A new bomb disposal robot developed at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) is blurring the line between advanced prosthetics and robotics. Rather than building arms and hands from scratch specifically for the robot, the Bimanual Dexterous Robotics Platform (BDRP) is equipped with artificial limbs designed for amputees. The combination is relatively unique, and provided the team with a secondary use for the Modular Prosthetic Limb (MPL) it developed for the DARPA Revolutionizing Prosthetics program.  Read More

With all the different makes and models of smartphones available, manufacturers are always looking for something to make their handsets stand out. China’s Huawei chose size as its differentiating factor at CES in 2012 when it unveiled the Ascend P1 S, touting it as the world’s slimmest smartphone. The company is at it again with its new Ascend P6, which it is calling, you guessed it, “the world’s slimmest smartphone.”  Read More

On Monday at 12:25 GMT, the European Space Agency (ESA) executed final shutdown on the Herschel space telescope after shooting it into solar orbit. This shutdown marks the end of Herschel’s successful four-year mission of deep space observation, which was terminated when it ran out of liquid helium in April. Without liquid helium to cool its super-sensitive infrared instrument, Herschel was unable to continue its mission, but it was otherwise fully functional, so ESA took the opportunity to use the probe to carry out technical tests that couldn't be done earlier.  Read More

What could be nicer than a picnic in a pleasant country field, a rotisserie chicken, a loaf of oven-hot bread and a nice bottle of wine? That is, provided you don't forget the corkscrew. This week, Amorim, the world’s largest manufacturer of cork stoppers, and O-I, the world's largest glass container manufacturer, made this nightmare scenario a little less likely by unveiling their Helix cork and bottle that are designed so that the cork can be removed with a simple twist of the wrist.  Read More

Anyone with a propensity to misplace keys knows how irritating it is to look for them when you are running late. But help is at hand for those people with a Bluetooth-enabled smartphone that can connect to tracking devices such as Button TrackR, a coin-shaped little number currently fundraising on Indiegogo. One of the innovations that Button TrackR introduces to this growing market niche is crowd sourced tracking that helps extend the search party.  Read More

Although everyone knows of the dangers of brain injuries, it’s often difficult to tell if such an injury has taken place. There are certainly cases in which athletes receive concussions, yet say that they feel fine when asked. That’s why Reebok and flexible electronics developer MC10 have created the CheckLight skull cap. It lets athletes and coaches know when a potentially brain-damaging impact has been delivered to its wearer’s head.  Read More

The octopus is a natural escape artist. It can squeeze its soft body into impossibly tight spaces and often baffles aquarium workers with its ability to break out of tanks. These abilities could be very useful in an underwater robot, which is why the OCTOPUS Project, a consortium of European robotics labs, is attempting to reverse engineer it in all its tentacled glory. Now researchers from the Foundation for Research and Technology (FORTH), in Hellas, Greece are learning how the robot might use its tentacles to swim.  Read More

It must be hard for university professors ... they tell their students to shout out if they don’t understand what’s being said in a lecture, yet few students are likely to feel comfortable raising their hand in front of the class and saying “I don’t get it.” Scientists at Spain’s la Universidad Carlos III de Madrid are hoping to address that situation, with a set of augmented reality glasses that let profs see who’s “not getting it,” without those students having to say so verbally.  Read More