Military Researchers Design Real-life 'Transformer' Plane

UK aerospace and defense contractor BAE Systems have taken the wraps off several concepts it envisions as possible tools for the military in the decades to come — and if these designs are any guide, future battlefields are going to look like the set of a science fiction movie.

The most interesting of the concepts is called the Transformer, a stealth aircraft that's actually composed of three airplanes — a large, diamond-shaped model, and two smaller flanking planes.

The Transformer is theoretically capable of longer flights that conserve fuel by reducing overall aerodynamic drag.

Right now, the most common aerial refueling techniques are the probe-and-drogue and the boom method, both of which require the delicate mid-air synchronization of separate aircraft. The Transformer would conceivably make the prospect of longer missions easier by requiring fewer mid-air fueling runs.

Alongside the Transformer, the firm also unveiled several other concept vehicles, including a self-healing aircraft called the Survivor (see video above). This plane repairs its exterior in mid-flight using a lightweight adhesive fluid within a pattern of carbon nanotubes.

BAE's concept videos also include an aircraft capable of shooting a concentrated energy beam to disable missiles as well as an aircraft (see video below) with the ability to fabricate and deploy UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) using on-board 3D printers.

But while BAE's advanced research group is known for coming up with fascinating innovations, the company is careful to mention that the concepts are mere predictions of what might be possible by 2040.

"[W]e don't know exactly what sorts of aircraft technologies will be used in 2040 with any certainty," said Nick Colosimo, an engineering manager from BAE's R&D team, in a statement. "But it's great to be able to show the public some concepts that might be possible through projecting where today’s technology could get to."

Image:youtube BAE SYSTEM

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Bionic Kangaroo Hops Into the Future of Robotics

Finally, a robot that successfully imitates a living thing without making you think of human extinction scenarios from The Terminator.

Germany-based Festo has unveiled its latest creation, the Bionic Kangaroo, a hopping robot fashioned in the image of a real kangaroo.

Weighing just over 15 pounds and standing 39 inches tall, the robot has the ability to jump forward at lengths of about two-and-a-half feet and has a vertical leap of a about one-and-a-half feet.

With an outer shell designed to mimic the form of a kangaroo, from its tiny front paws down to its curved tail, the robot jumps using pneumatic springs working in conjunction with sensors in its heels and main body. When it lands, it uses the recovered energy stored during leaps for its next jump.

The Bionic Kangaroo has two motors for the hips, one motor for the tail and, instead of a pouch, the robot's stomach area contains a pressure accumulator.

The robot's movements can be controlled through a user's wireless armband. Using various arm motions, the wearer can direct the Bionic Kangaroo to hop forward or turn in small circles to change its direction.

Although the company has not offered any specific uses or commercial release details for the robot at present, the Bionic Kangaroo represents its latest successful attempt to robotically mimic the look and locomotion of a living creature.

This time last year, the company took the wraps off a flying robot called the BionicOpter, a tiny drone with the appearance and hovering movements of a real dragonfly. 

IMAGE: FESTO

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Renault Concept Car Packs a Flying Drone in Its Roof

Renault's new concept car, the Kwid, is chock-full of futuristic ideas, including a flying quadrocopter drone that would launch from the car's roof.

The "flying companion," as Renault calls it, could be controlled manually (from a tablet on the car's dashboard) or fly autonomously in order to warn about traffic jams and other problems on the road ahead. It could also relay live video back to the car.

Kwid, first shown at the 2014 New Dehli Auto Expo, is a small SUV vehicle with a very modern design, which Renault thinks would fit in great into India's roads.

Its little flying buddy is not the only fun thing about the Kwid, though. The car's interior is unapologetically modern, with a centrally positioned wheel and a tablet on the left. Renault envisions a front-wheel drive and a 1.2-liter turbocharged engine for Kwid, but there's no word on when such a vehicle could actually hit the market.

Check out an additional video showing Kwid's flying drone in more detail, below.

Image: Renualt

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Self-Assembling Cubes Could Be First Step Toward Real Transformers

As the approach toward robotics in the science community has evolved over time, researchers are finding ever-more-clever ways to manipulate the physical structures and unique locomotive abilities of artificially intelligent constructs.

One particularly revolutionary new take on the modern robot is called the M-Block, a modular robot in the shape of a cube that works with an array of identical blocks to build ever-changing structures in any number of shapes.

Developed by John Romanishin, a research scientist at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab, along with several colleagues, each M-Block moves thanks to an internal flywheel that can turn at up to 20,000 revolutions per minute. Once the flywheel stops in a pre-programmed direction, the momentum of the shift moves the block in that direction.

Because the M-Block has no outside moving parts, its internal locomotive dynamic makes the robot appear as if it’s being pushed by some invisible force.

On the M-Block’s exterior are a series of magnets, eight on each side of the cube, and a cylindrical magnet on each edge. This series of magnets allow each block to easily attach itself to another, regardless of the vertical or horizontal position of the blocks.

The combination of the flywheel-generated motion along with the magnetic connections allows sets of M-Blocks to constantly transform into a wide array of shapes of varying height and intricacy.

In the future, the team envisions significantly smaller versions of the self-assembling blocks that would work together so seamlessly that to the naked eye the collection of miniature blocks would look like liquid steel.


