Category Archives: Innovation

Innovation

Flyboard Air

 


How many times a day do you look up at the sky?

Once…twice…three times…a lot…to much?

At one point or another we find ourselves staring at the sky. As if we have this spiritual connection to it. Over thousands of years the fascination never stopped. We observe it, study it, even dream about the mystical blue wonder. Yet most humans in history never had the chance to witness it first hand. To feel the breeze of air on your face. To see a cloud for what it truly is. Even touching it as you sit in the cockpit of a biplane. Why?

Does our obsession have to do with the fact that at we remain grounded on a daily basis?

 

 

Now that might change! With advances in modern techniques in UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle). Their has been a big push to find more applications for drones. Right now most drones are smaller then a cardboard box and can only fly for a limited amount of time.  Other then the military types. But the thing that most of us don’t realize is we only fly it around in our backyards. This doesn’t put us in the sky and without VR headsets it’s only a extension of our site. But what if someone found a way to change that. To help you bring your childhood dream to life. 

“I personally dreamed for this day to happen and I am excited to tell you that personal flight may soon be possible.” Meet Zapata Racing

Flyboard Air is an idea that every child has imagined, but till recently no one has been able to manifest into reality. It took advances in water hoverboard technology and UAV turbine technology to influence Zapata Racing to create something extraordinary. Although it’s still in the early stages of testing. Flyboard Air has already started to make strides in the hoverboard/jetpack industry.

Guinness Book World Record

7,388 feet

which surpasses the old distances record of (905 ft 2 in) Link

Flyboard Air

Features:

 Four 250-horsepower turbo engines

Jet A1 kerosene fueled

10,000 feet

Up to 93mph (150km/h)

10 min autonomy

Recently, some companies are starting to take interest in Zapata’s technology. Implant Sciences being a big player, has already submitted a letter of intent. Meaning soon Zapata Racing could be purchased by the leader in machines for explosives detection. Link

 

 

Innovation

Project Loon

 

 

In the picture above there are two things that stand out. Can you point them out?

Is it the vast emptiness of the Dubai dessert landscape or

the air ballon that floats in the blue sky?

Whether this image reminds you of something, like the fact that some of us might have experienced this before. Or that most of us have never witnessed this type of landscape. Even this type of flight. We all view it the same, an experience.

Recently I’ve come across a realization that we all take for granted things we do not realize we need to prioritize our life. Take for intense the internet. We as modern civilized people can’t live with out it. We read emails to conduct our business, view calendars to know when to be at work, even feed the inner drama queen with the social media habits of our closest friends. Once we adopted the internet like super glue promises, we won’t let go. But most of us don’t know or even realize how lucky you are to be able to Skype your business partner in China from the comfort of our home. Here something you might have never heard, (as of 2016, 46.1% of the population has an internet connection. Since 1995 it was at 1%, meaning the internet has increase more then tenfold. Reaching the first billion since 2005 and now reaching 3.5 billion.) – Link. With the world population at 7.4 billion as of 2016. This means 3.9 million people, more then half. Still don’t have access to something us Americans think is ubiquitous. The internet!

I know what your thinking, why can’t we just build a tower or base stations all over the globe and just beam it to them in rural areas. Possible yes, but the variables are endless and countries aren’t as organized or even civilized as we might be. So how do we get internet to war torn Syria, or the center of the Amazon rainforest, even in the Sahara dessert as like the picture above.

Whats the best way to equalize uniformity?


Project Loon

Google has offered up an idea recently from the X laboratories that might be the best way to close this gap from rural to urban life.

 

What, does it take to make a ballon broadcast the world with internet? Well it might surprise you not a lot. Start off with a certain location that has low wind turbulence. Then find a material to make a strong balloon that you can send up in the sky, lets say polyethylene plastic. Now build a device to broadcast a signal and let just add solar panels to it to power the device, because you know its in the air so it will have a lot of sun light. Still follow. Maybe not as easy as it sounds but a lot easier than the rest of the mad scientist might be gunning for.

As the device floats in the stratosphere away from airplanes and the everyday weather. It makes a system more reliable and less spotty as we call bad internet connections. The stratosphere has multiple layers of trade winds, making this more possible for multi-directional  paths to take the balloons to different parts of the globe. For maximum coverage of the Earth. With Google Project Loon making this possible for the half of the world without internet. We can move closer to our foreign friends, by helping them bring their rural countries out of oppression and into the endless uses technology gives us today.

