The UK’s National Oceanography Center in Southampton is prepping to launch a new autonomous underwater vehicle (also known as a robo-sub, landlubber) capable of exploring undersea volcanoes in the Cayman Trough up to 20,000 feet deep. It’ll only run for about a kilometer at a time though, so while it does have quickly replaceable lithium [...]
Autonomous seafaring vehicles may not be quite as common as unmanned land or air vehicles, but Harbor Wing Technologies looks to be doing its small part to change that, with it now apparently pretty far along in the development of its self-named Autonomous Unmanned Surface Vehicle (or AUSV). Among other things, it employs a specially-designed [...]
What with all this electric car business going on down on terra firma, it was clearly about time we all got to work flying the negatively-charged skies as well. The ElectraFlyer C, built by the Electric Aircraft Corporation, recently got some extended hang time on its maiden flight, powered by a 5.6 kWh lithium battery [...]
When landing or taking off in a plane, the only things you want to see on the runway are lights and stripes. Foreign Object Debris (FOD), the stuff that can get sucked into engines or even flatten a plane’s tires, has become the focus of several new technologies that are setting out to remove the [...]
Nissan has a knack for pumping out novel safety advancements every few months, and the latest two are in the same vein as a few previous efforts. Two new technologies, Side Collision Prevention and Back-up Collision Prevention, fit into the auto maker’s Safety Shield concept to “help protect the vehicle and its occupants from potential [...]
Wipe those tears away, budding astronaut. SpaceX’s latest failure wasn’t completely in vain. According to head honcho Elon Musk, the problem came just after a “picture perfect first stage flight” when a longer than expected thrust decay transient of the new Merlin 1C regeneratively cooled engine became “just enough to overcome the stage separation pusher [...]
Ad Astra’s VASIMR plasma rocket is about ready for testing, only problem is it requires the vacuum of space to do it in. NASA is now considering taking the rocket up to the International Space Station, clipping it on and firing her up — perhaps even using it to reposition the station. Formerly of NASA, [...]
Ah, Black Hat. How we adore you. Each year there’s always one speaker who shows up and completely undermines something that most people assume is rock solid. This year, our pals at Hack-A-Day were in attendance to hear Nate Lawson expose California’s FasTrak toll system for the security hole that it is. Essentially, toll transponders [...]
While we’re guessing “working replica” might be a bit of a stretch, this full-size, drivable Tumbler built by Bob Dullam in his garage is still quite the impressive piece of work, and will no doubt crush any eBay records set by home-built K.I.T.T.s if it ever actually goes up on the auction block. Unfortunately, apart [...]
Okay, so maybe it’s not a huge deal if your Civic Hybrid only hums around town, but when behind the wheel of say, a Lightning GT, you’re going to want that bad boy to make some serious racket. Lotus is taking a somewhat fresh concept and kicking out an idea of its own in order [...]