If drones changing shape on the fly and shooting streaks of hot flames weren’t enough to make you question what will rule the skies in the future, then this might change your mind… A few weeks ago, the 2019 Nanchang Flight Convention was held in China. From November 2-3, the convention showcased the best China…

You’ve seen tons of LEGO car builds in the past (some of which can even be driven), but I bet you don’t see something like this everyday: https://youtu.be/3j7n00Xx38o If your first instinct was to pick up this ATV and plop it on your homemade Hot Wheels track, you aren’t alone. This is a Sherp –…

If you thought mobile cases with bunny ears and googly eyes were weird, wait ‘til you get a load of what HCI (human-computer interaction) researcher and interaction designer Marc Teyssier has been working on. By laying a number of electronics underneath a mixture of various silicones, he and his team created Skin-On: a phone case…

Despite giant leaps in smartwatch technologies, the mechanical watch still manages to be a staple accessory that people continue to use every day. Currently seeking funding on Kickstarter, Rotate takes things one step further by having users assemble their own mechanical watch from scratch. Completely devoid of batteries (because that’s what a modular watch is),…

Even though it’s just as important as eating three square meals a day, not everyone practices proper dental care. On a busy day, most folks would just quickly brush their teeth (or forget to altogether) before hopping in a car and driving to work—much to the bummer of their coworkers. Encompass was made to give…

Do you know what’s cooler than watching a YouTube video of a person build something? Being there yourself as the artist makes their creation, that’s what. Thanks to a collaboration with Oculus and Tested (a website run by Adam Savage dedicated to showing off his works as well as those of other creators), owners of Oculus Quest…

Never one to fall behind the times, Acer is updating their previously announced Concept D laptops with NVIDIA’s new Quadro RTX graphics cards. The laptops in question are the Acer Concept D 9 Pro, Concept D 7 Pro, Concept D 5 Pro, Concept D 3 Pro – all of which will be out later this…

During the CES Asia tech event this past June in Shanghai, China, tons of companies showed off new and exciting ventures in the world of technology. For many attendees, the convention was a science fiction dream come true—with plenty of futuristic tech that seems years off. Among other companies presenting their latest wares was the start-up DeepMag Technology.…

It’s easy to overlook, but people face an almost unfathomable amount of hazards when working in a garage or workshop. Sharp power tools, heavy machinery—you name it, chances are there’s something dangerous about it.  Despite these obvious dangers, a surprising amount of injuries are the direct result of improper body positioning when performing tasks that…

With an increasing amount of STEM programming kits teaching children the basics of computer technology and coding, it was only a matter of time before one came along to that also teaches younglings how to also build a computer all on their own. Enter the Kano PC—a DIY laptop kit designed by educational startup Kano in partnership…

Lovers of miniature computers, rejoice! The Raspberry Pi Foundation has announced their newest addition: the Raspberry Pi 4, will now be available in flavors of 1GB, 2GB, and 4GB RAM for $35, $45, and $55 respectively. https://youtu.be/sajBySPeYH0 Raspberry Pi 4 Updates Updates to the Pi 4 over its predecessor include the aforementioned RAM increase, a…

If you thought touchscreens were the pinnacle of intuitive interfaces, think again. Google is currently working on a project which analyzes delicate hand motions and translates them into digital data; all without ever touching a screen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QNiZfSsPc0 Project Soli is an interaction sensor which uses a miniature radar to track hand movements down to the…

Kids these days will never know how good they have it. While nothing beats the adventure of playing outside and getting hands dirty in the mud, this generation also gets to pair the outdoors with a seemingly endless roster of “smart” toys that foster 21st-century skills—toys like the Chatterbox AI Speaker Bot. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63vV-jU0E8c As the…

If you were whining to the flight attendant about waiting to buy a mobile workstation until Lenovo’s launched their latest ThinkPad P-Series mobile workstations, your wait is about to be over. Four of the ThinkPad P-Series have fresh new specs and they’ve added another to round out the bunch. Here’s the breakdown: ThinkPad P73 Ultimate…

The future. Tis upon us. And once again, it’s gaming that’s paving the way. This week at E3, Bethesda Softworks announced Orion. What’s Orion? It’s “a patented collection of software technologies that optimize game engines for superior performance in a streaming environment.” For gamers, this brings ‘imperceptible latency’ to, not just one game engine but,…

You may know them primarily as a car company, but did you know Nissan also made self-parking chairs? It’s true and you can file this under, “Tech we need NOW.” Back in 2016, Nissan launched the Intelligent Parking Chair – a seat which incorporates the company’s patented Intelligent Parking Assist technology (most commonly found in…

TechDay New York took place this year at the Javits Center in Manhattan on May 2nd. This event boasted over 300 startups on display, tech talks, and demos. I didn’t stand around for any talks, however, and went straight for the toys shown off in the booths. Here are some of the coolest hardware-type-tech things…

