DARPA has selected Northrop Grumman and the University of Central Florida to develop a prototype augmented reality headset embedded with an AI assistant to help train rotorcraft pilots to deal with unexpected tasks and emergencies. One of the challenges of being a military pilot is that the job requires a lot of multitasking and a very high level of continuous […]

There are many parts of the world which lack infrastructure, but that get a lot of sunlight … which makes buildings uncomfortably hot. A new system could help, as it uses a combination of sunlight and salt water – but no electricity – to produce a cooling effect. Currently being developed at Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah University of Science and […]

According to Israeli startup Tevel Aerobotics, there is a severe shortage of workers available to pick fruit at orchards. That’s why the company is developing an alternative, in the form of autonomous flying drones that do the job. Each of the system’s FAR (Flying Autonomous Robots) units consists of a wheeled base vehicle which travels up and down the rows […]

  Although solar-powered devices are now fairly common, Swedish scientists have created something a little different. They’ve built tiny “metavehicles” that are mechanically propelled and guided via waves of light. Led by Prof. Mikael Käll and former PhD student Daniel Andrén, a team at the Chalmers University of Technology constructed the vehicles by coating microscopic particles with what are known […]

Superconducting quantum computers are huge and incredibly finicky machines at this point. They need to be isolated from anything that might knock an electron’s spin off and ruin a calculation. That includes mechanical isolation, in extreme vacuum chambers, where only a few molecules might remain in a cubic meter or two of space. It includes electromagnetic forces – IBM, for […]

Having flexed its muscles in predicting kidney injury, toppling Go champions and solving 50-year-old science problems, artificial intelligence company DeepMind is now dipping its toes in weather forecasting. The company’s latest tool is designed to predict oncoming precipitation through what’s known as nowcasting, and the vast majority of meteorologists found it to be more accurate than current methods in early […]

While we may think of blue jeans as kind of earthy, basic clothing, the process by which they’re dyed is definitely not eco-friendly. That may soon no longer be the case, however, thanks to the development of a new coloration technique. Ordinarily in the dying of jeans, either natural or (more commonly) synthetic indigo pigment is mixed with water, in […]

There are many parts of the world which lack infrastructure, but that get a lot of sunlight … which makes buildings uncomfortably hot. A new system could help, as it uses a combination of sunlight and salt water – but no electricity – to produce a cooling effect. Currently being developed at Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah University of Science and […]

3D printers may allow individuals or small companies to produce prototypes, but the machines aren’t really suited to mass production. That’s where the Mayku Multiplier is intended to come in – it’s billed as being the world’s first desktop pressure former. Users start by loading a sheet of heat-moldable material into the Multiplier, after which they place the item to […]

Elbit Systems has developed a new AI-powered rifle scope called the Assault Rifle Combat Application System (ARCAS) that turns a soldier’s assault rifle into a portable combat information center, as well as allowing the users to shoot around corners. There was a time when the most high-tech data system on a rifle was a pair of iron sights that let […]