MIT’s underwater robot can sniff out contraband hidden underneath ships
That object above might look like a benign, slightly deformed bowling ball, but it’s actually something far more advanced. It’s an aquatic robot designed by a couple of MIT researchers, which can surreptitiously inspect the hulls and propeller shafts of ships at port to bust anyone trying to smuggle contraband. The device is perfect for the job, not only because it’s small, but also because it doesn’t leave visible bubble trails as it moves underwater. Also, its propulsion system’s housed within the permeable half of the device itself, so it can potentially hide in clumps of algae to avoid being spotted without getting itself tangled when it starts up. The other half is watertight and houses its circuits, batteries, antenna and other electrical components.
Its creators, graduate student Sampriti Bhattacharyya and Ford Professor of Engineering Harry Asada, recently presented it at the 2014 IEEE/International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems. Bhattacharyya says that if he manages to get this device out for around only $600 each, port authorities could get a whole fleet to do collaborative inspection. The duo used a 3D printer to make the device’s main components, but in order to offer the device at that price point, their mass production process needs to be low-cost, as well. Right now, though, the two are focused on making a second prototype with wireless charging capabilities, longer battery life and the ability to perform ultrascans on ships without having to touch their barnacle-encrusted hulls.
Filed under: Robots
Source: MIT
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Bid adieu to ‘Airplane Mode’ on European airlines
Want to continue that scintillating game of Words with Friends throughout the entire flight? Well, that might soon be a possibility if you’re flying in European airspace. Late last year, the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) had decided to permit personal electronics like smartphones and tablets to remain on during takeoff and landing as long as it was in “Airplane Mode.” Now, even that restriction has been lifted. Yep, the EASA has deemed “Airplane Mode” no longer necessary, thus allowing for true “gate-to-gate” electronics use. Of course, even if the EASA permits it, each airline will still have to take an assessment test to make sure it won’t negatively affect aircraft communications. Turning off Airplane Mode is still a no-no for US flights, though most airlines do let you use your gadgets during takeoff and landing thanks to last year’s FAA ruling. Maybe if Airplane Mode becomes unnecessary some day, we’ll rename it to something that makes more sense, like “The Mode that Doesn’t Suck Up All Your Battery.”
[Image credit: pouwerkerk/Flickr]
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile
Via: Business Insider
Source: EASA
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Cheero Energy Plus 12000mAh Review: a very solid package which you can get for ridiculously cheap right now
There are an almost limitless number of portable battery chargers out there at the moment, with various shapes, sizes, and capacities. So when one comes up with a ridiculous price tag, we just had to take a look. We’ll be taking a look at the Cheero Energy Plus 12000mAh today – you may recognize the brand cheero after our last video review of their Danboard themed battery packs (check out that review here). This time we have a much more ‘normal’ battery pack, but much of the same solid design and value for money we’ve come to expect from cheero. Check out our video review of it below:
As you can see, a very decent package with a very attractive price tag – yes, that was $29.49 USD in case you missed it. Before we go on to giving you the links on where to get one, I just wanted to briefly mention the performance of the Energy Plus when it comes to real world recharging. In my brief tests using the Battery Monitor Widget app as my tool on my Galaxy Note 2, I found that the peak charge rate of the battery pack was around 75% per hour, although you can probably expect closer to 50% per hour – this equates to about 1,550mAh/hr given my battery capacity of 3,100mAh.
The charging abilities of the Energy Plus are pretty much the normal, and at 12,000mAh, you can expect to charge a few devices more than a few times before needing to charge up again. And that’s when you factor in the price of $29.49 USD again. While you can get other battery packs with similar amounts of capacity for a similar price, I doubt many will offer the quality of the cheero Energy Plus, so if you’re interested in picking one up, cheero is only offering this price to the first 3,000 customers, with 1,000 confirmed to have been sold already. Visit http://www.cheero.net/usa/lp/ep12000/ to purchase, or hit the Amazon link provided below.
http://ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&Operation=GetAdHtml&ID=OneJS&OneJS=1&source=ac&ref=tf_til&ad_type=product_link&tracking_id=wwwandcom-20&marketplace=amazon®ion=US&placement=B00LAEBJNM&asins=B00LAEBJNM&show_border=true&link_opens_in_new_window=true&MarketPlace=USWhat do you think about the cheero Energy Plus 12000mAh battery pack? Let us know your opinion.
