1. One to help
The walking cane used by visually-impaired people hasn’t evolved in years, but remains an effective and essential tool. The cane allows people to detect objects in their immediate vicinity but doesn’t help when potential obstacles are further away. Manuel Zahn and Armaghan Ahmad Khan at the Technical University of Munich have developed a device that uses infrared and haptic feedback to help blind people navigate safely and efficiently.
The device uses infrared cameras in 3D-printed glasses to capture a map of the vicinity. Since it uses infrared, it can detect objects and surfaces even in dark areas. How cool that visually-impaired people will see better in the dark then others will! When the cameras detect objects, haptic feedback helps the wearer locate them – the closer the obstacle, the stronger the vibration. This allows the wearer to get a picture of objects not only in their immediate vicinity but over a distance too.
Using five people for testing, the participants achieved 98% accuracy when navigating an obstacle course. Astonishingly, all five were able to complete the maze in the first run. It is hoped that with further improvements manufacturing the device will cost less than a game console, making it available to many people who could really benefit.
2. One to be wary of
If you get locked out of your email, social accounts or other online accounts it can be a massive pain and very frustrating. Maybe resist the urge to use third-party services to regain control of your account though – as there are so many dodgy players out in internet land!
As described in the linked article, the author tweeted, “I need help. My account got hacked.” and they immediately had replies from bots directing them to people that may help. There are legit account-recovery services but there are also scams – and it can be difficult to differentiate between the two. These services will always ask for your personal details to try and unlock an account but make sure they are only asking for ones relevant to that account. Also in one instance the person claims that he needs another $65 for a “firewall-booster”. If you’re not technical, maybe run it a past a friend who would know that a firewall-booster is not related to account recovery.
You also need to ask yourself, “Is it worth sharing my account details to this unknown person?” If you are trying to retrieve say, a crypto-wallet, think about the risks involved. Often, using third-party account retrieval is too risky and it’s better to go through the sometimes painful process provided by the actual company where your account is locked.
3. One to amaze
The word “bike” means different things to different people: a bicycle, a motorbike or perhaps in the near future, a hover bike. Swedish startup Jetson (I know an obvious name – but I like it!) may pave the way to making hover bikes as common as motorbikes with their Jetson ONE personal hover bike.
The Jetson ONE is an electrical vertical take-off and landing vehicle that weighs around 115 kilos. It carries just one person and is purposely small and a little slow so that owners will not need a pilot’s license to fly it.
It runs on batteries that allow 20 minutes of flight with a maximum speed of 63 mph. It can fly as high as 1,500 feet above ground and uses LIDAR to detect its distance to the ground. Even if one propeller fails, the hoverbike can still operate but it will strongly suggest that it’s a good idea to land soon!
In terms of training and safety, buyers must attend a two-day seminar before they get to ride their hoverbikes. At $92,000 USD, there are 118 preorders for the bikes at the moment.
To further ensure safety, co-founder Peter Ternstrom says that only those who have or have had a pilot’s license will be given the hoverbikes at first. Not surprising since he himself says: “This is a machine made for mischief, basically. I want them to be very responsible.” Hmmmmm……