Top TechTop Tech #112: High-Speed Projector, Nanoscale Switches, Un-Stealable Bike
Important innovations in science and technology, every day
By Paul Worthington
Thursday’s Top Tech:
• High-speed projector also track moving objects
• DARPA devises Nanoscale Programmable Switches
• Bike can’t be burgled
High-speed projector also track moving objects
The DynaFlash is a fast projector with its own camera and computer that see the projection surface’s angle and modify the image to match a moving object.
It shows 1,000 frames per second, albeit with 8-bit images — more than 10 times faster “than anything you’re likely to see on even the most intense display,” Popular Mechanics reports, “and over 41 times faster than the average frame rate of movies.”
It’s aimed at augmented reality and other applications. The LED-based prototype was made at Tokyo University and Tokyo Electron Device.
DARPA devises Nanoscale Programmable Switches
DARPA reports its researchers have combined electronic and radiofrequency device engineering to devise “ultra tiny electronic switches with reprogrammable features resembling those at play in inter-neuron communication.”
“The nanoscale switches toggle on and off so fast, and with such low loss, they could become the basis of not only computer and memory devices but also multi-function radio frequency (RF) chips,” DARPA adds, “which users might reprogram on the fly to behave first like a cell-phone’s signal emitter but then, say, as a collision-avoidance radar component or a local radio jammer.”
Bike can’t be burgled
An un-stealable bicycle? Engineers in Chile devised a bicycle that doesn’t need a lock, because it “bends around bike racks or lampposts and secures itself.”
That’s right, the bike becomes its own lock.
With the Yerka, “a thief would have to cut through the main structure to take the bicycle,” they say. “The bike would have no use and the thief is left empty-handed.”
What if the thief cuts that lamppost instead of the bike’s frame? “If by any chance the thief breaks the structure your Yerka was secured to, he won’t be able to ride it,” the company says. “When the frame is in its locking position, it blocks the crank set and pedals too, making it impossible to ride.”
They’ll sell for about $500. Here’s more information.
