innovator

Energy Dept. funds CO2 recycling, 'solar fuels'

The Department of Energy announced two technology clean-energy research projects to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, the same day that the Senate dropped efforts to include carbon limits in an energy bill this summer.

As part of a $106 million stimulus funding program, the Energy Department on Thursday named six companies which will be testing methods for using the CO2 from industrial processes as input for products, such as cement, fertilizer, or plastics.

The Energy Department also said that it will create a "solar fuels innovation hub," a research center focused exclusively on converting sunlight into liquid fuels. This … Read more

Robot Toyota lift truck performs unmanned tasks

Routine use of robotic lift trucks may not be far off.

Researchers at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, along with a team of engineers, have transformed a Toyota 8-Series lift truck into an autonomous bot capable of working alongside human supervisors using voice commands or hand gestures.

The 3,000-pound-capacity lift truck from Toyota Material Handling (TMHU) is capable of locating, lifting, moving, and placing supplies while traversing just about any type of terrain. It was demonstrated last month at an event hosted by the U.S. Army Logistics Innovation Agency at Fort Lee, in Virginia.

"Robotic forklifts have the potential to protect both military and civilian personnel working in high-risk environments, such as hazardous material storage facilities, said Brett Wood, president of TMHU.

The demo included a review of the robot's safety features, sensor capabilities, and human-robot interface.

The researchers and engineers developed a complex network of systems to enable the lift truck to navigate real-time conditions faced by lift truck operators (navigating obstacles and interacting with other moving vehicles, for example). To do this, they added a camera, sensors, laptops, servomotors, Wi-Fi, and a PDA.

"We chose the internal combustion Toyota lift truck because it can be operated outdoors on packed earth or gravel and because, with mini-lever control some of its functionality can be controlled electronically rather than solely mechanically," said MIT Professor Seth Teller, who headed the project.

The modified vehicle wirelessly exports video from its own point of view, so the human supervisor, even if hundreds of miles away, can see whatever is nearby (provided there is network connectivity between the lift truck and supervisor's tablet).

In September 2009, for example, the team demonstrated the lift truck operating autonomously at MIT, in Cambridge, Mass., while under the supervision of an operator in Washington D.C.… Read more

Don't interrupt, disrupt! Be viral without viral marketing

As we're inundated with hero shots of the iPad every day, on every billboard and the back of every magazine cover, it appears to be a good time to rethink the relationship between advertising and product, between marketing and innovation. It's not that Apple doesn't spend any money on advertising--no, it was pouring a whopping $500 million into its launch campaign for the iPad. But what is different is that Apple's marketing doesn't have to be clever or utterly creative. In fact, it is stunningly not so. No major social media campaign needed to be sparked, no user-generated content contest needed to be held. And while the ongoing tongue-in-cheek anti-Microsoft ads are undeniably cute, they are not really an advertising revelation. Gone are the days of the bold "1984" campaigns. Today, Apple earns enough attention to forgo any ostentatious marketing, in fact, so much that a cleverly orchestrated campaign would distract from the brand rather than boosting it. The company simply displays its products--that's all it takes. Apple's products are viral without any viral marketing.… Read more

At E3: Wiretape, a super-thin cable you can paint

LOS ANGELES--At a show that's as large as it gets for video games, in a corner of E3 the was a product designed to be hidden from sight entirely.

Hitech Innovation's Wiretape, which the company claims is the world's thinnest wire at 0.16 millimeters, has been designed to de-clutter the usual mess of wires that can stretch down from high-mounted televisions, or across rooms.

It works like a roll of tape, running as long as it's needed before consumers can cut it with a pair of scissors. Then, the loose ends can be fed into … Read more

Gates, other execs call for more energy spending

Bill Gates and other corporate figures say America's current energy strategy is hurting the economy, the environment, and national security and is asking the government to devote more money to fuel alternative energy.

The group, dubbed the American Energy Innovation Council (AEIC), released a detailed report on Thursday highlighting the problem and offering its own recommendations (PDF). Members of the group were due to meet with President Obama in the White House to discuss their concerns and possible remedies.