Until then, the team is working on building 100 hundred of the M-Blocks to explore the broader possibilities of how the current version of the robots can be used outside of the lab.

Image: MIT

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Samsung's 2014 Smart TVs will let you Control Videos by Pointing your Finger

Samsung's 2014 smart TV lineup may revolve around impressive-looking hardware, but the Korean tech giant has revealed that interface improvements will also play an important role. Its new TVs will support finger gestures that should be more intuitive than the whole-hand commands of this year's models; you can stop a movie with a spinning motion, for instance. Voice control will also be more powerful. It's at last possible to change channels or launch apps with a single step, and search results appear in one place. While the gesture and voice upgrades may not be revolutions, they'll likely be welcome to viewers frustrated with unwieldy TV software.

“Samsung’s 2014 Smart TV models deliver significantly improved voice interaction and motion control features so that our consumers will be able to enjoy our Smart TV more intuitively,” said Kyungshik Lee, Senior Vice President of the Service Strategy Team of Visual Display Business, Samsung Electronics. “We will continue to develop content that integrates voice and motion recognition for added convenience.”

With the 2014 Smart TV, finding content is easier than ever. Users can change the channel in one step – by simply saying the channel number. They can even open a website or app using shortcuts. For reference, 2013 models require two steps to change TV channels: ‘Channel Change’ and ‘Channel Number’

The voice search feature is also more convenient to use, letting users find all content results in one place.

Further, when a consumer uses voice interaction to search for daily living information such as weather, stocks and sports while watching TV, a pop-up window appears on the bottom of the page with search results. Consumers can move to the app and see the details by clicking the pop-up.

Along with voice interaction, the motion control has been improved by adding the ‘finger gesture’ feature of the 2014 Smart TVs – a significant improvement to motion control.

Thanks to ‘finger gesture,’ users can change the TV channel, adjust the volume, find and select what they want to watch just by using their fingers. They can also go back to the previous screen and stop the video by motioning their finger counterclockwise – a more intuitive way to control the TV.

Image: Samsung Tomorrow

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Bendable Smartphones Aren't Coming Anytime Soon

Samsung Electronics's Galaxy Round smartphone retails in Korea for about $1,000. It's that expensive for a reason.

The curved display has graduated from science fiction to store shelves, but manufacturing them is still a challenging and expensive process. Screen makers are struggling to figure out the techniques needed to produce millions of the screens cheaply.

As for phones you can bend or fold? Don't hold your breath.

Mass-produced mobile devices with flexible — and eventually, foldable — screens may be as far as a decade away, according to Max McDaniel, chief marketing officer of Applied Materials's display business group. He showed Bloomberg firsthand some of the complexities involved on a recent tour of an R&D lab at the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company, the world's largest maker of the machinery used to produce displays.

One of the main sticking points is an elusive screen technology called organic light-emitting diode, or OLED. Electronics makers have been touting the advantages of OLED since the days when PCs were big towers connected to bulky tube monitors. It allows companies to make screens that are thinner, sharper and more energy-efficient. Currently, that comes with a big trade-off: price.

Producing large amounts of these screens, using machines costing tens of millions of dollars that can deposit microscopic layers of materials in a vacuum, is expensive because of the relatively high failure rate, said McDaniel. One tiny speck of dust can be enough to send a whole screen to the scrap heap.

Even when they do get it right, the screens don't have a very long lifespan. OLED materials, which must be encased in a protective layer, can decay quickly. So it only makes sense to use the technology in smartphones or similar devices that people typically hang onto for no more than two years or so, McDaniel said.

Gadget makers aren't giving up on OLED. Samsung uses that type of screen in its high-end flagship Galaxy S line of phones. Even with the support of the world's largest smartphone maker, OLED hasn't grabbed much market share, said Vinita Jakhanwal, an analyst at market researcher IHS.

"Even with over 10 years of development and being incorporated in one of the best-selling handsets out there, it's still only 8 to 10% of the mobile handset market," she said.

Curved displays are even harder to make. They involve a painstaking process where a thin film is laid on a flat surface, lifted off and then adhered to a curved piece of plastic almost like a sticker, according to Jakhanwal. She expects the failure rate to be higher for these screens, which sends costs even higher.

Samsung's Galaxy Round and the G Flex from LG Electronics, which hits stores in Hong Kong on Friday, will probably be the only two phones on the market this year that use that complex curved-OLED technology, Jakhanwal said. But Applied Materials is seeing increased interest from phone makers in those types of screens, McDaniel said.

"You're going to start to see more and more curved displays," he predicts. "Flat phones are going to start to look dorky."

Curved and flexible displays could account for 16% of the display market by 2023, compared with less than 1% this year, according to Touch Display Research. The market for OLED screens is expected to rise to about $93.8 million in 2014, and the first flexible displays could come as early as 2016, the researcher said.

For Applied, though, the difficulties of OLED and flexible displays are a chance to sell more technology and machinery after the stagnation caused by the relatively slow growth in TV size, McDaniel said. More complexity requires more capable machines and processes. That requires factory upgrades.

However, solving screen manufacturing issues is only part of the puzzle. Component makers will need to figure out how to make a battery that can be bent without failing and other parts such as cases that can flex.

"We're a long way from foldable," McDaniel said.

Image: Yoshikazu Tsuno/AFP/Getty Images

This article originally published at Bloomberg here

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