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Snakebot and quadcopter combo makes for a go-anywhere rescue drone
Everyone has different ideas on what the perfect search-and-rescue robot is, and for a University of Pennsylvania Mod Lab team, it comes in the form of a snake drone-quadcopter chimera. The Hybrid Exploration Robot for Air and Land Deployment or H.E.R.A.L.D. is composed of two snake-like machines that attach via magnets to a UAV. After being carried to the site by the quadcopter, the snake bots can detach themselves, slip through the holes and cracks of a collapsed building, for instance, and slither to their destination. The researchers have been working on H.E.R.A.L.D. since 2013, but now that all its components can properly merge and work together like the robots in Power Rangers, they presented it at the 2014 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems. You can watch the machine ace the tests its creators put it through in the vid after the break, including a part where a researcher used an Xbox controller to navigate a snakebot through a pipe.
Filed under: Robots
Source: University of Pennsylvania, Science News, PopSci
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Unbox Therapy sets the record straight by bending iPhone 6 Plus and tries a Moto X 2014 to compare
If you have been following tech news this week, you might have heard about ‘Bendgate’ which is the alleged weakness of the newly released iPhone 6 Plus to resist fairly ordinary handling and bend quite severely. And not that good type of bending demonstrated by the LG G Flex; this looks to be a design flaw in the iPhone 6 Plus and looks like it will undermine Apple’s first attempt at a phablet device. The Apple faithful have been putting on a brave face and claiming that this is either untrue or those who have been testing it have been using excessive force. YouTuber Unbox Therapy has gone on record today to prove exactly how easy this bending occurs, and promptly tries to bend the new Moto X 2014 to show exactly how a normal phone should work.
Suffice to say that Apple probably needs to go back to the drawing board and try again. Quite a contrast to the Moto X 2014, which held its own in this brief test, and yet another feather in Motorola’s cap for making another robust device. The Moto X 2014, which was announced during IFA 2014 just a few weeks ago, combines much of the latest tech available to smartphones including a 5.2-inch display powered by a Snapdragon 801 processor. While that might not be the absolute newest processor available, the original Moto X proved Motorola can do a lot with a supposedly “underpowered” processor, let alone one of the best available. We can’t wait to see more of them in action.
What do you think about the Moto X 2014 and this whole ‘Bendgate’ ordeal? Let us know your thoughts.
Source: YouTube
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Science! New research in nanotechnology could mean more efficient, clearer LED screens on smartphones
Image credit: Wikipedia
I don’t know terribly much about LED lights, but enough to know that they are quite a lot more efficient that conventional lighting, hence why household and personal lighting has largely adopted it as well as portable devices, most notably smartphones. LED screens are all the rage now, but apparently even they are quite inefficient themselves – light that is emitted by the diode can potentially get trapped within the LED’s structure, causing not only wasted energy but creates heat within, reducing its overall lifespan. Thankfully though, some nanotechnology researchers at Princeton University have used their know-how and created a new nanoscale structure which can allegedly increase the brightness and efficiency of LEDs by 58 percent.
The research also shows that with this improvement in brightness and efficiency comes a 400% increase in picture clarity, courtesy of some manipulation of light at a level only nanotechnology has enabled us to use. It’s pretty incredible stuff and you can read their full findings here if you’re particularly interested. But for the rest of us, what tangible differences could this potentially have for our smartphones? Increased battery life is probably going to be a big consequence of this, as will general screen clarity if these findings are true – who needs 2K displays anyway? – and perhaps most importantly, these new methods could potentially make smartphone screens cheaper, and presumably, smartphones cheaper as well.
What do you think about clearer, cheaper, more efficient smartphone screens? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
Source: Phys.org via Phone Arena
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Consumer Reports weighs in on iPhone 6 bending
As much as Apple would like for this discussion to be over, controversy and conversation over whether the iPhone 6 / 6 Plus has a durability problem is continuing. Just as it tested out antenna reception for the iPhone 4, Consumer Reports has forced Apple’s newest mobile devices into its torture testing chambers, measuring them along with several other devices to see how much pressure they can really take. You can see the tests for yourself in a video embedded after the break, but according to CR, the larger iPhone 6 Plus is actually stronger than its counterpart, only deforming under 90 pounds of pressure, more than the 70 it took to bend the standard iPhone 6 and HTC One (M8). Meanwhile, Unbox Therapy gave a brand new iPhone 6 Plus another go in its less-scientific test, and bent it once again, while a Moto X withstood the challenge.
