Maglev technology may be best know for its use in trains (and the odd wind turbine), but a group of researchers led by Carnegie Mellon University's Ralph Hollis have some ideas of their own for it, with them now touting a so-called "maglev joystick" that they hope to bring to market. That, they say, can provide increased feedback compared to a standard joystick, and offer an alternative to complicated gloves and robotic interfaces. Key to that, obviously, is a whole bunch of electromagnets, which are concealed in the bowl pictured above and allow the "joystick" to levitate, while also providing resistance when it's moved in any direction. Needless to say, there's no indication as to when the joystick might actually be available, but Hollis has recently formed a company, Butterfly Haptics, with just that as its goal, and it'll apparently soon be shipping six of the joysticks to a consortium of US and Canadian universities for testing.

We'd already heard about Central Japan Railway Company's not-so-near-term intentions to deploy a speedy new maglev system in the country, but it looks like it's just now getting official with things, and it's still promising to have it up and running no sooner than 2025. By then, there should be 180 miles of track stretching from Tokyo to central Japan, which'll accommodate a maglev train capable of topping out at 310 miles per hour, apparently making it the world's fastest. That, as you might have guessed, comes at a fairly hefty cost -- $44.7 billion, to be specific -- which makes some similar, but decidedly less speedy systems pale in comparison. As The Register points out, however, while Japan's train will be the fastest maglev system, it won't quite keep up with the fastest conventional trains around, or whatever else might be around in the year 2025.

[Photo courtesy of FYS]