On February 4 Northrop Grumman and US Navy conducted the first flight of the X-47B UCAV, the prototype for the UCAS-D program. The aim is the development of an armed stealthy drone that will be able to routinely operate from aircraft carriers. The X-47 is an unmanned aircraft similar in size to a jet fighter. The flight took place at Edwards AFB, the aircraft (AV1) reached 5000ft altitude and 240kt while performing a simple fly-over with the landing gear deployed. After 29Β’ it landed performing a rough carrier landing simulation.

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DLR's institute of Robotics and mechatronics is developing one of the most advanced dexterous robotic arms and hands that combine accurate object manipulation, robustness and strength in a quite compact and light package. The robotic hand is inspired by the human one although anatomic fidelity isn't the main objective. It can handle small and fragile objects but it is also able to exert force of 30 newton at the fingertips. It is also able to survive a baseball bat hit (a 66 g impact!) while being relatively compact and light. The key of these arms amazing ability lies to its operating principle and its clever inner workings.

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If you like your mobile phone simple and you use it mostly as a phone and not as a camera, mp3 player, gaming console or “internet communication device” then you will certainly like the JohnΒ’s Phone. It is a simple but elegant device that performs this sole function but in a very easy way.

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Ferrari was the first team to launch their 2011 car today in Maranello. The new F150 is a conceptual evolution of previous year F10 with all the necessary changes demanded by the new F1 rules. As usual in F1 car launches at this time of the season the cars carry simplified or outdated front and rear wings and many aerodynamic details will change until the first 2011 race. The most interesting aspects of the new F150 are hidden inside.

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The online design website designboom.com in collaboration with seoul design foundation organized a competition on bicycle design. 3078 entries from 88 countries created a huge variety of imaginative designs but the winner was the amazingly simple Β‘Bike 2.0Β’ from Inoda + Sveje, a studio based in Milan Italy comprised from Kyoko Inoda and Nils Sveje.

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This is the new Audi R18 that will claim the companyΒ’s 10 th victory in 2011 24heurs du Mans. Audi returns to a closed cockpit configuration since the R8C of 1999 and the related Bentley EXP Speed 8. The latest regulations with the engine displacement restrictions favor coupe racecars instead of open cockpits because with about 150hp less power drag is more important than ever. The new R18 follows the engine-downsizing trend of recent years and it is powered by a new V6 turbo diesel. The previous R15 had a V10 and both its predecessor the R10 (the first Diesel Le Mans winner) and the 2009 winner Peugeot 908 used a V12.

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Nine months ago Audi presented its third e-tron concept car that was based in the small A1. In contrast to the other two e-tron concepts this one had an internal combustion range extender. We featured this concept at the time; you can read our feature here. The most interesting aspect of this project is the IC range extender, which is a wankel rotary engine developed by Austrian firm AVL.

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A NASA-funded team led by Felisa Wolfe-Simon of NASAΒ’s Astrobiology Institute announced a discovery that although humble and small as a microbe it fundamentally changes what we consider as life and the conditions where the development of life is possible. Every living being on Earth (microbes, elephants, humans, trees, everything) use exactly the same building blocks and the exact same replicating mechanism in a molecular level. This mechanism is based on DNA/RNA, molecular complex acids and the use of 6 basic chemical substances, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur. Arsenic is a toxic substance because by behaving similarly to Phosphorus can disrupt this delicate process.

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Robotic arms that are destined to handle a wide variety of objects with different shape, robustness, surface finish, shape, size and weight are usually modeled after the human hand with elaborate fingers, grippers and stepper motors. A group from Cornell Cumputational Synthesis Laboratory comprised from researchers from Cornell, University of Arizona, iRobot and DARPA followed a completely different approach. They designed an extremely simple and cheap robotic gripper that is amazingly capable of handling objects. In the image above you can see on the left the gripper and on the right its main component, a simple party balloon filled with coffee grounds.

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