Electrowetting displays are just as capable as the liquid crystal displays in tablets and notebooks, but they are three times more efficient. Johan Feenstra, who heads Samsung’s electronic display research center in the Netherlands, explains how they work.
New gadgets galore at the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show press preview Amidst the milling hordes at the first big event of the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show, we spotted some products that immediately appealed to us. Some featured new technology, others clever design. Here’s a look at six of them from the show floor: let us know which one is your favorite in the comments below! 1. Company: 3M Touch Systems Product: Prototype 84-inch touch screen 2. Company: Synaptics Product: ClearPad integrated touch sensor and display 3. Company: Sculpteo Product: 3D-Printed iPhone cases 4. Company: Goal Zero Product: Yeti 150…
A long day of press briefings at CES on Monday was capped by Digital Experience, an event which was the last chance to preview gadgets before the show floor entered. While new device categories were thin on the ground thus year, there were still innovative products to be found.
Watch as four integrated robots work a casino game.
The unveiling of the new version of Lego’s Mindstorms kit wasn’t the only robot news at the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. While educational and entertainment robots still dominate the offerings on the show floor, there were also robots meant to help with tasks such as window cleaning, reminding young students about homework, or helping autistic children develop better social skills.
A lot of exhibits at the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas were about driving more safely, more efficient homes, or being more productive. But sheer entertainment is also a big seller, and none more so than video games. We took a look around the floor for some of the best games and game accessories.
Spacecraft have more degrees of freedom than typical cars or airplanes, making them complicated to pilot. A custom USB controller was created to make it easier to perform precise maneuvers in the spaceflight simulator Orbiter. Unlike most spacecraft games, Orbiter tries for as much physical realism as possible, including the need for considerable finesse when docking a spaceship at the ISS’s air lock. Unfortunately, the keyboard controls are not particularly intuitive, and most joysticks and other game controllers are designed with airplanes, cars, or avatars in mind, not spacecraft. So I decided to build my own controller.
Simon Hauger presents the West Philly Hybrid X Team’s EVX race car at the USA Science and Engineering Festival.
PlanetSolar is the first boat to travel around the world on sunlight alone. Christian Ochsenbein, the on-board electrical engineer during the 19-month journey, shows off the yacht’s power system.
The Knowledge Navigator sequence of this video was created in 1987 and presented at an educational computing trade show by then Apple CEO John Sculley. The introduction was appended later, in the 1990s. Back when Apple made the original Macintosh, the company created videos predicting what computing might be like in the future. In hindsight, the results were both eerily prescient and embarrassingly risible. IEEE Spectrum editors Stephen Cass, Steven Cherry, and Jean Kumagai affectionately recap the highs and lows of Apple’s 1987 vision of a world with a futuristic “Knowledge Navigator” device—including talking tablets, life without cellphones, and…
Software company Movea helps app developers corral the data from the sensors that pack today’s mobile devices.
The National Ignition Facility is one of the world’s more polarizing fusion experiments. But even the most vociferous critics will likely marvel at the sheer scale and ambition of the $3.5 billion facility. When IEEE Spectrum visited NIF in August last year for an in-depth look at the program, associate editor Rachel Courtland was given a tour by Bruno Van Wonterghem, the lab’s operations manager.
Turn by turn directions indicated by blinking LEDs and a tracker for a bike gone missing are built into these $200 smart handlebars launched at Haxlr8r in San Francisco
IEEE Spectrum toured Dupont Pioneer’s production genotyping lab in Johnston, Iowa to see how the process of improving the genetics of crops is automated.
3-D printers can do more than make plastic parts. At Cornell University, researchers are changing the shape of food, with geometric chocolates and space-shuttle scallops.