Technologies

Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department Bomb Squad Robot This robot, or one like it, was recently used to snatch a gun from a suspect. In life and death situations, a robot gives police options. Last week, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, in a standoff with an attempted murder suspect, did something unusual: they waited him out, and then sent in a robot to disarm the suspect. With the man’s gun gone, the standoff ended peacefully.

Internet devices powered by Wi-Fi and other telecommunications signals will make small computers and sensors more pervasive. ven the smallest Internet-connected devices typically need a battery or power cord. Not for much longer. Technology that lets gadgets work and communicate using only energy harvested from nearby TV, radio, cell-phone, or Wi-Fi signals is headed toward commercialization. The University of Washington researchers who developed the technique have demonstrated Internet-connected temperature and motion sensors, and even a camera, powered that way.

What if robots could figure out more things on their own and share that knowledge among themselves? any of the jobs humans would like robots to perform, such as packing items in warehouses, assisting bedridden patients, or aiding soldiers on the front lines, aren’t yet possible because robots still don’t recognize and easily handle common objects. People generally have no trouble folding socks or picking up water glasses, because we’ve gone through “a big data collection process” called childhood, says Stefanie Tellex, a computer science professor at Brown University. For robots to do the same types of routine tasks, they also need access to reams of data on how to grasp and manipulate objects. Where does that data come from? Typically it has come from painstaking programming. But ideally, robots could get some information from each other.

Rockets typically are destroyed on their maiden voyage. But now they can make an upright landing and be refueled for another trip, setting the stage for a new era in spaceflight.

An age of wonders and mischief Perpetual motion stirs Philadelphia The first debunking Perpetual motion moves to New York The "impossibility" of perpetual motion

In early July at the Boreal Mountain Resort, temperatures reached 91 degrees Fahrenheit (33 degrees Celsius), which is not uncharacteristically hot in California at the crest of the Sierra Nevada mountain range. The real surprise was that the ski area near Lake Tahoe was making snow.