A little while back we had a pretty lively discussion about robots on our roads, but, even with the rapidly approaching technology, you still have a little time before the mass adoption of robotic vehicles makes every trip a chance to catch up on your sleep, but, near term, there may be some intermediate steps in the process and I think transponders will be among them. Just … [Read more...]

When you hear the word, robot, what springs to mind? It’s often some movie robot with a semi humanoid appearance or it could be one of the movie androids that look just like a human, the Terminator or Data from Star Trek, but in reality, robots don’t need any humanoid appearance, no arms and legs or verbal communication, a robot is just a complex machine, performing certain … [Read more...]

About a week ago, Aerofex put out an update about the latest developments and test flight of their hovercraft. It's a single seater with a motorcycle like rider position and, from the video, it definitely shows potential. I watched the videos and looked at the photos and drawings on their website and it's hard to draw any conclusions, yet. These days, it isn't hard to take … [Read more...]

The choice is simple, rear view mirrors are either flat or wide angle, but we're all familiar with the distorted image in the wide angle versions, those curved mirrors bend everything onto the convex surface. Then along comes Drexel University mathematics professor Dr. R. Andrew Hicks, who came up with an algorithm to precisely control the angle of light bouncing off of his … [Read more...]

Old school machinists, listen up, a newly developed technique for creating ceramic molds to a foundry-ready state for investment casting of intricate metal parts may disrupt the current process in a big way. We're confident that our approach can lower costs by at least 25 percent and reduce the number of unusable waste parts by more than 90 percent, while eliminating 100 … [Read more...]