Amazon is using an electric vest to help improve worker safety when dealing with automated systems and robots inside its warehouses, according to a report from TechCrunch. The Robotic Tech Vest, which is really just a pair of suspenders connected to a belt, signals to robots that a human is entering a space to avoid any sort of collision. The way the so-called vest works is by arming human workers with sensors that can communicate with robotic systems.

Drones have a fundamental design problem. The kind of drone that can carry large payloads at high speeds over long distances is fundamentally different from the kind of drone that can take off and land from a small area. In very simple terms, for the former, you want fixed wings, and for the latter, you want rotors.

For the first time, a new network of satellites will soon be able to track all commercial airplanes in real time, anywhere on the planet. Currently, planes are largely tracked by radar on the ground, which doesn't work over much of the world's oceans. The final 10 satellites were launched Friday to wrap up the $3 billion effort to replace 66 aging communication satellites, reports CBS News' Kris Van Cleave, who got an early look at the new technology.

Longer life times, larger ranges and faster recharging—developments such as electric mobility or the miniaturisation of electronics require new storage materials for batteries. With its enormous storage capacity, silicon would potentially have decisive advantages over the materials used in commercial available lithium-ion batteries. But due to its mechanical instability, it has so far been almost impossible to use silicon for storage technology.

I flew across the country to Portland to experience the Adapt BB, Nike’s new self-lacing, Bluetooth-enabled sneakers, but the guy showing me around campus is wearing a pair of Zoom Flys that refuse to stay tied. Within 10 minutes of tying them, they’re untied again, flailing all over. I hate when people point out my untied shoes, but his feel intentional. Of course I notice the laces. Of course I point them out. He laughs and swears he’s not doing this on purpose, that Nike hasn’t deliberately set up my visit with a scene out of an infomercial fail.

The head unit, made with help from Lockheed Martin (which designed the F-35) is way more than a protective shell. Built around a custom-fitted insert based on a 3-D scan of the pilot's noggin, it combines noise-canceling headphones, night vision, a forehead-mounted computer, and a projector---not so different from the one in your office's conference room---that displays live video on its clear visor.

The Internet of Things promises to connect billions of otherwise ordinary devices to the internet, but when each one needs to have its own battery, there’s a limit to how small or cheap they can become. A new paper-thin Bluetooth chip that’s able to operate entirely without a battery could be about to solve this problem. The postage stamp-sized chip from Wiliot is able to harvest energy from the ambient radio frequencies around us, such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and cellular signals, and use them to power a Bluetooth-equipped ARM processor that can be connected to a variety of sensors.

Come one, come all and behold the future of space travel: steam power! No, seriously; half a century after the world's first manned space mission, it seems that interplanetary travel has finally entered the steam age. Scientists at the University of Central Florida (UCF) have teamed up with Honeybee Robotics, a private space and mining tech company based in California, to develop a small, steam-powered spacecraft capable of sucking its fuel right out of the asteroids, planets and moons it's exploring.

Israeli startup Coral Detection Systems unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week a product that it says is able to quickly detect drownings in swimming pools and alert rescuers. The product, Coral Manta, which the company calls “the first of its kind,” is a hexagonal-shaped device — the same shape as the large flattened manta ray fish it’s partly named after — powered by solar panels covering its surface.

“A takedown artist.” That’s how Ford describes the gobby-looking new Mustang Shelby GT500. We presume that’s ‘Murican for ‘giant killer’.That’s backed up by Ford’s bullish claim that “the new Shelby GT500 will surprise supercar owners with its Ford Performance racing tech, supercharged engine and visceral swagger". Sounds punchy, until you look at the spec and discover the Shelby is every inch the musclebound supercar botherer.

India’s solar capacity addition is set for a record in 2019. New installations this calendar year will reach nearly 14 gigawatts (GW), which is about 50% more than the capacity added last year, according to a report by the Gurugram-based renewable energy consultancy firm Bridge to India, released on Jan. 09. The new capacity addition will take India’s installed solar capacity to about 38 GW by the end of the year. Overall, the country is estimated to add nearly 16 GW of clean energy capacity in 2019, driven by large-scale solar projects.