[Image credit: Consumer Reports]
The toughest phone in the test proved to be the Galaxy Note 3, which didn’t deform or suffer case separation until it hit 150 lbs of pressure. According to Consumer Reports, one of Apple’s tests uses a similar machine and method but only goes up to 55 lbs, about the pressure it says is needed to break three pencils. Ultimately, it gauged all of the phones capable of withstanding normal usage, but go ahead and press play if you need some more convincing.
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Apple
Source: Consumer Reports, Unbox Therapy (YouTube)
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Pantech is putting itself up for sale after six consecutive quarters of losses
Pantech has the rather uneviable task of competing with mega smartphone companies like Samsung and LG in their home country of Korea, but has still managed to hold onto third place there for some time now. But six consecutive quarters of losses has to hurt, and the manufacturer has decided to put itself up for sale. Interested parties whose names have been swirling around include main competitors, Samsung and LG, as well as other Korean companies like car manufacturer, Hyundai, and telecommunications operator, SK Telecom. Even India’s Micromax and China’s Lenovo, Huawei, and Xiaomi have pricked up their ears, particularly with the knowledge that 90% of the Korean smartphone market only buys Korean products, making buying Pantech an easy way to access the Korean market.
Interested parties will have until October 7th to lodge their offers, and the selling price is expected to be around $366 million USD. It’s pretty sad that Pantech has fallen on hard times as they have made some particularly beautiful devices in their time, like the Pantech Vega Iron, but you can probably guess how hard it is to compete with Samsung and LG hanging around. Still, we hope whoever buys them keeps the company intact and making those spiffy smartphones.
What do you think about Pantech going under the hammer? Let us know your thoughts.
Source: ZDNet Korea via Phone Arena
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Consumer Reports: iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus Not As Bendable As Believed
Just a day after Apple issued its first statement regarding the ongoing complaints that the iPhone 6 Plus bends in user pockets, Consumer Reports has released its test results for how “bendable” Apple’s new phones are. In summary, the results show that the new phones are far stronger than what some testimonies have suggested in the past few days.
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To test the phones, Consumer Reports put them through the “three-point flexural test”, which has the phone supported at two ends and has pressure applied at a third point, alongside competitors like the HTC One (m8), Samsung Galaxy Note 3, LG G3 and iPhone 5.
Consumer Reports’ tests pushed the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus much further than [Apple’s test of 55 pounds of force]. We started light, applying 10 pounds of force for 30 seconds, then releasing the force. Then we upped the force in 10-pound increments, noted when the phones first started to deform (that’s what our engineers call it) and stopped the test for each phone when we saw the screen come loose from the case.
The results showed that the 6 Plus was actually stronger than the iPhone 6, starting to deform at 90 pounds of force and having its screen and case separate at 110 pounds of force. The iPhone 6 started to deform at 70 pounds of force and started coming apart at 100 pounds of force. The HTC One (m8) performed the worst in Consumer Reports’ test, deforming at 70 pounds of force and coming apart at 90 pounds of force.
iPhone 6 Plus after Consumer Reports’ test
The LG G3 started to deform and come apart at 130 pounds of force while the iPhone 5 deformed at 130 pounds of force and came apart at 150 pounds of force. The Galaxy Note 3, on the other hand, deformed and came apart at 150 pounds of force. Consumer Reports notes that while other phones, like the iPhone 6 and HTC One, were still functioning after deforming and coming apart, the Note 3 stopped working right away.
Overall, the magazine notes that while none of the phones they tested were indestructible, all devices tested should hold up fine under everyday use
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What is Weirded? This is Weirded.
How does one introduce an original web series like #Weirded?
For one, it’s not tech news — at least, not in the way you’re used to seeing. So scrub that notion from your brain. It’s more like a constant channel change; like pressing the seek button on a car radio and catching tidbits of the noise filling the tech industry’s airwaves. It’s light, but biting in a way we hope’ll make you ask for “more, please!” It’ll skewer and shine a light on the more outrageous news and comments of the week. But it will always be in good fun (and in very bad taste). It’s a guilty pleasure; our tongue-in-cheek gift to you.
This week’s inaugural episode is pretty fruity: It’s nearly all about Apple, with some Blackberry crumble on the side. The full episode’s just after the break. Enjoy the feast!
[Image credit: Denelson83, Wikipedia]
Filed under: Cellphones, Apple, Blackberry
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AIVAnet 
