and other Big Oil companies will have their little islands floating around the sea. Just to let you know, Shell’s Prelude FLNG can withstand Category 5 cyclones, so you don’t have to worry about natural disasters flipping these things. At least I hope so.

http://dvice.com/archives/2011/05/shell-to-constr.php

Review » The Invisible iPhone prototype

Here’s some interesting App developed by Patrick Baudisch and his team of researchers at the Hasso-Lattner Institute.

As you can see from the video, they have figured out a way to make the iPhone invisible. Actually, they just figured out a way for the user to put the interface on a hand thanks to “an Xbox-like camera”. Special software is able to determine where the fingers are on the palm, and transmit the commands via WiFi radio.

You will notice that the video that the user in the video just touches her hand to shut the phone off. If you want to do something more complicated, that is possible, as Baudisch and his colleagues discovered how two-thirds of all iPhone users can find their apps on their palm.

I suppose that would be interesting if they get this off the ground, but I don’t see an invisible phone working very well, unless there is some invisible Bluetooth headset involved. Considering that most of the apps on the iPhone are pretty visual in nature, making them invisible seems like a bad idea.

In order to do this trick, the equipment is going to have to be a lot smaller. I can’t help but wonder what the future of this is. I hope I will get to see it for myself, not that I can see it now, of course.

Review » Ubiquitous iRemoTap is a Wi-Fi connected power strip

If you are like me, you have “that desk” in your house that is sort of the hub for digital information. On the desk is a laptop or desktop computer, and all kinds of accessories.

Chances are, all of these devices are plugged in to a power strip, and they are a source of great power consumption on your monthly electric bill. This power strip by Japan-based Ubiquitous is the iRemoTap, and it has a built-in Wi-Fi module.

The purpose of the Wi-Fi is so it can send information to connected devices in the household. The iRemoTap can automatically send out some sort of message like an email or tweet so you know how much energy that you are consuming.

In fact, you can program this thing for a preset level, so you can make energy goals and hopefully keep them. I guess you will have to know what levels your devices have, of course. I don’t really know that off the top of my head.

So is this the wave of the future? All of us knowing how much power we consume and making certain that we live up to it? Well, it is better than the model that most of us have, which is just use up power and then pay the bill.

http://www.crunchgear.com/2011/05/24/iremotap-power-strip-with-built-in-wi-fi-video/

Review » Ollie the robot comes in blimp form, with a child’s mentality

The other day, we reported on some telepresence robots that were essentially miniature blimps that fly around with someone’s head on it, and I equated the floating heads with something rather dystopian.

I now see a utopian age full of Ollie, a blimp who has been given the emotional range of a shy baby. There is a video after the jump, and you can see that Ollie is somewhat curious, and flaps its little fins when someone claps for it. It’s like a fish that has been given the ability to fly instead of swim, and breathe air, too.

It is an open source project that is designed by Parson’ grade Pritika Nilaratna, and it can be yours if you are willing to copy some code and assemble the lighter-than-air body.

Man, I tell you, if I knew anything about coding, and I had a bunch of helium filled apparatuses around, I would make a bunch of Ollies. Then I would have them float about the room, as if my room were one giant fish tank. If I had a tall ceiling, I would lay on my back and watch it like a mid-air aquarium.

Yeah, I think that Ollie is pretty cute. Maybe I don’t want my robots to have any more A.I. than this, but that’s just me.

Ollie from Pritika Nilaratna on Vimeo.

http://www.crunchgear.com/2011/05/25/ollie-the-socially-awkward-blimp-wants-to-be-your-friend/

Review » ITP Thesis shows that the touchscreen is not enough

The touchscreen has revolutionized the last decade, and it will continue to improve this decade. However, this ITP thesis by Michael Kneupfel for NYU’s design program has shown that the touchscreen could use a little more accessories.

There is a video after the jump so you can see what he has in mind. The one in the picture is for pulses, and I am not certain what to use that for. However, there are a few things that are pretty much self-explanatory.

For example, there are two types of pens, and one of them allows for some intriguing shapes like a traditional thick marker pen. The other is used for making some interesting shapes.

The most intriguing of them is this weird toy robot that moves its arm as the user brings his or her finger closer to it. It is the one at the end of the video, and I can’t help but wonder if some toy company is planning some new line of action figures because of it.

Whatever the case, I think it shows that having a touchscreen is only the beginning. That iDevice may think that it is all that, but after all this, it seems very incomplete.

Extending the Touchscreen – ITP Thesis Teaser from Michael Knuepfel on Vimeo.

http://gizmodo.com/5806045/here-are-a-bunch-of-ways-to-make-touchscreen-gaming-about-more-than-screen

Review » In the 1960s, the government had their own AT-AT

I’ve always wondered why in the world there isn’t a real-life walking vehicle like the AT-AT from The Empire Strikes Back. After all, what makes the wheel think its so great?

