Welcome to the Future, Again.


Some of the latest technology currently in development:

The PHaSR. The Personnel Halting and Stimulating Response weapson was developed for providing a non-lethal method in crowd control and immobilizing attackers by shooting low-powered laser beams that induces a temporary blinding effect on targets. Sadly, it has neither 'disintegrate' nor 'frag' settings. (link)

The BLEEX. The Berkeley Lower Extremity Exoskeleton is basically a device designed to help soldiers carry all their stuff for miles and up hills and not get tired. It's still not quite Starship Troopers yet (the book, not the movie), but it's getting there. (link) But, it would cool to be used in conjunction with...

The Gryphon. The ESG Personal Flying Wing is a device to allow airborne paratroopers to be deployed in safer airspace and glide in to their designated target. (link)

The Bionic Arm. Claudia Mitchell lost her arm in a motorcycle accident, and has received a bionic arm that actually responds to her thoughts. If she thinks, "close my hand", it does. They did this by essentially rewiring the nerve endings that used to go the arm into a small patch on her upper chest where contacts on the bionic arm can pick up electrical impulses and translate them into actual movements of the arm. She is the fourth person to receive one of these prototype arms. (link)

The Teleporter. Researchers at the Niels Bohr Institute in Denmark has successfully teleported a small quantity of matter a distance of half a meter. While this doesn't sound all that impressive compared to the transporters of Star Trek, this is first time a macroscopic object composed of trillions of atoms has been successfully teleported - prior to that, the best they could do was one atom at a time. (link)

Labels: science/tech