The group sees the energy challenge as more serious and much worse than most people realize, predicting a burden that will become more costly unless the U.S. can change its current energy policies.

In its findings, the group pointed out that the nation spends $80 billion a year on military research and $30 billion a year on health and medical R&D, but only around $5 billion each year on new energy R&D. With such a small amount of the national budget devoted toward energy research, the group believes the U.S. lags behind other countries in spending on alternative energy.… Read more

IBM Study: CEOs Say Creativity and Managing Complexity Are Vital Today

IBM has just released its fourth annual survey based on 1500 face-to-face interviews with global CEOs. Past studies have been rich sources of understanding the trends that company leaders are seeing shaping their businesses. The opening statement by IBM's own CEO, Samuel J. Palmisano, sets the stage for this year's study:

"[E]vents, threats and opportunities aren’t just coming at us faster or with less predictability; they are converging and influencing each other to create entirely unique situations. These firsts-of-their-kind developments require unprecedented degrees of creativity — which has become a more important leadership quality than attributes … Read more

Listening to B&W's $15,000 diamond speaker

I first wrote about Bowers & Wilkins updated diamond speakers in January, but I finally got to hear them a few weeks ago at Innovative Audio & Video, one of B&W's New York City dealers.

Specifically, I listened to the 802 Diamond speaker that sells for $15,000 a pair. The speaker has a big and beautiful, carefully honed design.  The 159-pound speaker stands 44-inches high by 14.5-inches wide by 22-inches deep. It has a 1-inch synthetic diamond dome tweeter, 6-inch woven Kevlar midrange driver, and two 8-inch Rohacell woofers. Rohacell is a super lightweight, yet highly rigid material that is ideal for woofers that need to move a lot of air without flexing.

The 6-inch midrange driver is housed in a teardrop shaped "head" that is crafted from inert Marlan composite material, a synthetic, mineral-filled resin. This granite-hard enclosure is sprayed with seven coats of hand-polished black lacquer. The head's internal cavity--a sphere closely coupled to a short tube--absorbs most of the sound from the back of the driver. On the outside, the teardrop shape smoothly disperses the sound around the speaker, creating a solid, three-dimensional stereo image.

The diamond tweeter is fitted to a tapering tube that is filled with absorbent wadding to control the energy that radiates off the tweeter's backside. The diamond tweeter doesn't look like a diamond at all, it's a dull gray dome, so it wasn't just used for show. B&W favored aluminum tweeters for its top models for years, but now uses  diamond domes because of their higher stiffness-to-density ratio. According to B&W, diamond gets closest to the sound of a hypothetically perfect tweeter.

I've heard my share of high-end speakers, but the thing that struck me first about the 802 Diamond's sound was its purity. It's the second-generation diamond model, the original version was the 802 D--the company changes it models every five to seven years. B&W offers a complete range of 800 Diamond Series speakers for hi-fi and home theater systems. … Read more

Microsoft--down but by no means out

The living dead never looked so good.

For several years now Microsoft has been written off by friends and foes alike as a shuffling shadow of its former self, doomed to feed off the profits of past successes while it goes gentle into the good night of irrelevance. And yet Microsoft's profits remain enviable and its outlook far from bleak.

It may be too soon to engrave Microsoft's headstone as Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff recently did.

Microsoft, after all, has a history of making dramatic changes in direction, changes that have saved it more than once from software … Read more

Washington to award $1 million in tech challenge

In a bid to stimulate future jobs and industries, the U.S. Department of Commerce is offering a million dollar incentive for people who can come up with the best ideas to commercialize technology.

Announced on Monday, the new i6 Challenge will award up to $1 million to each of six winning teams with the most creative ideas on how to make different innovative technologies profitable in their regions. Washington's goal is to ensure that the right technologies make the leap from the test lab to the marketplace to help the U.S. economy stay alive and competitive.

Run … Read more