Pokémon Go—the game that overlayed the live image from a smartphone camera with virtual items for the user to find and collect—catapulted augmented reality (AR) into mainstream consciousness. Ask people what AR is, and chances are this game will feature in the answer. However, gaming is not the only area where AR can be transformative; […]
Giving Old Gadgets a New Life
Modern technology presents us with a unique and uncomfortable dilemma; what to do with old electronic hardware? For many reasons—from a lack of updated software to the desirable features of newer models, to hard-to-replace batteries—we are replacing consumer electronics at an increasingly rapid pace. Regrettably, today’s thousand-dollar cellphone is often bound for tomorrow’s landfill. And, […]
Wireless Power Transmission: From Electric Toothbrushes To Battlestars
In “The Next 100 Years” Dr. George Friedman gives us a barely familiar technological landscape. Friedman, a strategist at Geopolitical Futures, sees solar energy—harvested from photovoltaics in outer space—as the primary source of electrical energy used on the ground (i.e., on the surface of the Earth). Electrical energy is beamed via microwave transmission to ground-based […]
Creating Control Systems For Autonomous Vehicles
When you’re faced with an incredibly complex task, it’s helpful to break it down into smaller, specialized components. Once you understand these individual tasks so that you can define and enforce their input and output tolerances, you can start automating the process and delivering productivity gains. One of the keys to successfully automating a task […]
Wireless Charging: Current Capabilities And Future Opportunities
Wireless power transfer (WPT), or simply ‘wireless charging,’ has become a headline feature of many consumer tech devices. Moreover, its usefulness does not end there: it’s also attractive for the automotive industry because there’s no direct link – and therefore no opportunity for a spark that could trigger an explosion. Moreover, a wireless charging system […]