ELEKTRO

As LEDs become a more common source for room lighting, they’re opening a new pathway for linking mobile devices to the Internet, with the potential for wider bandwidth and quicker response time than Wi-Fi. At least that’s what researchers such as Harald Haas, chair of mobile communications at the University of Edinburgh, are hoping. “All the components, all the mechanisms exist already,” Haas says. “You just have to put them together and make them work.” Haas’s group, along with…

Fighting a wildfire requires a lot of manpower and a lot of equipment, including helicopters and airplanes for aerial support. The problem with the humans in those aircraft, however, is not only that do they put their lives at risk—and sometimes lose them—they’re not actually very efficient. Pilots need to do things like eat, use the bathroom, and sleep. That means spotter planes and water bombing helicopters spend more time on the tarmac than they do actually fighting fires. That’s why…

In a small town about 60 miles southwest of Amsterdam lies a stretch of road with no streetlights. Instead, along some 15,000 feet of Highway N329, cars follow stripes of glowing green paint that illuminate the edges of the road like an airfield landing strip at night. Designer Daan Roosegaarde calls it the highway of the future. For the past several years, Roosegaarde and his team of Dutch designers have been working on making these glowing lines a reality. This road in the Netherlands is the…

The embedded world Exhibition&Conference – the world’s biggest exhibition for embedded technologies with two internationally renowned conferences – brings theembedded community to Nürnberg from 24–26 February 2015. embedded world 2015 in combination with special shows and conference papers is presented under the theme of “We are the Internet of Things”.  In contrast to general opinion, 13 is a positive number for embedded world, because only a few months before the start of the 13th…

Finally the goal of electric bike manufacturers everywhere has been achieved in the aptly named Impossible. This electric bike folds down so small it'll fit in your backpack with room to spare. Impossible, which deserves to win all the design awards, is a good looking bike that ingeniously folds down into a case that doubles as the saddle. It's currently on Kickstarter smashing its goal which is well deserved after three years in the planning. Despite its size the Impossible bike is able to…

Between revolutionizing the car industry with Tesla and pushing human space exploration with SpaceX, Elon Musk seems to be everywhere these days. Now, Mr. Musk has a new project: bringing cheap, uncensored Internet access to the world at large.   Here’s what we know for sure: The Wall Street Journal reported on November 7th that, according to anonymous sources, Elon Musk is working with ex-Google executive and satellite industry alum Greg Wyler to deploy a large fleet of small…

Gogle has launched a new cloud platform in Germany called Open Roberta, as the internet giant looks to simplify “programming for small robots.” With Open Roberta, Google is looking to encourage kids to code using LEGO Mindstorms, which are basically programmable robots. Google has been working with local IT organization Fraunhofer IAIS, which received €1 million from Google.org, to develop the new program to work on ways to simplify the programming of the robots, and circumvent technical…

A report from Navigant Research analyzes a potentially booming global market for throttle-control and pedal-assist electric bicycles, e-bicycles, including global market forecasts for annual e-bicycle unit sales and revenue through 2023. While e-bicycles are still an emerging market in North America, where they have largely been viewed as a novel type of sporting equipment rather than a vehicle for transportation, they have developed into a mature market in many countries in Asia Pacific and…

Today, the world’s largest industry gathering for the electronic industry, electronica 2014, is starting with 2,737 exhibitors from 50 countries. Since 1964, electronica has been showing the electronic trends of tomorrow and providing a comprehensive overview of the international industry. This year’s key topics are automotive, embedded systems and lighting, as well as the overarching themes of security and energy efficiency. Facts & figures at a glance Exhibitors: 2,737 Countries: 50…

Today U.S. President Barack Obama announced his support for Net Neutrality and asked the FCC to “reclassify consumer broadband service under Title II of the Telecommunications Act.” In a press statement, Obama called Net Neutrality — the argument that Internet service providers should treat all data equally — “common sense” and said the U.S. “cannot allow Internet service providers (ISPs) to restrict the best access or to pick winners and losers in the online marketplace for services and…

Kano has made a kit, that gives kids (and adults) components to build their own computer. The kit is comprised of a single Raspberry Pi board, a wireless keyboard, a dongle, some cables and a memory card that comes with the Kano operating system. The idea is that kids will take these components and construct their own computer that they attach to a monitor. Storybooks will guide them through the process, also teaching them how to code within the Kano OS. They’ll be able to make a…

Amazon Echo is a voice-activated, cloud-connected speaker for your living room. With seven microphones embedded in the top of its 9.25-inch, tower-like design, it promises to hear you from anywhere in the room -- ask it to stream your favorite music, ask it to set an alarm, or ask it for information, and it promises to respond in kind. Amazon claims that you can put its speaker anywhere in the room and still talk to it without needing to shout. To wake it up, you'll address it as "Alexa,"…

Mr. Upendra Tripathy (Secretary, Indian Ministry of New and Renewable Energy) recently spilled the beans at a press conference that a Renewable Energy Act or a National Renewable Energy Policy is in the making. It is expected to be ready and perhaps in place by February next year before India organises its first Renewable Energy Global Investors Meet and Expo (RE-INVEST). The German Renewable Energy Act, from which this Act might draw upon, came into force during 2000 and provided a major…

The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and Deutsche Nanoschicht GmbH have made it their goal to develop tailored high-temperature superconductors for energy technology applications. The research institute and the BASF subsidiary New Business GmbH have signed relevant cooperation agreements. As part of the collaboration, the partners will open a laboratory at the Institute for Technical Physics of KIT in early 2015. Here, the scientists from Karlsruhe together with the experts of Deutsche…

The Neural Turing Machine will combine the best of number-crunching with the human-like adaptability of neural networks – so it can invent its own programs. Your smartphone is amazing, but ask it to do something it doesn't have an app for and it just sits there. Without programmers to write apps, computers are useless. That could soon change. DeepMind Technologies, a London-based artificial-intelligence firm acquired by Google this year, has revealed that it is designing computers that…