Soon you may be able to transform any of your photos into 3d images, using just software. That’s not all, you’ll find four more innovative technologies after the jump.
Xogen – Tap Water as Fuel?
Xogen claims to have developed a process to split water and deliver hydrogen on demand to a burner tip, combustion chamber, or fuel cell, without external pressurisation or storage while consuming modest amounts of electrical current.”
They have joined up with Tathacus Resources Ltd. to develop a home heating apparatus. Their claims have, however, met with scepticism from some quarters
Metal Storm Weapons
The Metal Storm Weapon system is “based on an electronically fired gun-and-launcher design with multiple rounds stacked in a single barrel — the only moving parts are the bullets themselves.”
O’Dwyer constructed a triple-barrel, a nine-barrel, and a 36-barrel firing prototype design that he lovingly named Bertha. “The reason for the 36 barrels was simply to indicate to ourselves and to others the future versatility of this system, in that with the 36 barrels we had 540 rounds on board and, based on the 45,000-round-per-minute rate per barrel, that gave us a maximum firing rate of 1.62 million rounds per minute,” the inventor says
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Self-Cleaning Sportswear
LiveScience reports that the scientists have devloped a new type of self-cleaning fabric that can go weeks without washing, including your underwear. Here’s how it works:
The new technology attaches nanoparticles to clothing fibers using microwaves. Then, chemicals that can repel water, oil and bacteria are directly bound to the nanoparticles. These two elements combine to create a protective coating on the fibers of the material
[Source]
Autonomous Starfish Bot
Created by Viktor Zykov, this autonomous Starfish robot “works out its own model of itself and can revise the model to adapt to injury: first, it teaches itself to walk; then, when damaged, it teaches itself to limp.”
The underlying algorithm, the researchers said, could be applied to much more complex machines and also could allow robots to adapt to changes in environment and repair themselves by replacing parts. The work also could have other applications in computing and could lead to better understanding of animal cognition. In a way, Bongard said, the robot is “conscious” on a primitive level, because it thinks to itself, “What would happen if I do this?”
2D Transformed
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have developed a new method of converting a single 2D image into a 3D scene.
The transformation is accomplished by teaching the computer to spot visual cues to differentiate horizontal and vertical surfaces in outdoor scenes. For example, the sky is always blue and cars will likely be resting on flat grounds
[Source]
