Jackson Chung

Bio-Inspired Whiskers Enable Tiny Flying Drones to Navigate and Explore Total Darkness by Touch

By Jackson Chung October 14, 2026

Rats and mice move through pitch-black burrows and narrow tunnels by brushing long, sensitive whiskers against nearby surfaces. Those same whiskers detect contact forces with almost no pressure, letting the animals build a mental map of walls, corners and openings without ever relying on sight. Researchers at Delft University of Technology have now translated that approach to a palm-sized flying robot, mounting a pair of artificial whiskers on a Crazyflie drone that weighs roughly 44 grams once the sensors are added.

Autowash Rolls Out Kuka Robots That Map Every Car for a Four Minute Touchless Wash

By Jackson Chung October 14, 2026

Drivers pull into a bay expecting the same spray pattern every time, yet modern vehicles keep changing shapes, sensors, and contours that older equipment never anticipated. Autowash founders Dennis and Erin Dreeszen recognized this mismatch years ago after building their Denver-based chain of touchless self-serve washes from a single site in 2013 to more than two dozen locations. Conventional machines relied on decades-old designs that struggled with electric vehicles and accessories, so the couple decided to rebuild the process around industrial arms rather than fixed nozzles.

Alibaba’s New Qwen N1 Glasses Let Wearers Pay by Gaze With Swappable Temple Batteries

By Jackson Chung October 14, 2026

Photo credit: Alibaba
Alibaba began selling its Qwen N1 and N1 Pro smart glasses in China on October 13 after a Hangzhou event, with pre-orders open since late September. Standard packages start near 2,899 RMB ($433) for the N1 and 3,399 RMB ($508) for the Pro, though subsidies and launch offers can bring the lower model closer to 2,200 RMB ($329). Both models land in the same price band as Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses and are listed on Taobao, Tmall, JD.com, and Douyin.

Fujifilm Instax Square 2 Rounds Out Instant Photography With Built In Color Mood Switches

By Jackson Chung October 14, 2026

Fujifilm’s latest square-format instant camera arrives with a noticeably softer outline than the boxy model that preceded it. The Instax Square 2’s body measures 139 by 119.5 by 71 millimeters and weighs 450 grams empty, shaped from smooth plastic that curves around the edges rather than meeting them at sharp angles. Vertical texture lines run along the grip and continue around the large front lens barrel, giving the camera a consistent feel in the hand whether you hold it for a quick portrait or a wider scene. Three color options ship with it: Slate Blue, Misty White, and Brick Red.

Gemini 4 Argon Helps Robots Learn Cornhole Throws and Trash Disposal From Ordinary Video

By Jackson Chung October 13, 2026

Google DeepMind showed this week that Gemini 4 Argon can watch a short video of a person tossing beanbags into a cornhole board, map the arm swing and release point onto a humanoid’s joints, build a full physics simulation of the robot and the board, practice the motion until the hand clears the hip cleanly, then transfer the result to Apptronik’s Apollo humanoid. On real hardware the robot sank seven consecutive shots. Researchers described the sequence as turning ordinary video into a scalable training ground that compresses weeks of manual simulation modeling into a few hours.

NASA’s Perseverance Rover Sets New Record for Off-World Distance Driven Across Mars

By Jackson Chung October 13, 2026

NASA’s Perseverance rover crossed 28.10 miles on the surface of Mars on October 11, 2026. That figure edged past the 28.06 miles logged by the Opportunity rover, which explored the planet from 2004 until 2018. Perseverance reached the mark on its 2,006th Martian day after roughly five and a half years of operations. Opportunity required nearly fifteen years to cover the same ground.

Motorola Moto G (2026) Turns Modest Specs Into All-Day Reliability

By Jackson Chung October 13, 2026

Motorola positions the Moto G (2026), priced at $249.99 (was $300), as a straightforward unlocked option for people who need a phone that covers daily work, messages, maps, and media without demanding extra spending. It lands in a crowded budget field with a few practical touches that keep it usable day after day. A 6.7-inch IPS LCD panel runs at 120Hz with a peak brightness rating around 1000 nits, protected by Gorilla Glass 3. Text and icons look a little soft because the resolution sits at 1604 by 720 pixels, yet the higher refresh rate keeps scrolling and interface movement fluid enough that most owners notice the smoothness more than the pixel count during ordinary use.

Apple TV 4K (2026) Gains Hands Free Siri AI and a Much Faster Processor

By Jackson Chung October 13, 2026

Apple released the fourth generation Apple TV 4K today, priced at $299 with the matching remote included. Preorders open immediately and the first units ship on November 13. The box now carries the A19 chip, which Apple says runs the processor roughly 50 percent faster and the graphics twice as fast as the A15 inside the 2022 model.

Apple HomeView Arrives on Counters and Walls as a Screen That Recognizes Who Walks Up

By Jackson Chung October 13, 2026

Apple HomeView landed this morning as a dedicated screen meant to sit in a kitchen, on a nightstand, or fixed to a wall, handling music, video calls, and the controls for lights, locks, and cameras all at once. Both the tabletop version and the wall-mounted version cost $299, with pre-orders open today and units shipping on November 13 in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and a handful of other countries.

AVIDrone Electric Helicopter Wins DARPA Lift Challenge Carrying Nearly Four Times Its Weight

By Jackson Chung October 12, 2026

An electric helicopter built by a small team in Columbia, Maryland, flew away with first place in the DARPA Lift Challenge after hauling a load of cast iron that weighed nearly four times the aircraft itself. The machine, called Katana, finished its winning run in just over nineteen minutes at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force in Dayton, Ohio. Judges measured an empty weight of 29.3 pounds and a payload of 112.4 pounds, producing a ratio of 3.84 to 1. No entry cleared the official four-to-one mark that would have unlocked the full prize amounts, so the top check was cut to $1.25 million. Still, the result set the highest completed score of the week and left every other finished aircraft behind.