Designing an inch-long robot is tricky: there are lots of small moving parts, and it's hard to get a tiny enough battery that can still power the entire system. Instead of designing a whole new robot body, scientists at Texas A&M University instead hijacked an existing, efficient form: cockroaches. Using an implant that plugs into the roach's nervous system, they were able to steer the cockroach in the correct direction 60 percent of the time.
Let's face it: Storage devices aren't exactly the most exciting pieces of hardware. They either work or they don't. And when they don't work, they can cause major headaches. For the last decade, SanDisk has prevented those type of headaches by providing some of the most reliable storage devices on the market. Now it's going a step further by providing the highest capacity microSD card in the world.
Fumbling for a cell phone that rang during a meeting can be pretty embarrassing, and tapping out an email on a smartwatch is always a frustrating experience. To make mobile devices even simpler to control, a team of German and American computer scientists has created a patch called the iSkin that turns your epidermis into a digital interface. Just place the patch on your preferred body part, and with a few simple taps, you can answer calls, raise or lower music volume, or type on a bigger smartwatch keyboard without having to grope for the phone in your pocket or bag.
Before this week's Mobile World Congress 2015 (MWC) in Barcelona, Samsung had its back against the wall. The company reported slumping sales of its flagship smartphone , and many believed its dominance in the smartphone world was coming to an end. But after Samsung's latest smartphone release it's clear that there are plenty of innovative ideas coming from the company.
Trying to get a building to tell you how it's feeling is, well, like talking to a brick wall. But it doesn't have to be that way. Researchers with the GENESI project want to make it so walls can talk back, by creating various sensors to fit inside buildings, tunnels, and bridges. With the feedback collected from these sensors, inspectors will have a better understanding of how a city's infrastructure is holding up
There's nothing worse than getting hacked. Ask anyone at Sony, which lost an estimated $100 million in the malicious hacks committed against the company last year. Silent Circle, a company founded by Internet security legend Phil Zimmerman, wants to bring those type of hacks to a halt. The company's solution: An end-to-end service that starts with an ultra secure smartphone called the Blackphone 2.
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