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Six next-gen battery technologies
By Cat DiStasio We all love our battery-powered gadgets, but portable power cells can be devastating to the environment. Fortunately, recent developments have proven that greener batteries are coming in the not-too-distant future. Engineers are replacing toxic components with less harmful materials ranging from leaves to sugar. Other innovations on the rise look to nature to help make batteries last longer, perform better and leave less of a trace once they've been discarded. This gold nanowire-based battery, for instance, was created by accident and could make lithium ion batteries obsolete, while this single-use battery dissolves in water when its job is done, making it easier to reuse its components.
ICYMI: Electrify your food and cleaning bubbles too
#fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-327950{display:none;} .cke_show_borders #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-327950, #postcontentcontainer #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-327950{width:570px;display:block;} try{document.getElementById("fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-327950").style.display="none";}catch(e){}Today on In Case You Missed It: Virginia Tech researchers found they can better clean fruits and vegetables with electrified water bubbles. Japanese scientists are also harnessing the power of electricity, but this time putting it into a fork to subtly zap food into having saltier flavors. Allegedly. And a new smartphone case features a crank to get that precious charge up when you need a hit of the juice.
DARwIn IIIx RoboCup entrant gets shown off on video
We caught sight of the very first DARwIn soccer-playing robot way back when, but the folks at Virginia Tech's Robotics & Mechanisms Laboratory unsurprisingly haven't been resting on their laurels all this time, and they're now out there showing off the bot's latest incarnation, which they hope will lead 'em to victory in the next RoboCup competition. Dubbed the DARwIn IIIx, this one apparently uses some of the same technology developed for Virgina Tech's DARPA Urban Challenge entry, known as "Odin," and is a complete redesign over the previous DARwIn IIx model, boasting an improved range of motion and a whole host of software upgrades that promise to improve its perception and let it better adapt to different lighting conditions, among other things. Head on past the break to check out the (unfortunately auto-playing) video.
STriDER: Virginia Tech's creepy, three-legged bot
Apparently, robot designers are worried that they're not creating automatons that are creepy enough, because a team of engineers at Virgina Tech have put something together that will give even the toughest of men chills. The robot in question is the three-legged STriDER (Self-excited Tripedal Dynamic Experimental Robot, not to be confused with CMU's Strider) which balances itself on two legs and then flips its body 180-degrees, bringing its third leg forward with the motion. According to project leader Dennis Hong, "STriDER's gait is closer to that of a human walking than most bipedal humanoid robots you see today," adding, "This is how we humans walk, we do not actively control our knees, we just let them swing." It does seem to be true, as the robot has an eerily life-like quality to its movements. Don't believe us? Take a look at the video after the break and see the tripod in action.