Well, it has been tried. Back in the 1960s, the U.S. Army worked with General Electric to create the Cybernetic Anthropomorphous Machine (CAM) to create a walking machine for rough terrain.

The purpose of the CAM was not to find the location of the hippies’ rebel base, but to go through swampland impassable to ordinary vehicles while carrying huge loads on its back. Perhaps this is designed for Vietnam?

Apparently, it didn’t quite work, as it was controlled by some hydraulic levers that matched the 11-foot-tall legs. The project was scrapped because the operator had trouble thinking about which lever to pull to move the proper leg. Think about it as a mechanical dog, but you have to think about which leg steps at what point in time. It did work, and was able to move at 35 miles per hour. Couldn’t we make it so some computer algorithm to control its forward and backward leg movement?

Well, if you want to see this thing, it is at a U.S. Army Transportation Museum at Fort Eustis. Before that, it was in a warehouse in Detroit, along with the landspeeder, speeder bike, and other abandoned projects that somehow predated Star Wars.

http://dvice.com/archives/2011/05/us-armys-had-a.php

Review » Disney’s Tactile Brush makes the user feel the film

I’m guessing that 3D is not good enough any more, as Disney is working on a process called Tactile Brush.

You might have seen this type of technology at Disney’s EPCOT center with their “Honey I Shrunk the Audience” presentation where little mice are supposedly going through the crowd, a trick done with airhoses under the seats.

The Tactile Brush uses 12 vibrating coils in the seats that create the sensation of things like speeding around a track or other sensations that you see in the image.

Disney demonstrated the Tactile Brush technology at the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Vancouver, and hope to bring it to amusement park rides and movie theaters. It certainly would take a lot of reconstruction to get every cinema on this track. Disney is even planning to use Tactile Brush in home theaters. but there is no word as to when it will be out.

I suppose that we are looking at an age where we have “The Feelies”. This is the types of motion pictures that are in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. In that novel, the characters put their fingers on a ball, and they could sense the characters in the film they were watching. They might as well put the sensory things under the seat.

http://www.ubergizmo.com/2011/05/disney-tactile-brush/

Review » ASUS shows off Padfone at Computex

It is a good time to be a tablet or smartphone right now, so I don’t see any reason why in the world someone couldn’t combine them. It looks like ASUS is doing that with the Padfone, and they showed it off at Computex Taipai in Taiwan.

As you can see, the Padfone tablet opens up in the back so the Padfone smartphone can nestle safely in the back. Not much else is known about this, but the smartphone should have a 3G connection.

Another feature is that the smartphone can charge itself inside the bigger battery in the tablet. Of course, I think we all know what we really want, which is data sync between the smartphone and the tablet.

After all, why have all that data in so many dang places? There is no point in doing that whole “oh, where did I put that document” game. Just put it all in one place by plugging the phone into the tablet, and you have your data in both places.

The ASUS Padfone is planned on being out some time around the holidays. I believe that the operating system is going to be Android, but who knows who the carrier is going to be.


http://www.crunchgear.com/2011/05/30/padfone-asus-officially-announces-its-android-tabletphone-combo-videos/

Review » This robot does windows, and runs on water

 

There’s nothing I like more than reporting on robots on this blog, and this one has is certainly has something unusual on two fronts.

First, it is can climb up walls, provided they are made of glass. It has suction cups, and they could take away all window washing jobs permanently. No more of those guys hanging off the sides of tall buildings.

Unfortunately, the suction cups won’t keep the robot affixed to the side of a glass building, not by themselves anyway. Here’s where it gets interesting. This robot has a vacuum suction that is generated by water. Yes, this robot can run on water. Not only that, the excess water is squirted out, which will help wash the windows.

Talk about killing two birds with one stone! Another thing that makes this robot nifty is that it is modeled after a gecko. Too bad it does require a flexible pipe in order to work, but the water tank is only so large, really.

Well, this water-powered robo gecko is under development from researchers at Zhejiang University in China, and there is no word if this will ever go past the experimental stage. So if you work on the top of a tall building, and you see a robotic gecko washing your window, do not be alarmed.

http://www.ubergizmo.com/2011/05/window-washing-gecko-inspired-robot/

Review » BodyGuard electric gauntlet delivers a 500,000 volt handshake

This is the BodyGuard, an electro-gauntlet, which is actually the best description of this device that I know.

The BodyGuard has some other features, like a laser pointer, video camera, and a hefty taser of with 500,000 volts. I suppose that one could classify it as a weapon, and I suppose that it is much less violent than a gun. I don’t know, but 500,000 volts sounds pretty harmful, however, I heard that it is not the volts, but the amps. However, since this thing has a video camera, you can watch the victim get some serious shock therapy.

The gauntlet also has a hard outer shell, which means this device is a good defense as well as an offense. It definitely looks like something Batman would wear if he didn’t keep all of his contraptions on his belt. It even has some pointy things on it.