Toys for little girls have come a long way. Instead of gangly, mobility-limited figurines with zero capabilities, young ladies can now opt for an awkward, less mobility-limited, learning, talking, facial expression recognizing robot friend to do their bidding. Its name is Little Sophia. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18qaAE3SOQg Mixing A.I. technology with traditional toy design, this robot doll is…

Get ready to shelve your disgusting earplugs because this one is a doozy. Researchers Xin Zhang, Reza Ghaffarivardavagh, Jacob Nikolajczyk, and Stephan Anderson, along with their team of engineers from Boston University recently conducted an experiment which involved blasting a loudspeaker through a standard PVC pipe. But instead of hearing the funneled sounds of dubstep…

As someone who works from home, I can attest to dumping my belongings on my laptop like a food tray if I ever decide to move between rooms. When the working location I’m moving to is outside of the house, I simply throw all that stuff in a bag. It’s a messy way to go…

Yes, yes, you might’ve heard smartphone accessory companies brag about how their wireless chargers are the thinnest in all the land. But, if you find a wireless charger thinner than 0.11 inches, it’s either made from some undiscovered material or an entirely bogus claim. The environmentally-conscious Xpad universal charger from Australian company PlusUs, however, is…

NVIDIA introduced their Quadro RTX line with an eye-poppin’ mix of high-end GPUs that put previous Quadro cards to shame and made workstations question their life choices. What seemed to be missing, however, was a mid-range RTX option. They introduced that last fall – the Quadro RTX 4000 – and it’s due… really, any moment.…

Every war begins when one side is pushed to the breaking edge; and when you see the abuse this ANYmal robot is being put through by these scientists from Robotics Systems Lab in Switzerland, you’ll know just where this particular feud started: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTDkYFZFWug&feature=youtu.be Like many robot dogs, the ANYmal is a four-legged mechanical robot weighing…

If you’ve ever wondered what miniature technology gnome is responsible for the delay you experience when writing on your Amazon Kindle or other E Ink device, it’s due mainly to the slow TFT backplates behind the screen that register the pressure points from your stylus. Transforming pressure data into something you can see on-screen may…

Even if you have just a grain of knowledge about the automotive industry, you’ll know how resilient Toyota is. This resilience is mostly due to what the company calls “The Toyota Way” – an adaptation of the kaizen philosophy where everyone, from the head honcho to the interns, work together to further improve the business.…

TechCrunch Disrupt Berlin brought together startups and tech enthusiasts from all over Europe November 29-30, 2018. I stopped by to bring you the highlights. The scale of the event in Berlin, Germany was noticeably smaller than the one in San Francisco, which we covered here. Disrupt San Francisco reported around 7,500 attendees while Disrupt Berlin expected…

With the Holidays just a few weeks away, it’s probably time to think about what gifts the young kids in your life might like. If they’re into robotics, perhaps Bellrobot’s Mabot Plug-and-Play Modular Robot is just what you’re looking for. Sure it’s a STEM-based learning kit, but it’s easy to put together and program in…

With more houses becoming almost sentient with their built-in A.I.s and voice-activated functions, it can feel a tad creepy coming back home to find some invisible guardian controlling your personal living space. That said, mui is attempting to bring some of that analog connectivity back into the digital home. It isn’t a hovering know-it-all like…

We did a story earlier this year on where to find other HW nerds in Seattle. But what if you want to specifically find VR nerds? Wonder no more! In this article, we give you a peek inside a huge monthly VR MeetUp in Seattle. It’s a sure spot for a chance to demo VR…

Back in 2016, Nintendo released the NES Classic Edition – a miniaturized version of their 1985 Nintendo Entertainment System (called the Famicom in Japan). The console came preinstalled with 30 of the console’s best games. With titles like Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past, and Super Metroid included in…

Fans of open hardware that also just so happen to like using a Mac, your prayers have been… slightly heard? According to the internal service readiness guide for this year’s MacBook Air, Apple has made their new laptop’s battery a self-removable one. For context, ever since MacBooks and MacBook Pros with retina displays were released…

Just over a year ago, SolidSmack reported that Astropad creators Astro HQ had successfully funded their latest project — Luna Display — on Kickstarter, having raised over $645,000 to bring the project to life. The (minimal) hardware and accompanying app claimed to seamlessly turn any iPad into a second display. Well, now it’s here; we…

All of us were told off from drawing on the walls as children for a lot of reasons. Maybe it’s because we couldn’t reach high enough for our parents to appreciate our work. Or perhaps they couldn’t see art if it was right in front of their faces. Or it could just be the uncleanable,…

