Grab your 3D glasses and have a look at the Boeing 787 Dreamliner as it takes to the air.
First Flight – a set on Flickr.
Category: Technology
FUTUREPICTURE: Light Field Camera Project
Multi camera madness to be sure…
So, what does this thing do? The primary function of this array is to capture the Light Field, a four-dimensional function that is capable of describing all rays in a scene. Surrounding you, now, and always, is a reverberating volume of light. Just as sound echoes around a room in complex ways, bouncing from every surface, so does light, creating a structured volume. Traditional, single-lens cameras project this three dimensional world of reflected light onto a two dimensional sensor, tossing out the 3D information in the process, and capturing only a faint, sheared sliver of the actual light field. By taking many captures at slightly shifted locations, it is possible to capture a crude representation of the light field. The number of slices determines the resolution of capture; our 12 captures at 7cm separation is a bare minimum. What can you do with a light field? The lowest hanging fruit is computational refocusing. By computational refocusing, we mean focusing the image AFTER it is captured.
Ice Rockets Away!
Very nice, I like the part about the propellant being frozen while it’s being loaded into the motor.
Researchers are developing a new type of rocket propellant made of a frozen mixture of water and “nanoscale aluminum” powder that is more environmentally friendly than conventional propellants and could be manufactured on the moon, Mars and other water-bearing bodies.
New aluminum-water rocket propellant promising for future space missions.
Air Powered Microprocessor
I seriously doubt that you will be playing Super Mario Brothers on this any time soon but it would be fantastic for a self operating chemical analysis machine.
Each pneumatic valve is operated by changing the air pressure in a small chamber below the air channel, separated from the circuit by a flexible impermeable membrane. When the lower chamber is filled with air the membrane pushes upwards and closes the valve, preventing the binary signal flowing across one of the processor’s junctions.
Sucking out the air from the chamber reopens the valve by forcing the membrane downwards, letting the signal move across the junction.The two researchers used the valve-controlled channels to produce a variety of logic gates, flip-flops and shift registers, which they linked together to create a working 8-bit microprocessor. That means that the longest discrete pieces of data it can handle are eight binary digits long, like the processors used in 1980s consoles such as the Nintendo Entertainment System.
Hackable ‘Soft Camera’ for Computational Photography
An open-source digital camera platform… Wow… The video for this project makes mention of on the fly dynamic range adjustments and infinite focus via micro lens arrays. Amazing stuff, I can hardly wait for something like this to make it to the general public.
Anyone will be able to create new features for the camera by writing aps that control all the camera’s functions — focus, exposure, shutter speed, flash, etc. Cameras could be taught new tricks with downloadable apps, analogous to iPhone apps.
[A tip of the CyberHelm to Special Agent Greg for this one]
Stanford open-source camera could revolutionize photography.
Airborne Laser Zaps Ground Target
Cool… No shark jokes please.
According to Boeing, the C-130 fired its 12,000lb high-power chemical laser through the beam control system while flying over White Sands Missile Range, N.M. The beam control system acquired the ground target and guided the laser beam to the target.
[via NetworkWorld]
Zapping things from the sky: Airborne Boeing laser blasts ground target.