The world’s hottest pepper is currently the Carolina Reaper, clocking in at an average of 1.6 million Scoville Heat Units. The world’s hottest tomato? That’s still to be determined. The current hottest tomato in the world is, of course, none of them, because tomatoes don’t make capsaicin, the chemical compound that gives hot peppers their kick. But, a group of researchers say that the bland red fruits (yes, they are technically fruits) could conceivably be genetically engineered to begin pumping out the scorching compound, due to tomatoes’ close evolutionary relationship with peppers.

Commentary: I haven't eaten beef in a decade, and the new fake meat at CES comes close enough to cow to gross me out. That's a compliment, I think.

Germany automotive firm Continental is best know for its tires, but at CES 2019 the company is demonstrating something a little different: package delivery by robot dog. As part of its research into the future of mobility, Continental has partnered with robotics company ANYbotics (a spin off from ETH Zurich) to imagine the future of package delivery. In a staged demonstration on the CES show floor, the firm showed how one of ANYbotics’ four-legged robots could jump out the back of a self-driving delivery truck and carry a package right up to someone’s front door.

Amazon Alexa is in almost everything from microwaves to wall clocks, and the latest addition to that list is a bike. The bike you can see above is part of a new range of cycling products coming later in 2019 called the Cybic Legend. There's also an electric bike in development called the Cybic E-Legend and both have been announced ahead of being shown at CES 2019.

Scientists from Russia and around the world see plasma rocket technology as a crucial possible ingredient for speedy missions to Mars and beyond. Physicists from the Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Siberian branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Novosibirsk are preparing another round of experiments aimed at successfully harnessing the power of thermonuclear plasma for use in a rocket engine, institute deputy director Alexander Ivanov has told journalists.

The distance from Aleppo to the lab at Montreal’s Trudeau airport where a young engineer-in-training is perfecting her first invention is 8,580 kilometres, but Shoushi Bakarian’s trajectory might better be measured in light speed.

It’s a common problem: You’re off to Le Mans with your new 400 bhp engine and you discover that it won’t fit in the airplane's overhead compartment. This week, Nissan showed off the answer to this traveler’s nightmare with its ultralight DIG-T R 1.5 liter, three-cylinder petrol engine that is small enough to fit in carry-on luggage and boasts a power-to-weight ratio better than the engine of a Formula 1 racer.

Wearables are most useful when worn 24/7 to track your activity across the entire spectrum of your life. With the PowerWatch 2, there is no need to take it off to charge it up.

Toyota Research Institute had a breakthrough last year in its pursuit to make driving safer. It was so profound that Toyota wants to open up to other automakers. The inspiration was modern-day fighter jets, which use a low-level flight control system to translate the intent of the pilot and keep the aircraft stable and tucked neatly inside a specific safety envelope. TRI calls it blended envelope control, an approach that lets its “Guardian” driver assist system combine and coordinate the skills of the human driver and the vehicle they’re driving.

‘Don’t believe everything you see on the internet’ is pretty standard advice, but it’s getting harder than ever to distinguish the real from the fake. A new algorithm from Nvidia could muddy the waters further by generating completely made-up human faces that are almost indistinguishable from the real thing.

Yes, that's right — underpants you can wear for weeks without washing. But Organic Basics' mission as a company is not to advocate laziness amongst the younger generation, though it might seem the case. No; it's all about saving the environment. "Our business is sustainable fashion. The traditional way of buying, wearing, washing and throwing away overpriced underwear is a terrible waste of resources.

Humans can get by in the most basic of shelters, can scratch together a meal from the most humble of ingredients. But we can’t survive without clean water. And in places where water is scarce—the world’s deserts, for example—getting water to people requires feats of engineering and irrigation that can be cumbersome and expensive.

