realsoon

micro flying spy drone
The battery powered craft can stay in the air for 50-60 minutes at a time, and moves around at up to 55 kilometers an hour. The Micro Air Vehicle has flown more than 200 successful flights, including flying in a representative urban environment. "If there is an emergency, you could provide "eyes" on whatever the emergency is, for police or Homeland Security," explains Vaughn Fulton of HONEYWELL. In the meantime, the U.S. Army has prepared a promotional video showing the craft zooming over war-zone streets. Drones have been given to the military to test during training exercises.

Gravitational Tractor
How would you change the course of an Earth-threatening asteroid? One idea - a massive spacecraft that uses gravity as a towline - is illustrated in this dramatic artist's view of a gravitational tractor in action. In the hypothetical scenario worked out by Edward Lu and Stanley Love at NASA's Johnson Space Center, a 20 ton nuclear-electric spacecraft tows a 200 meter diameter asteroid by simply hovering near the asteroid. The spacecraft's ion drive thrusters are canted away from the surface. The steady thrust would gradually and predictably alter the course of the tug and asteroid, coupled by their mutual gravitational attraction. While it sounds like the stuff of science fiction, ion drives do power existing spacecraft and a gravitational tractor would work regardless of the asteroid's structure or surface properties.

Now, robotic muscles that can work 1000 times faster than human ones
Researchers from the MIT, led by Professor Sidney Yip, are now developing artificial muscles for robots that can work 1000 times faster than human muscles with virtually no extra energy demands and wear and tear.
The artificial muscles are made from conjugated polymers and can carry electric current just like metal wires. Conventional polymers like rubber and plastic on the other hand are insulators and do not conduct electricity.

Whole Skin Locomotion
The robot's pliable body can squeeze between obstacles, through holes, traverse uneven surfaces and maneuver into tight places, making it ideal for exploring everything from a digestive tract to a disaster zone.

Armed/Weaponized Talon Robots
What do you get when you mount a TRAP (Telepresent Rapid Aiming Platform) on a Ferret tracked mobile robot?

The US government has unveiled a "non-lethal" laser rifle
The US Department of Defense (DoD) believes the weapon could be used, for example, to temporarily blind suspects who drive through a roadblocks.

Researchers at The Neurosciences Institute in La Jolla have designed a machine that thinks
The machine's brain is called Darwin, after the 19th century biologist who conceived the theory of natural selection. Under Institute director and Nobel laureate Gerald Edelman, M.D., Ph.D., the Darwin series of thinking brains began in the mid-1980s. Today, Darwin 6 consists of a realistically designed simulation of a nervous system housed in a mobile platform called NOMAD (Neurally Organized Mobile Adaptive Device).

Re-wiring the Body
At the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, physicians earlier this year laid the foundation for such technology when they strapped Jesse Sullivan's new arm and shoulder into place. Sullivan, a Tennessee power company lineman whose arms were amputated after he was electrocuted on the job, suddenly had an artificial limb that allowed him to rotate his wrist and upper arm, bend his elbow, grip with his hand, and, incredibly, feel. And like Luke Skywalker, Sullivan required just a few minutes of learning to adjust to the new limb, mainly because it used a neural wiring scheme similar to nature's own.

NASA has a plan for asteroid deflection... for 2029
NASA has outlined plans for dealing with an asteroid a quarter of a mile wide that astronomers believe is on a near-collision course with Earth (in 2029).

Gravity Train Tunnels Through The Earth's Crust
A gravity train is a theoretical means of transportation intended to go between two points on the surface of Earth, following a straight tunnel that goes directly from one point to the other through the interior of the Earth.