I seem to recall that the villain from the James Bond film Die Another Day wore one of these and shocked the heck out of 007 and Halle Berry. By the way, the shock-glove served as his undoing at the end of the film. Hopefully I didn’t spoil the end of that film. Speaking of films, this device is designed by a cameraman and friend of Kevin Costner.

Well, I’m not certain if this electric gauntlet will be available to the general public, and I don’t have a price. I just hope I’m never on the receiving end of this thing.

http://www.crunchgear.com/2011/05/31/this-stun-gun-equipped-armored-glove-is-worthy-of-judge-dredd/

REVIEW >> Interactive Story Telling Mirror

It seems like I am always reporting on how the mirrors of the future will be touch-interactive. This Through the Looking Glass mirror takes it one step further.

Designed by Romy van den Broek, this mirror allows children to experience an interactive fairy tale. If you have ever seen one of those interactive storybook iPad apps, then I am guessing that the experience is going to be quite similar.

Right now, they have it set up for Hansel and Gretel, and I am told that two kids can interact with the mirror at the same time. I wonder if they can take advantage of the mirror’s reflective surface, which would be the only difference between this an some sort of storybook app or interactive website.

The technology is done with a highly reflective LCD touchscreen display, and I suppose the idea is to imitate the magical mirrors that are seen in many stories. For example, Harry Potter’s Mirror of Erised, which I just realized is “desire” spelled backwards.

Right now, this is just concept technology, and I’m not certain whether parents would justify the purchase of one of these techno-magical mirrors for their own children. Perhaps one day we will live in an age where all mirrors will be like tablet PCs, and the functions of the Through the Looking Glass mirror will be just another App.

REVIEW >> We have a hoverbike!

I think that Hollywood has taught us that in the future, everything that is has wheels will be hovering. Think of any episode of The Jetsons, or the Back to the Future II hoverboards.

An Australian inventor named Chris Malloy has figured out how to build a hoverbike, using nothing but parts from motorcycles. These propellers are powered by a 1,170-cc engine for 107 horsepower, with a 231-pound thrust-to-weight ratio.

According to my Source, he should be able to get this guy flying at 10,000 feet, at a speed of 173 mph. As of now, the fuel tank is good for 92 miles of cruising at 92 miles per hour.

So far, this is only a prototype, and the inventor is looking for some funding to get his invention off the ground. Okay, that was a terrible joke, but you will have to agree that this thing doesn’t look very safe in its present form. By the way, you won’t need a pilot’s license to fly one of these, as it is classified as an ultralight.

Still, I’m sure that it will take a while before you or I will be able to fly one of these hoverbikes. Ever since the Jet Moto game, I have wanted to ride something like this.

http://www.wired.com/autopia/2011/06/die-smiling-on-this-hoverbike/

REVIEW >> In the future, there could be moving train stations

If there is one thing that can make trains more efficient, it is less stops. Unfortunately, people have to get on and off the train, but what if the stations themselves were moving, and all the train would have to do is slow down in order to board and unboard?

You can watch a video of how it would work after the jump. It is computer-generated, but I would imagine that you could probably construct an equally good presentation if you have a model railroad.

Just make a circular or oval set of tracks that is next to a longer track. The train on the smaller length of track passes the one on the longer one, which doesn’t stop for boarding. Here’s the tricky part: somehow, the doors of the two trains lock together and the people get on and off.

Granted, there would be a limited amount of time for the passenger exchange. I would imagine that if you missed your stop, you could always catch the next one, but you would have to catch a train going in the other direction. Think of it like missing a freeway exit.

I suppose that if we have a train system that encompasses the world, like the type seen in the film 2046, this is the most efficient system of getting on and off of it.

Moving Platforms from Priestmangoode on Vimeo.

http://dvice.com/archives/2011/06/train-stations.php

REVIEW >> New Batmobile design is earth-friendly, designed by a legend

 

We have seen a lot of Batmobiles driven by the caped crusader in the movies, television, and comic books. Most of them have interesting gadgets, and many are not grounded in reality. Think about the Batmobile that drove up the wall in Batman Forever.

Some people don’t like the Humvee look in the latest Batman films, and Gordon Murray, legendary Formula One car designer, created this one. As far as I know, it won’t be used in the new Batman film coming next summer, but designed for a Batman Live World Arena Tour in the United Kingdom. You can see a video of it after the jump.

Murray designed this Batmobile with elements that may actually exist in the next 15 to 20 years. For example, it has a hydrogen-powered engine that produces a by-product of water. Not only is the Batmobile eco-friendly, but it has a “breathable” carbon fiber, another interesting technology.

Then there is the neat features like the “virtual wheels” with the LED lights that create an interesting effect. Hopefully, the Batmobile will not lose one of these wheels. That’s a reference to the “Jingle Bells, Batman smells” song, in case you missed it.

If you want to see this new Batmobile for yourself, follow the tour in the United Kingdom, and it will soon be coming to the United States.