Neato Robotic Vacuum Cleaner: Best gift for your Mom

Tired of vacuum cleaning your floor? Here is something for you.
Neato Robotics is a California based company which aims to produce products to help people get free from household chores. On December 16 2009, they introduced a new Robotic Vacuum cleaner.

"The Neato XV-11"

This is not something very new in the market we had iRobot’s Roomba which came in 2002 which sold over 3 million units.

The technology which gives Neato an edge over its competitors is called the Room Positioning System (RPS) it uses laser vision mapping which maps the entire floor and avoids obstacles perfectly. It traces everything(360degree) within a 4mt range. It systematically moves over the entire floor by back and forth motion rather than moving at random, like its competitors do.

New Google products

Google has come up with a couple of new products 

1. Google goggles for Android
   
2. Google translate with voice
   

Google goggles

Google goggles is an great application which is exclusively available for the Google Android Platform. Its a visual system which lets you take a picture of something and that picture is compared with similar pictures available in the Google database to give you search results and details about it.

For E.G. You can take a snap of a book cover and get search results for it.

Its still has a lot of glitches and is under development.

"Sixth Sense" By Pranav Mistry

Technology as we know, has come a long way now. We have laptop computers which now even fit in our pockets. Smart phones which can do almost everything for you which you could never think of. We have 4G technology which can provide you seamless ultra high speed wireless internet connectivity anywhere on the go. We have powerful and energy efficient processors which are smaller than your thumb nail. But surprisingly a lot has not been done to connect our virtual/Digital world with the real world, Like we still have the same old mouse and keyboard for interacting with our computer and now we have touch which is becoming more prevalent. But still our computers/devices still don't recognize the real word, your computer does not recognize the fact that a thumbs up means good and thumbs down means bad.

But now, An Indian guy by the name Pranav Mistry, Research Assistant and PhD candidate at the MIT Media Lab has come up with an ingenious solution to the problem. 
The name:"Sixth Sense"  

Oyster, Wave Energy Project

Wave/Tidal energy is something which has a huge amount of energy stored in it but its not been harnessed on a large scale till now. Now a company by the name  Aquamarine Power  has developed a power plant by the name Oyster. Its a pretty simple idea so to say but its very effective.

The device is a pretty simple hydraulic pump which is connected to a wide hinged flap.The hinged flap moves along with the waves in the sea, thus creating a movement in the hydraulic piston; this pumps the water through underground pipes to electric turbine where it is converted into useful electricity.The oyster is attached at the sea  bed and pops 10mts above water.

Diabetes monitoring made easier

Diabetes is one of the most increasing body ailments in the modern world. Reports say that, India will be the Diabetics capital of the world. Now a diabetic patient has to go through a lot of pain for check up and some have to go through it on a daily basis. Well, one thing is for sure, what I believe is the field of medicine has always been supported by Engineering. Doctor can do nothing until they have reports.

So what we have is another ingenious idea from Engineers this time it’s from India. A team from The Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai (IIT-B); The leader of the research is Prof. Rohit Srivastava and a group of students have developed an Implantable glucose Bio sensor using nanotechnology. Once injected the bio sensor would help monitor blood sugar levels for up to six months using an external hand held device. 

Cyborg Insects

This is something very interesting. Ever thought if you could control an insect or an animal with a remote control? Sounds a bit cruel?, maybe it is, but that’s what a team of engineers at the University of California,Berkeley have already made possible. It’s a part of a program funded by the Pentagon’s Defence Advanced Research project Agency (DARPA). This project is led by Hirotaka Sato and Michel Maharbiz. The basic aim of the project is to create fully remote controlled insects. These insect will be fitted with tiny cameras looking for survivors after disaster or acting as the ultimate spy.


Basically, the team implanted electrodes into the brain and muscles of specific species of Green beetles, one african and an American one. Both respond to the simulations in almost the same way but the African species is larger and it could easily lift the weight of the electronics and the battery. This beetle can grow  as big as the size of the an average human palm.