Robotic race car, a fog catcher and an award-winning cargo drone round out this week's gallery.
1. Rose Pavilion
A building that blooms like a bouquet of roses is really a conceptual design for a pavilion by Russian architect Vasily Klyukin. The glass and metal façade would change colour based on interior lighting.
2. Solar-Electric Car
This summer, Chinese solar power company, Hanergy Holding Group, unveiled four prototype solar-powered cars. Each one is covered in a thin-film solar cell that generates 8 to 10 kWh of energy, which gives the car a range of about 50 miles.
3. Dew Harvester
This little cactus-shaped device called Dewpoint collects and stores water vapour from the air for later use. It was designed by students at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago for the Biodesign Challenge. The students took their inspiration from actual cactus leaves, which also store water to survive.
4. Nissan Bladeglider
At the Rio Olympic Games, two Nissan prototype Bladeglider cars are being used to shuttle around VIPs. The all-electric three-seater goes 0 to 62mph in 5 seconds and has a 118mph top speed.
5. Second Skin
For rescue workers and first responders, finding lightweight, breathable clothing that’s also protective is nearly impossible. But scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have turned to nanotechnology for a solution. They’ve developed a flexible polymer membrane that contains carbon nanotubes aligned to function as tiny pores. The pores breathe and also can be engineered to neutralize biological and chemical agents.
6. Cargo Drone
For his design of a vertical take-off drone meant to carry cargo, Alexey Medvedev won first place in the Airbus Cargo Drone Challenge, sponsored by Local Motors. Medvedev named the drone Zelator and is now US$50,000 richer.
7. Rolling Robot
This rolling robot named Ourobot is made up of 12 linked segments that each have a motor and a pressure sensor. On flat ground, it rolls like a wheel. But to move over uneven ground or obstacles, it flattens out and works more like a tread on a tank. It was designed by a team of computer engineering students at Germany’s Bielefeld University of Applied Sciences. Ourobot comes from the Egyptian symbol called Ouroboros, which shows a serpent curled around in a circle.
8. Honeycomb Morphing
Kirigami is an ancient Japanese art form similar to origami. It involves cutting and folding paper to obtain 3-D shapes. Now researchers at the University of Bristol have found a way to use Kirigami to transform 2-D sheet materials into complex 3-D shapes. The technique could be used to improve robotics, morphing structures for aircrafts and space vehicles, as well as microwave and smart antennas.
9. Roborace
Roborace is a new kind of car racing event being planned to take place in tandem with the Formula E in the 2016/17 season. Ten teams will compete in identical cars and so for this race, the car isn’t the muscle - it’s how the data is processed from a huge array of sensors and cameras get processed.
10. Pin Gun
To prevent theft and to reduce the chances of an accidental shooting, San Diego-based start-up Safety First Arms created the self-locking Smart 2 pistol, which has a built-in PIN pad and an anti-theft alarm.
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