Mercedes-Benz creates bizarre concept car that looks like a 19th century carriage

It takes more than a passing resemblance to a old car, but Mercedes-Benz claims that this roadster could be the car of tomorrow.

Built by 150 students, the car combines traditional design elements with the latest technology.

 Mercedes-Benz

So while it has large spoked wheels that goes back to the first Benz Motor Car of 1886, is powered by a hybrid drive using an emissions without fuel.

It can reach a top speed of 15.5 miles per hour and has a range of 220 miles.

The students of Daimler AG has been working on the overall concept, development, assembly and completion of the F-CELL Roadster for a year. The project was created to educate young people in alternative propulsion systems.

The car has a top speed of 15.5 miles i timen

The car is powered by a joystick and operated by an electric motor

They include carbon-fiber bucket seats with hand-stitched leather upholstery and a marked styled fiberglass front section, inspired by Formula One race cars.

The Roadster is controlled with drive-by-wire technology, and a joystick replaces a conventional steering wheel.

"I'm glad to see how much initiative and creativity of young people in this project," Labor Relations Manager Günther Fleig said.

Mercedes-Benz F-CELL Roadster has the same wheels with the first Benz Motor Car

Sikker Baby Safety

Oh but it’s much much more. The Sikker (Danish for safety) is a jack of all trades baby monitor, radio, alarm clock, and watch. One bracelet stays on baby; the other on parent. The units work in tandem with the base station to transmit basic biometric data about baby’s condition like temperature. The units also transmit sounds and even remotely play music for baby.

 

Portable computer in India

Yogesh Kumar Baghel’s MITRA PC is a cylinder-shaped portable computer. It was designed for rural areas in India in order to spread the importance of education, health and other social issues for the development of the country.

The term “mitra” means “friend,” and the MITRA PC is also an eco-friendly gadget that uses solar energy to store and use in case of emergency. The MITRA PC contains a built-in LED projector for convenient presentation, as well as a hand crank charging facility to generate power (rotating the crank 30 times provides 30 minutes of use).

  

What Comes After the Touch Screen?

Gesture control, devices that recognize different people, and tricks to make a screen feel as if it has physical buttons could be coming to your gadgets.

Finger moves: A Microsoft research project, called Digits, makes gestural commands mobile.
Credit: Microsoft Research

In a few short years, the technologies found in today's mobile devices—touch screens, gyroscopes, and voice-control software, to name a few—have radically transformed how we access computers. To glimpse what new ideas might have a similar impact in the next few years, you need only to have walked into the Marriott Hotel in Cambridge, Massachusetts, this week. There, researchers from around the world demonstrated new ideas for computer interaction at the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology. Many were focused on taking mobile devices in directions that today feel strange and new but could before long be as normal as swiping the screen of an iPhone or Android device.

"We see new hardware, like devices activated by tongue movement or muscle-flexing, or prototypes that build on technology we already have in our hands, like Kinect, Wii, or the sensors built into existing phones," said Rob Miller, a professor at MIT's Computer Scienceand Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) and the chair of the conference.

One of the most eye-catching, and potentially promising, ideas that was on show makes it possible to perform complex tasks with a flick of the wrist or a snap of the fingers.

The interface, called Digits, created by David Kim, a U.K. researcher at both Microsoft Research and Newcastle University, is worn around the wrist and consists of a motion sensor and an infrared light source and camera. Like a portable version of Microsoft's motion-sensing device for the Xbox Kinect, Digits can follow arm and finger movements with enough accuracy to replicate them on screen or allow control of a complex computer game. "We envision a smaller device that could be worn like a watch that allows users to communicate with their surroundings and personal computing devices with simple hand gestures," said Kim (watch a video of Digits in action).

Projects like Kim's could be a glimpse into the future of mobile computing. After all, prior to the iPhone's launch, multi-touch interfaces were found only at this kind of event. Researchers believe that mobile computers are still being held back by the limitations of existing control methods, without which they could become even more powerful.

"We have an increasing desire and need to access and work with our computing devices anywhere and everywhere we are," Kim said. "Productive input and interaction on mobile devices is, however, still challenging due to the trade-offs we have to make regarding a device's form factor and input capacity."

The advance of mobile technology has also given researchers easy ways to experiment. Several groups at the conference showed off modifications of existing mobile interfaces designed to give them new capabilities.

Hong Tan, a professor at Purdue University currently working at Microsoft Research Asia, demonstrated a way to add the feel of buttons and other physical controls to a touch screen: vibrating piezoelectric actuators installed on the side of a normal screen generate friction at the point of contact with a finger. The design, dubbed SlickFeel, can make an ordinary sheet of glass feel as if it has physical buttons or even a physical slider with varying levels of resistance. Such haptic feedback could help users find the right control on compact devices like smartphones, or enable the use of a touch screen without looking at it, for example while driving.

Who's that? A touch screen that recognizes different people's fingers, developed by Chris Harrison and colleagues at Disney Research.
Credit: Chris Harrison

In another effort to make more of the touch screen, Chris Harrison of Disney Research presented a way for devices to recognize the swipes and presses of particular people. His interface, a capacitive touch screen with a resistance sensor attached, identifies the unique "impedance profile" of a person's body through his or her fingers. Users need to hold a finger to the device for few seconds the first time they use it, after which subsequent presses are attributed to them. That could allow apps to do things like track modifications to a document made by different people as a tablet is handed around a table (see a video of the screen). "It's similar to the technology that is already in smartphones," said Harrison. "There are lots of implications for gaming—no more split screens—and for collaborative applications."

