Who wouldn't want to put a camera on a dog? Dive in a personal sub? Fly a hoverbike? This tech will make you start a new wish list.
1. Personal Submarine
Here, underwater aviation company DeepFlight shows off its personal submarine, the DeepFlight Dragon, which will be officially unveiled at the 2014 Monaco Yacht Show next week. At US$1.2 million, this all-electric sub will be aimed at the super wealthy. Drivers will be able to explore depths of 400 ft.
2. Tidal Energy
Because of its turbulent, ocean coastline, Scotland is ideally set up for tidal energy. Singapore-based Atlantis Resources recently announced that its tidal energy project, the MeyGen array off Scotland, will be the world’s largest. When finished, it will generate 398 MW of electricity for 175,000 homes.
3. Smart Skins for Aircraft
Tens of thousands of micro-sensors the size of dust particles could one day give the outer layer of aircraft skin-like sensing abilities. At BAE Systems' Advanced Technology Centre, senior research scientist Lydia Hyde and her team is working on material embedded with tiny sensors that, when used in the exterior material of an aircraft, could detect wind speed, temperature, physical strain and more to ensure the vehicle's integrity.
4. Robo Brain
Everyone is storing their information and data in the cloud and why should robots be any different? A new project called Robo Brain, which arose from a collaboration between Cornell, Brown, Stanford and the University of California, aims to create an Internet for robots. The project is similar to one in Europe called RoboEarth, but Robo Brain will go one step farther in that the robots will not only use the robo-Web to identify objects in the world around them, but to also learn and understand what those objects are used for.
5. Bio Chip Mimics Human Body
This computer chip is a "living semiconductor" designed to mimic specific organs. The chips have miniature networks of channels and chambers that contain biological cells from different parts of the body. Scientists think that once they perfect the cellular contents they'll be able to test hundreds of drug combinations on various tissue, running a range of experiments at once and zeroing in on the right dose faster than current laboratory methods.
6. Biometric Shirt
For the first time in tennis history, the ball chasers at the US Open in New York this past week wore high-tech, biometric shirts. The Polo Tech shirts, designed by Ralph Lauren, were woven with threadlike sensors capable of capturing the movement and direction of the wearer as well as his heartbeat and respiration. The information can be gathered and sent via a wireless connection to an app on a person's smartphone. Eventually such a shirt could be worn by tennis champs to track their performance.
7. Atlanta Falcons' New Stadium
The Atlanta Falcons NFL team is getting a new stadium. Designed by 360 Architecture, the 1.8-million-square-feet facility will feature a "rose-petal" roof that opens and closes like a flower. The organic shape and nature-inspired designed will make conventional retractable roofs look dated.
8. Project Wing
This week, Google unveiled its secret Project Wing delivery drone concept. The 5-foot autonomous aircraft is a blended wing "tail-sitter" able to take off vertically and then fly horizontally. When it arrives at its destination, it hovers over the site and lowers its package to the ground using a cable and winch system. Google tested the the drones in Australia, where flight restrictions are more relaxed than in the United States.
9. Hoverbike Drone
Speaking of drones, U.K.-based Malloy Aeronautics is wrapping up a Kickstarter meant to fund a quadcopter hoverbike for humans. The crowd-funding campaign focuses on a 1/3-scale version of the Drone 3 and features a robot rider that is about the size and weight, proportionally, of a human rider. For US$1,000, you can get the whole package and control the drone via remote. Like the scaled-down version, the full-size one will have four overlapping fans, which give it better stability, manoeuvrability and payload capacity than competing two-fan designs. Malloy says human riders will be able to fly the larger version to an altitude of 9,000 feet and at 115 mph.
10. GoPro Fetch
GoPro camera fans now have a way to get their dogs in on the action. The Fetch harness available for US$59.99 fits dogs from 15 lbs to 120 lbs and accommodates the GoPro Hero camera. Dog owners can secure the camera to the dog's back or to its chest and then let the good times roll.
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