Robotic exoskeletons are one of those technologies that tend to be associated with warfare or at least the industrial sector, but soft robotics and artificial muscles like these ones created by Swiss researchers make them suitable for more delicate operations as well. Read More
Using a mixture of different materials in 3D printing has been difficult for the user end, requiring basically knowledge of programming and specific training, but new software developed by MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab aims to be the “Photoshop for 3D materials,” making it accessible to basically anyone. The “Foundry” system developed by… Read More
Kettering University unveiled this week an automotive proving grounds in a bid to lure companies and students to the Flint, MI area. The test track is on the school’s grounds, housed on land that once contained a massive General Motors’ manufacturing facility that was torn down and left abandoned. The Kettering University GM Mobility Research Center (or MRC) features outdoor lab… Read More
Apple’s latest Watch was met with great applause when the company announced in September the thing could take a dive in the pool and keep on ticking. But the price and other bells and whistles of the Watch might be too much for those just looking for a simple way to track steps, laps and calories. Enter Fitbit’s Flex 2, which starts shipping tomorrow morning. It’s a… Read More
Researchers at Disney Research in Pittsburgh have built a single-legged hopping robot that can currently bounce around 19 times without falling over. The project by Zachary Batts, Joohyung Kim, and Katsu Yamane began as a computer simulation and finally a hardware product. The researchers based their system on Marc Raibert’s hopping controller and it’s controlled by a linear… Read More
New Lab, which co-founder David Belt described as “a collaborative workspace” for companies in fields like robotics and artificial intelligence, officially opened last month.
The facility is located in Brooklyn’s Navy Yard, in a building that was once used to assemble ships. Belt said he wanted to bring the building back as a manufacturing center, except updated for… Read More
Being synonymous with a particular product category is a mixed blessing. Mophie is undoubtedly the best-known name in the battery case business, but the company has been keen to distance itself from the space a bit — or, at the very least, let it be known that it has more to offer the world. Mophie released a whole bunch of new power banks a few weeks back. Necessary, sure, but… Read More
Yesterday, Facebook revealed that it’s working on a standalone headset with inside-out tracking, which would mean that a user could jump into a full virtual reality experience with only the head-mounted display itself, without needing cumbersome cables attached to a big, expensive PC – and without base stations, too, to bounce IR signals off the headset and help it determine the… Read More
Self-driving cars of the future won’t need to be configured on the inside the way they are now, since things like steering columns won’t be required. Electric drive trains will also help maximize available interior space, so it makes sense that cars will look dramatically different inside and out when the two things combine, as they seem inevitably on track to do. The new… Read More
Google held its biggest ever hardware event on Tuesday, and we got a glimpse at devices that bear more of Google’s fingerprint than anything they’ve done before. Yet most of us here at TechCrunch, including myself and TCBC guest for this week Frederic Lardinois, came away with the feeling that the event was less about hardware than it was about Google’s work with… Read More
