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Why do we call the Mercedes Benz Smart Car smart — when it's really just small? A truly smart car might be able to drive sideways, like the equally tiny, shape shifting EO Smart Connecting Car 2.

A research project from the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence, the EO 2 is designed for crowded cities where rush hours are nightmares and parking in nearly non-existent.

Though just a prototype, the EO 2 gives ample evidence of how some of its innovations could lead to truly smart, …

Die Bilder nach den Erdbeben in Haiti, Japan, L’Aquila oder Christchurch haben sich tief eingeprägt: zerstörte Häuser, chaotische Szenen, Verletzte und Tote. Erdbeben bleiben auch für die Städte der Zukunft eine tödliche Gefahr, aber wir sind ihnen nicht machtlos ausgeliefert. Von Stefan Wiemer, Direktor des Schweizerischen Erdbebendienstes, Professor für Seismologie an der ETH Zürich

Städtebau für die Zukunft muss auch die Erdbebensicherheit berücksichtigen, um Schäden wie in Christchurch 20…

Drei junge Ingenieure an der Technischen Hochschule Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna in Pisa haben sich zu einer Arbeitsgruppe zusammengeschlossen, die die Entwicklung eines

Daimler lässt erstmals selbstfahrende Lastwagen auf die Straße. Der US-Bundesstaat Nevada hat zwei Lastwagen von Daimler für den Betrieb im Straßenverkehr zugelassen. Die Zulassung sei ein weiterer Schritt auf dem Weg zur Serienreife, sagte Daimlers Nutzfahrzeugvorstand Wolfgang Bernhard am Mittwoch in den USA.

Im Juli 2014 hatten die Stuttgarter erstmals einen autonomen Lkw auf einem gesperrten Teilstück der A 14 bei Magdeburg vorgestellt. Damals hatte Daimler angekündigt, die Technologie so…

Extreme Hitze und hohe Luftfeuchtigkeit kennzeichnen das Wetter in Katar. Siemens testet dafür seine Avenio-Straßenbahnen im Klima-Wind-Kanal des Rail Tec Arsenal (RTA) in Wien auf Temperaturbereiche von null bis über 40 Grad Celsius.

2016 werden in Doha, der Hauptstadt von Katar, 19 Avenio-Straßenbahnen oberleitungsfrei fahren. Sie sind mit dem Energiespeichersystem vom Typ Sitras HES von Siemens ausgerüstet, das bei kurzen Stopps an den Haltestellen aufgeladen wird. Eine leistungsfähige Kl…

Nur 160 km/h fliegt die Maschine, dafür aber abgasfrei: Airbus will sein kleines Elektroflugzeug in Serie bauen und bastelt schon am Nachfolger.

Die Vision lebt: Lange schon träumen Ingenieure von abgasfreien, leisen, wartungsarmen Flugzeugen. Airbus will nun einen großen Schritt gehen: Das Unternehmen hat angekündigt, 100 Exemplare des Elektrofliegers E-Fan 2.0 herzustellen.

Gut 500 Kilo wiegt das knapp sieben Meter kurze Flugzeug, nur ein Bruchteil normaler Maschinen dieser Größe. Und die be…

After natural disasters, it’s often difficult to reach the people who need the most help. Are small robots, able to fly above damaged areas or crawl into collapsed buildings, the answer? Hurricanes, mudslides, earthquakes and terror attacks often leave widespread damage – and those injured can often be very hard to reach for search and rescue teams.

Robots can play a vital role in getting life-saving aid to those in need. In fact, Dr Robin Murphy, director of the Center for Robot-Assisted Sea…

Bats are able to fly with such breathtaking precision because their wings send data about even minuscule changes in airflow to their brains. It is the bats’ sense of touch—keyed to highly sensitive sensor cells in those wings—that provides the information, researchers say.

The findings may help design aircraft better able to negotiate obstacles by sensing and adjusting to air turbulence.