Despite advances in the field of helmets and head protection, few safety gear companies give as much attention to another critical part of the body for getting work done: the hands. Sure—your head is the brains of the outfit (literally), but without fully-functional digits, getting manual work done is next to impossible. While many gloves…

Ever since Amazon’s Alexa was released back in November 2014, I’ve been afraid of inanimate objects suddenly greeting me or setting my schedules. It’s gotten so bad I’ve decided never to name any future pets or daughters ‘Alexa’, for fear I might suddenly activate a bystanding Alexa-enabled device. This is only going to get harder…

Last year, Kano debuted a complete DIY desktop computer kit based around the Raspberry Pi as a way to get kids interested in computing. The unforeseen problem, however, is most kids today prefer to interact with touchscreen mobile devices—such as smartphones and tablets—rather than a desktop PC. Kano took notice and has launched an updated…

While the Nintendo Switch Labo lets you create your own external peripherals, there’s no getting around the fact the vanilla Labo consists of flimsy cardboard. To this end, people have been finding other materials to better improve Nintendo’s ambitious—but in some cases, materially flawed—creation. And what better material to use than LEGOs! Apart from being a…

It’s no secret that commercial 3D printing has been taking giant technological leaps in the past few years—but bringing the price per part down has been a significant technological barrier for just about every industrial 3D printer manufacturer. With their recently-announced Metal Jet commercial 3D printing platform, HP aims to take what they’ve learned from…

This year’s TechCrunch Disrupt had a reported 7,500 attendees bustling through the Moscone Center in downtown San Francisco, September 5th-7th, 2018. There were a ton of interesting talks, the Startup Battlefield competition with a $100k prize, exhibitors small and large at the expo and, yes, we’ve got all the highlights for you. See the details in…

It would seem like an impossible endeavor to top NASA engineer Lonnie Johnson’s Super Soaker water gun, but a team of German engineers may have taken the water weapon crown with their Spyra One- a water rifle that fires ‘water bullets,’ meant to improve accuracy and distance. Whereas the Super Soaker requires you to fill…

Being able to talk to friends and relatives from far away via Skype or Facetime is all well and good, but it just doesn’t have the physical interaction you get when the person is actually beside you. Combined with the first few minutes wasted shouting to see if the person can hear you over the…

What you’re looking at right now isn’t a Bluetooth speaker. It isn’t even a pint-sized Roomba. What you see in the photos and videos here is actually Logitech’s newest MX Vertical mouse. While older users of computer peripherals are no strangers to mice the shape of actual rodents (some early computer mice were even bigger…

Don’t get me wrong – today’s graphics cards are no slouch. While they deliver images which are almost on par with blockbuster movies, the biggest issue graphics cards have to deal with right now is light; more specifically, how it bounces, reflects, and refracts off objects similar to the real world. Nvidia Turing isn’t the…

Let’s face it: the days when learning for kids meant going outside to play are dwindling fast. Instead of experiencing the outside world for themselves (or reading about it in a classic paper bound book), children of this generation are more content to sit in front of a screen for hours on end and absorb…

There were scattered reports of Mackbook Pro users covering themselves in ash and eating gallons of ice cream earlier this week with Lenovo’s announcement of their new ThinkPad P1 ultralight mobile workstation. Ultralight mobile workstation. Yeah, I just used those words together in a sentence – TWICE. First though, I admit, ‘Ultralight’ is my word…

Rather than forcing chunky peripherals on your head or hands via VR or AR, real holograms are the stuff of science fiction: true interactive displays which humans can interact with on a more personal level. The day when such a display would come to fruition was thought to be right up there with flying car…

An unusual robot designed by professor David Zarrouk at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev is capable of changing its shape to overcome obstacles, allowing it to roll around on wheels, crawl like a turtle, and even flip itself over to traverse difficult terrain. The RSTAR (Rising Sprawl-Tuned Autonomous Robot) features sprawling wheel-leg assembly, which…

It’s all over the tech news, of course, but the Magic Leap mixed-reality headset, yeeeears in the making, is now available for developers, creators or anyone who wants to shell out $2,295 for ML’s inaugural edition HMD. The Magic Leap One Creator Edition launches with SDKs, Unity and Unreal Engine 4 support, tutorials, preview experiences, games,…

An interesting 3D camera has launched, the Wunder360 S1. This is a 360-degree camera, similar to one you may have or others you’ve likely seen: it captures visual activity happening all around you. It’s developed by Evomotion and a follow-up to their highly-rated Wunder360 C1 camera. But the S1 adds quite a bit more. It’s…

Researchers from UC Berkeley’s Biomimetic Millisystems Lab have been busy developing their Salto jumping robot since its debut in 2016. Back then, the robot was capable of jumping at great heights, but had orientation issues and could only complete two jumps in a row before crashing. The researchers have since solved the orientation issues with…