David Szondy

Orbital Sciences Corporation’s Antares rocket lifted off Sunday at 5:00 PM EDT (21:00 GMT) from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport Pad-0A at NASA”s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. The launch was the first from the pad at Wallops and also the first flight of Antares, which carried a "mass simulated payload" equivalent to the mass of a spacecraft into Earth orbit.  Read More

The arrest of one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects was carried out, in part, with the help of a remote controlled robot. Such an operation highlights the growing uses of unmanned ground vehicles (UGV) in anti-terrorist and other operations. Northrop Grumman Corporation’s CUTLASS robot, developed by its division in Coventry, U.K. is designed to provide remote handling and surveillance of hazardous threats and is intended to replace British Army’s Wheelbarrow robot for bomb disposal.  Read More

If you look up at a power line in a few years and see something skittering along the wires, it (hopefully) won't be a mutant crab monster, but a powerline inspection robot costing less than US$1,000. A prototype of such a robot, called SkySweeper, was presented this month at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) Jacobs School of Engineering's Research Expo. The robot was built with off-the-shelf electronics and plastic parts printed on an inexpensive 3D printer.  Read More

With government encouragement, London is seeing more cyclists taking to the road, which is great for the environment and public health. Unfortunately, London’s roads were built for oxcarts, not bicycles, and certainly not cyclists and lorries at the same time. Sat nav company Navevo, in association with Transport for London (TLC), is trying to make this combination a bit safer with Navevo’s ProNav HGV Cyclist Alert software, which provides visual and audible warnings of junctions and stretches of road with heavy cycle traffic.  Read More

With baristas able to draw masterpieces in a macchiato, the days when going out for a coffee meant a cup of something scorched in an urn seem long gone. Unfortunately, if your tastes run more toward brewed coffee rather than a double decaf or skinny latte, you’re still likely to be pointed to a vacuum-flask at the end of the counter. Alpha Dominche’s Steampunk Coffee and Tea Brewer aims to redress the balance of power by asking the espresso machine to make room for a computerized coffee maker that gives baristas the power to replicate a wide variety of brewing methods.  Read More

Whichever marketing genius came up with the Apple catchphrase, "There's an app for that," has a lot to answer for – or brag about. It's heard so often these days that it’s become a cliché. Touch Bionic’s i-limb ultra revolution robotic artificial hand gives yet another reason to repeat the phrase. It’s linked to a smartphone app, which allows for greater control of the hand, including the ability to program it to suit the wearer’s personal needs.  Read More

With their ability to pick out humans by their heat signatures, long-wave infrared (LWIR) thermal imaging cameras are a valuable asset for soldiers – and alien predators. Unfortunately, non-alien built ones are expensive and so large that they need to be mounted on vehicles. In an effort to make a LWIR camera cheap and small enough for an individual soldier to carry, DARPA is working on a five-micron camera that offers a reduced size without sacrificing performance.  Read More

NASA has announced that the Kepler space probe has discovered two planetary systems that include the smallest planets yet found that lie in the "habitable zone." The systems include three super-Earth size planets, with one of them being a habitable-zone exoplanet that is the closest in size to Earth yet discovered.  Read More