The motion and touch sensors in current phones were another target for experimentation.Mayank Goel, a PhD student the University of Washington, and colleagues, modified the software on an Android phone to automatically determine in which hand a person is holding it. The software figures this out by monitoring the angle at which the device is tilted, as revealed by its motion sensor, and the precise shape of pressure on its touch screen. Goel says this can allow a keyboard to automatically adjust to whether a person is using the left or right hand, an adjustment that cut typos by 30 percent in his experiments.

Touchy feely: A malleable interface made by Sean Follmer and colleagues at MIT's Media Lab.
Credit: Sean Follmer

Other prototypes on display were less obviously connected with the gadgets in your pocket today. One was a malleable interface that can be shaped somewhat the way clay can, developed by a team at MIT's Media Lab. Sean Follmer, a PhD student in the lab of Professor Hiroshi Ishii, demonstrated several versions, including a translucent bendable touch screen laid flat on a table. This was made from a plastic material containing glass beads and oil, with a projector and a 3-D sensor positioned below. Pinches and twists made to the pliable screen changed the colors displayed on it, which were also shown on a 3-D model of the material on a computer screen nearby.

It's hard to imagine such an interface in your pocket. However, Desney Tan, a who manages Microsoft's Computational User Experiences group in Redmond, Washington, and the company's Human-Computer Interaction group in Beijing, China, believes that being able to choose from multiple modes of interaction will be an important part of the future of computing. "We will stop thinking about mobile devices, and instead focus on mobile computing," said Tan, who was winner of Technology Review's 35 Innovators under 35 Award in 2011. "As I see it, no one input or output modality will dominate quite in the same way as visual display and mouse and keyboard has so far."

Nokia Concept Phone Runs on Coke

As a general rule, cell phone batteries are costly, resource-intensive, and difficult to dispose of properly. So why not ditch them and run our cell phones on soda? That’s the thinking behind designer Daizi Zheng’s concept phone for Nokia. Instead of running on traditional batteries, the conceptphone uses a bio battery that generates electricity from carbohydrates.

Fuel cells powered by sugar are nothing new — they’ve been in use for years — but Zheng’s point seems to be that we shouldn’t overlook innovative uses for the products we consume everyday. And of course, maybe Coke does belong in a battery more than it belongs in our bodies. It doesn’t hurt that the bio battery can operate for three to four times longer than a lithium-ion battery on a single charge, either.

We jut have one question: what about all the energy used to produce Coke? In the end, it probably makes more sense to use plain sugar water as a fuel source — unless it’s your New Year’s resolution to give up on your stockpile of soda.
Future technology devices concept
Future inventions

Capture All Your Exploits with Helmet Cameras

With social networking exploding, more and more people are sharing their videos online and in other venues. At one time, recording your own exploits was difficult if you participated in highly active sports. Helmet cameras  have changed the game, though. Whether you are scaling a treacherous rock face or navigating the rapids, helmet cameras offer you a hands-free way to record and share all the action. Even if you stick with tamer activities, a helmet mounted camera can be a fun addition to your arsenal.

The best videos require the most appropriate cameras. Thus, there are a few things you should consider when in the market for a helmet camera.

• What Can You Afford to Invest? One of the top considerations when you are browsing helmet cameras is price. Less expensive models are priced well under a hundred dollars while more expensive models will run well into the thousands. The type of camera you ultimately select will depend on what you can afford to invest. With the wide range of helmet cameras available, it should be fairly easy to find something to suit your needs.

• What Will You Be Using It For? Perhaps you are not into sports and simply wish to record exploits from your point of view. Obviously, you will not need the same type of camera a die-hard sports enthusiast might require. For tamer exploits, you can use a simple point of view (POV) helmet camera. These cameras can be mounted on a helmet, the handlebars of your bike, or your car. A simple standard definition camera is all you need to capture video for scenes without much action. If you will be covering your more active pursuits, though, you might consider investing in a high definition camera instead.

• Where and Will You Be Using It? If you will be using your camera in rugged outdoor type environments, you will need to choose a camera that can withstand the punishment. Activities such as snorkeling, scuba diving, and whitewater rafting require waterproof as well as shockproof helmet cameras. Be sure to pay special attention to the water depth restrictions of your camera.

• What Have Others Said about It? After you have narrowed your choices down to a few selections, do your research. Read as many consumer reviews as possible to get the most complete picture of your potential camera’s capabilities. There is nothing worse than purchasing a camera that does not suit your needs and having to endure the hassle of returning it.

• Some Basic Must Haves… Battery life is important when selecting a camera. After all, you do not want your adventure cut short because your battery died. Handling and operating the camera should be as simple as possible, especially if you are recording high energy sports action. Also consider whether you will be frequently recording in low light situations, and choose the best camera for those conditions as well.

Helmet cameras allow you to easily share all your adventures with your family and friends. Even with educational outings, reviewing the video sometimes reveals detail you may have missed. You will find that helmet cameras open up an entire world of possibilities that you never considered.