How communication between the wing-based receptors and neurons in the brain enable a bat to make split-se…

„The sky is the limit“ – dieses Motto wird bei einer der weltweit führenden Gruppen der Luxushotellerie ab sofort wörtlich genommen, denn „Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts“ setzt mit der Fertigstellung des ersten eigenen Privatjets neue Maßstäbe in der Welt des luxuriösen Reisens.

Der erste Jet, der unter der Flagge einer Hotelgruppe fliegt, soll über den Wolken die selben Standards bieten wie in den über 70 luxuriösen Standorten weltweit. Um das zu gewährleisten, hat die „Four Seasons“-Gruppe…

In the wee hours of one random January morning, a drunk federal employee accidentally crash-landed his friend’s 2-foot-by-2-foot drone, or “quadcopter,” in the White House lawn.

The employee, whose name hasn’t been identified, went to bed that day without realizing where exactly the drone had landed. The next day, after seeing the news blow up, he contacted the Secret Service and admitted he was drinking at an apartment a few blocks away from the White House and lost control of the aircraft.…

What if buildings could adapt their shape and form – without any other input from us? Architect Skylar Tibbits says 4D printing could make materials that build themselves.

The way we build our structures has become more and more sophisticated. But the materials we build them from are static, waiting for us to fit them to the required shape.

What if they could assemble themselves – and even change form if they needed to? The emerging technology of 4D printing – where 3D-printed material chang…

Pilotless drones have had the biggest impact on the battlefield, serving as eyes in the sky and even as attack aircraft. But could they find another role, helping farmers boost food production?

The popular image of drones is as expensive pieces of military hardware which can be used for spying – or even going on the offensive.

But that's changing as robots become more integrated with our everyday lives. Farming is one of the new frontiers, as food production has become more automated – ev…

The European aerospace consortium EADS has unveiled its electric airliner, the E-Thrust, which could radically transform commercial aviation by 2050. Developed in partnership with Rolls-Royce to increase the efficiency of future airliners, the E-Thrust concept is a hybrid electric propulsion system that could slash fuel consumption, emissions and noise. All if this has been incorporated into one design called the eConcept.

As part of the ‘Flightpath 2050’ plan produced by the European Comm…

Von Rom nach Mailand in 2 Stunden und 15 Minuten: Die italienischen Staatsbahnen wollen mit einem neuen Superzug Standards setzen. Der

1,7 Kilometer lang, 26,5 Meter breit und 37 Meter hoch soll der Tunnel werden, den sich Norwegen für rund 115 Millionen Euro nun bauen will. Es ist der erste Tunnel für Schiffe auf See und groß genug für das Hurtigruten-Postschiff MS Midnatsol.

IEEE Robotics & Automation Society

ICRA is the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society's flagship conference and is a premier international forum for robotics researchers to present their work. The 2015 conference will be held May 26-30, 2015 at the Washington State Convention Center in Seattle, Washington, USA.

The conference will include plenary and mini-plenary sessions, contributed paper sessions, workshops and tutorials, an industrial forum, exhibits, and robot challenges as well as some even…

Doctors rescue boys by propping open their airways using stents made via 3-D printing.The three infant boys were each near death. They were all on ventilators. All had airways so tiny that the breaths they tried to exhale couldn’t get out.

As a last-ditch effort to save their lives, doctors at the University of Michigan used a 3-D printer to produce small plastic stents that surgeons attached, just above the boys’ lungs, to prop the airways open.

In all three attempts, carried out since 20…

In just a few months, the Microsoft wearable device that blends virtual reality with the real world seems to have gotten closer to becoming a commercial product.Technologies that blend virtual reality with physical reality could be used for work, play, and education.

Microsoft is making fast progress with HoloLens, the device that you can wear over your eyes to blend 3-D virtual objects with rea…

Tesla founder Elon Musk has launched two batteries designed to power homes and businesses in an attempt to reduce the world's reliance on fossil fuels for generating electricity. The wall-mounted Tesla Powerwall battery was described by Musk as "the missing piece that's needed" in the transition towards "a sustainable-energy world". Up to nine Tesla Powerwalls can be stacked together to work as one to power a home, with each unit costing $3,500 (£2,300).

The intention is for the batteries t…