In the first half of 2019, the Impossible Burger–the plant-based burger known for its ability to bleed plant-based blood–will be sold in grocery stores for the first time. Good Catch, a startup making fish-free tuna and crab-free cakes, plans to launch in February. And it’s possible that the FDA and USDA will approve the first chicken grown from chicken cells in a bioreactor for sale in restaurants. It means we could be at a tipping point for the post-animal meat industry. Sales of plant-based meat are growing; between August 2017 and August 2018, according to Nielsen data...

Development across the entire information technology landscape certainly didn’t slow down this year. From CRISPR babies, to the rapid decline of the crypto markets, to a new robot on Mars, and discovery of subatomic particles that could change modern physics as we know it, there was no shortage of headline-grabbing breakthroughs and discoveries. As 2018 comes to a close, we can pause and reflect on some of the biggest technology breakthroughs and scientific discoveries that occurred this year.

There's nothing like the prospect of being hanged in the morning to focus the mind." Eben Upton is describing the weight of public expectation that fell on his shoulders after the prototype of the $35 Raspberry Pi computer he co-created was revealed online in May 2011. After five years of tinkering with the board's design in relative anonymity, suddenly the number of people aware of the project exploded, with the YouTube video of the early Pi racking up 600,000 views in just two days.

Texas might have the perfect environment to quit coal for good. Texas is one of the only places where the natural patterns of wind and sun could produce power around the clock, according to new research from Rice University. Scientists found that between wind energy from West Texas and the Gulf Coast, and solar energy across the state, Texas could meet a significant portion of its electricity demand from renewable power without extensive battery storage. The reason: These sources generate power at different times of day, meaning that coordinating them could replace production from coal-fired plants.

The problem with common wisdom is that it’s often not all that wise. Take for example, the “fact” that vehicles are getting heavier all the time. At an average of 4,044 lbs for model year 2017, light duty vehicles in the U.S. aren’t exactly lightweights. However, as is usually the case, that single metric doesn’t tell the whole story. In fact when placed in a larger context, the vehicle weight story is actually surprisingly positive and tremendous progress has been made over the past four decades.

(Phys.org)—A small team of entrepreneurs affiliated with Skipping Rocks Lab has started a crowdfunding effort to mass-market a consumable water bottling device that produces what they call the Ooho!—a spherical blob of water held in a thin membrane that is small enough to be popped into the mouth.

A regular shop-bought mushroom has been turned into an electricity generator in a process scientists hope will one day be used to power devices. The “bionic mushroom” was covered with bacteria capable of producing electricity and strands of graphene that collected the current. Shining a light on the structure activated the bacteria’s ability to photosynthesise, and as the cells harvested this glow they generated a small amount of electricity known as a “photocurrent”.

The goal of AI is not to replace doctors, it's to optimize physician performance, releasing them from menial tasks and providing alternative assessments.

Futuristic-looking bendable tablets and smartphones have captured our imagination for years. Whether it’s the folding tablets found in Westworld or the many book-like slates with foldable pages in Microsoft’s future vision videos, a phone that folds out into a much larger device is dreamlike. Samsung is now trying to make these wild concepts a reality.

As rumored, Samsung showed off a prototype of a folding display today. Folded, it’s a smartphone. Unfolded, it’s a tablet. Neat! Less neat: The company sort of went out of its way to not really show very much. A prototype was onstage for about 45 seconds, and it was deliberately backlit to be intensely silhouetted. They “disguised the elements of the design” to keep secret whatever secret sauce they have.

As if we didn’t already have enough to worry about when it comes to artificially intelligent machines being able to perform many tasks faster and better than humans can, potentially stealing our jobs in the future, and presenting what some technologists worry is an existential threat to humanity, now it appears AI will soon be able to match humans at being, well, human, too.

Injuries can't heal without a constant influx of blood's key ingredient—oxygen. A new flexible sensor developed by engineers at the University of California, Berkeley, can map blood-oxygen levels over large areas of skin, tissue and organs, potentially giving doctors a new way to monitor healing wounds in real time. "When you hear the word oximeter, the name for blood-oxygen sensors, rigid and bulky finger-clip sensors come into your mind," said Yasser Khan, a graduate student in electrical engineering and computer sciences at UC Berkeley.