After a solid week gazing at wall-sized TVs, opulent yachts that respond to your every whim, and self-driving supercars at CES, you have to wonder: Couldn’t we be using technology to do more for the world? The answer is definitely yes, and more companies are answering that call than ever before. To recognize them, Digital […]
[embedded content] Chinese company Ubtech debuted its new, improved Walker humanoid robot and Cruzr service robot at CES 2019, reminding us that we’re closer than ever to living in the kind of future promised to us decades ago by The Jetsons. Walker, which made an appearance at last year’s Las Vegas event, has seemingly spent […]
It was a year ago this month that San Francisco-based startup Udelv laid claim to the world’s first autonomous grocery delivery service on public roads after partnering with Draeger’s Market for a trial operation in San Mateo, California. Since then it’s signed a deal to use 10 of its autonomous delivery vans to transport orders […]
Impossible Foods I’m calling it early this year. The new Impossible Burger is the most impressive thing on display at CES 2019. Hands down. Forget about Samsung’s monstrous new OLED screen, forget whatever Google is doing this year. As far as I’m concerned, the most incredible thing at the show this year is a hamburger […]
Impossible Foods In a world of startups making shrimp out of red algae and 3D-printed beefsteaks, Impossible Food — makers of the bleedable veggie burger — stands as the best-known company in this brave new world of next-gen eatables. At CES 2019, the company announced its Impossible Burger version 2.0, the first time its recipe […]
[embedded content] A world of self-driving cars is going to give us a whole lot more time, during which we would previously have been behind the wheel, to spend on everything from sending emails and watching Netflix to, well, getting a few extra hours of shut-eye. Focusing on this latter scenario, Toronto-based design studio Aprilli […]
Last year, researchers at the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland developed a new type of transistor — one based on excitons, a special type of quasiparticle — which could be used in the future to make electronic devices smaller, faster, and more efficient. And now the same team has made another breakthrough […]
The Milky Way is under threat: new research from astrophysicists at Durham University, UK, suggests that the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) will dramatically collide with our galaxy in two billion years’ time. It was previously predicted that the Milky Way would collide with the nearby galaxy of Andromeda in between four billion and eight billion […]
Fresh greens in space? Recent research has looked into how plants respond to low levels of gravity and a particular hormone which can help plants grow in challenging space conditions. Now, new research has succeeded in growing plants in high-tech planters which use artificial soil made from lava rock. Plants in climate-regulated growth chambers Silje […]
In 2018, Indiegogo campaigns took 1,300 products from ideas to shipped products. The crowdfunding platform shared the statistic for the first time at the start of the new year, along with reviewing milestones like new partnerships designed to bring more projects to life. Last year, about 1.4 million people made 2.1 million contributions to projects […]
A Chinese lunar rover has reportedly made history by landing on the far side of the moon and transmitting back the first images to Earth, Chinese state media announced this week. According to China’s National Space Administration, the Chang’e 4 probe landed in the moon’s South Pole-Aitken Basin crater late Thursday evening, Beijing time. The probe […]
When you hear that the world’s largest robot has gone live in Australia, your mind might conjure up something like an anime-style giant mech. In fact, the announcement comes from iron ore mining company Rio Tinto, which recently launched its fully automated rail network: A series of mine-to-port trains able to run completely free from human […]
U.K. Space Agency The above image may look like a scene from some as-yet-unannounced Hollywood adaptation of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds. In fact, it’s a picture from recent tests which took place in the Sahara desert, the world’s largest hot desert region, where an autonomous driving software for future Mars rovers was […]
Animal Dynamics The idea of a drone delivering our Amazon orders sounds pretty darn rad, but a key innovation that delivery drones offer is being able to transport supplies to places where they might not otherwise be safely or easily delivered. With this goal in mind, the British Army is currently testing out an unorthodox […]
The New York Police Department (NYPD) discovered the limitations of current drone technology on New Year’s Eve when rain forced it to cancel plans to use the machine as part of its security operation during the celebrations in Times Square. The NYPD’s Chief Terence Monahan confirmed in a tweet that the police department’s quadcopters wouldn’t […]