Epson builds lightest, smallest micro-flying robot
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EPSON HAS ANNOUNCED that it has developed a successor to the FR  the world&#39;s smallest and lightest micro-flying robot. The FR-II uses micromechatronics technology, and features Bluetooth wireless control and independent flight. It&#39;ll go on show at the ...
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'Sh*t, I've dropped the Annapolis football team down a drain' This weekend, the city of Atlanta, Georgia will play host to an international soccer contest, in which all the players will be robots. So far, so yawnworthy - but wait. These droid sportsmen - unlike the ordinary, everyday mechanoid ballplayer - will be nanoscale ones, each smaller than an amoeba.â¦
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A tiny generator that harnesses vibrations to produce power has been created by British scientists.
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The blueprint for a tiny, ultra-rugged mechanical computer has been inspired by ideas put forward 200 years ago.
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The little diagnostic test kit maker that could.
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TOKYO - Seiko Epson Corp. is developing a flying robot that looks like a miniature helicopter and is about the size of a giant bug...
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In photo land, a new gizmo extreme white balancing than the traditional white paper. David Becker's PMA coverage continues in Gadget Lab.
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One nanotechnology researcher said supercomputers small enough to fit into the palm of your hand are only 10 or 15 years away."If things continue to go the way they have been in the past few decades, then it's 10 years," said Michael Zaiser, a professor and researcher at the University of Edinburgh School of Engineering and Electronics. "The human brain is very good at working on microprocessor problems, so I think we are close -- 10 years, maybe 15."Zaiser's research into nanowires should help move that timeline along.For the last five years, he has been studying how tiny wires -- 1,000 times thinner than a human hair -- behave when manipulated. He explained that each such miniscule wire tends to behave differently when put under the same amount of pressure. Therefore, it has been impossible to line them up close to each other in tiny microprocessors in a production atmosphere.Zaiser said he's now figured out how to make the wires behave uniformly. He separates the interior material of the wire into distinct groups so the wire can't react as a whole. That makes it much easier to control. "It's like crowd control," he added. "If they can all go one way, you have a big mess."These nanowires will go inside microprocessors that could, in turn, go inside PCs, laptops, cell phones, or even supercomputers. And the smaller the wires, the smaller the chip can be.Shrinking down the microprocessors is a big step toward shrinking down computers.Zaiser was quick to point out that his nanowire discovery won't immediately lead to the development of supercomputers that can fit in the palm of a hand or even shrink down to the size of a book of matches. In addition to smaller microprocessors, engineers will need to deal with thermal fluctuations that erupt at that size.But he does humbly admit that taming nanowires is a big step toward the goal of small supercomputers."This will enable chips to become much smaller," he said. "Think 10 years back. You could hold [a cell phone] the size of a telephone receiver and it didn't work so well. Today, you can fit what is a powerful computer onto a small device."Charles King, an analyst at Pund-IT in Hayward, Calif., said that with advances like nanowire technology continuing to come along, Zaiser's predictions for tiny supercomputers may not be so far off. And that will be a huge step for the industry, considering that not so long ago supercomputers filled up enormous rooms or even entire buildings."Actually, what he's saying is not crazy," said King. "The wire problem was an important one. Solving that particular issue, one so fundamental, needed to be done. If he can solve that, a lot of people, a lot of companies, will appreciate that. The industry is aligning in a direction where we're going to be seeing continuing improvements and developments."Jim McGregor, an analyst at In-Stat in Scottsdale, Ariz., said he definitely can see palm-size supercomputers coming out within 10 to 15 years, but he thinks they'll be based on the basic silicon technology used today. He added that the next generation of tiny supercomputers -- made with carbon nanotubes and nanowires -- may be as far off as another 30 to 40 years, though."You know, everybody says we'll get to a physical limit but every time we think we're going to hit it, we overcome it," said McGregor. "They end up being speed bumps instead of road blocks."King added that over the last 10 or 20 years, technology advancements have put smaller and more powerful computers into the hands of children and researchers alike. That leads him to believe that the shrinking of supercomputers is just ahead of us."We're at the beginning of some very exciting times in supercomputing," he said.Computerworld is an InfoWorld affiliate
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With Pixar style desk lamps, cyber-teddies, and droid flowers An MIT doctoral candidate has produced a robotic desk lamp, though its maker prefers to call it a "collaborative lighting assistant", or even "non-anthropomorphic robotic platform".â¦
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The 'Blue Sky' ThinkCentre A61e is small, light, quiet, and energy-efficient.
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Company is working on flexible display technologies.
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Science & environment: The robot devised by Ivan Bowman makes remote working and interacting with his colleagues much easier, says Matt Walcoff.
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BURLINGTON - Forget R2D2. The next frontier in robotics is a miniature tank that borrows some of the technology behind military bomb-defusing robots - to eject rotting foliage from your gutters.
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Seiko Epson Corp. announced Wednesday it had developed the world&#39;s lightest flying microrobot, with a weight of just 8.6 grams without its battery, or 12.3 grams with the battery installed.
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Toshiba's new projector brings home theater to tiny living rooms. In Gear Factor.
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Avago Technologies, today announced a new series of small form factor  (SFF) optical mouse sensors with an integrated chip-on-board (COB) LED  illuminated optical navigation system that is the thinnest in the  industry.
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For several years people have been talking about the idea of miniaturizing a projector so that it&#39;s small enough to fit inside a cell phone or digital camera. Now it&#39;s finally been done, and 3M is demonstrating a prototype of such a device at this year&#39;s International Consumer Electronics Show.The mobile projector is about a centimeter thick and about 4 centimeters tall by 3 centimeters wide -- small enough to fit inside portable devices like cell phones, PDAs, or a digital still camera, said Todd Rutherford, product development specialist with 3M&#39;s optical systems division.It uses an LED as the light source and can project a VGA resolution (640 pixels by 480 pixels) image through a lens that&#39;s about a centimeter in diameter.3M is demonstrating the projector at CES built into a small handheld device that runs video from flash memory. The image projected onto walls or other light surfaces was good enough and easy enough to see over a distance of about half a meter, although it suffered over greater distances due to the bright lights of the show floor.The demo attracted a lot of attention and a constant stream of show attendees, many of whom had badges identifying them as employees of mobile phone makers or network operators.3M is already working with companies interested in embedding the projector in devices, and the first products should be out in early 2008, said Rutherford. He wouldn&#39;t identify the companies or the applications but said that they are mobile consumer electronics products.