Innovation

The Fall of Headphones

Listening to music is almost synopsis with life. It’s like it goes hand and hand with daily task or events. Everywhere we go its around us. In the stores we shop playing in the background, at the restaurant while we eat, even in the car as we drive. Walking down the street we can grab those earplugs and go into our personal concert thanks to Apple.

The immersion is real

Around us it’s there even if you don’t notice it. Here’s a fun game next time your in public. Look around and see how many people you can spot with headphones on? It might surprise you the number of people that are listening to their music away from the world around them. But yet, it’s like they’re in their own world enjoying the moderation that music can offer them in a daily life. 

But are we taking granted of something without realizing it?

I recently watched the movie Interstellar. At one point Matthew McConaughey playing (Cooper) is listening to headphones and the sounds of nature on earth like crickets and thunderstorms as they were in their space ship floating further away from earth. If you didn’t know space is a vacuum so sound is absent. It’s there, but not, if you could imagine that. The only sounds you have in space are the sounds of your space ship. This made me think that when we plug into our music libraries and tune out the world around us are we missing out on something more simple and delicate. What if we no longer had it, what we do? Link to video

 

A lot of us take for granted nature and the sounds of life around us. We would rather plug into our headphones or turn up the radio. But what if we didn’t have to shut off the world around us. Still be able to hear that firetruck as it goes by or someone screaming for help when we wouldn’t notice otherwise because we are to busy jamming out. 

 

Zungle

It’s the future of music with a bit of style.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1S3eX4ehQ9k

Zungle Panther is a new way to listen to music with a bit of ingenuity. It uses bone conduction technology to rid of the earbud experience.

 

“It’s something out of a sci-fi movie if you’ve never tried them before.” Mashable

 

First off what is Bone Conduction? Bone conduction is the conduction of sound to the inner ear through the bones of the skull. Basically in normal people terms. Its sound vibrating off your skull and being picked up by you eardrum to create sound. As shown with the picture below.

With Zungle Panther, they have installed two conduction speakers on each temple. By applying a certain vibrations to the skull the sounds travels down the ear canal and hitting the ear drum creating ear bud free sound. While being able to listen to the noises around you at the same time. I know crazy sci-fi stuff going down here.

Now that you can wear sunglasses that provide the music experience for you with an ease. While still being able to hear the world around you. Maybe you’ll see less people tuning everything out and possibly listening to both. This creates something new along side a different applicator for music. Creating music that will immerse both the outside world and your recording artist music at the same time. Ocean sounds on the same track as Come Sail Away by Styx. Interesting but kind of cool at the same time.

See how the device works without having to try them on first. Link
Kickstarter Campaign – Link

 

 

Innovation

PaperID

Paper Trails Are Getting Bigger

 

 

Sit back and think of all the times you pulled out a piece of paper to write something down. Hundreds? Thousands? To many to count? All those times you worked through high school math problems or when you needed to print your research paper in college. We all have a close connection in some way to that white 8.5 by 11 inch piece of paper.

But in all that time using those sheets of paper. Most people never thought that something so simple and complex when you need it to be could become better or even more adaptable.

Maybe It Can

Advanced research from 3 labs, University of Washington, Carnegie Mellon University and Disney Research which is one of the leading research labs in the country. Have come up with a way to update sheets of paper into tools that could revolutionize different types industries.

PaperID is something of true genius. Using common paper and a RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tag you can do some amazing things.

 

Wave your hand  or swipe

Touch it with your finger  or cover it

Free air tag motion

Use of a slider  or knob

All of these movements can be programmed into a  RFID tag that is placed on a sheet of paper. Then with a bit of programming magic you can do wonders with this technology.

This technique can be used on other mediums besides paper to enable gesture-based sensing capabilities. The researchers chose to demonstrate on paper in part because it’s ubiquitous, flexible and recyclable, fitting the intended goal of creating simple, cost-effective interfaces that can be made quickly on demand for small tasks. "Michelle Ma - Link

A Technique For Drawing Functional Battery Free Wireless Interfaces on Paper [PDF]

Disney Research Pittsburg Article Link

Washington University  Article Link