I started out by just wanting to make a very small drone. But I quickly realized that there was a limiting factor in just how small and light I could make any design: the motors. Even small motors are still discrete packages that have to be attached to all the other electronic and structural elements. So I began wondering if there was a way to merge these elements and save some mass. I drew inspiration from how some radio systems used antennas made from the copper traces on a printed circuit board (PCB).

Even as STEM toys become more popular, Lego's construction sets remain the gold standard, with more recent products like Mindstorms and Boost expanding into the fields of robotics and coding. Now bread-and-butter sets like Lego city and licensed products like DC Superheroes get nifty additions like motorized parts and app connectivity, starting with Batman's iconic vehicle. This is the Batmobile from the current slate of DCEU films, complete with tiny cannons and a scowling Batman minifig. For the most part it's a pretty normal Lego set where you follow the instructions and snap it together with your hands. But maybe it was a little too normal: I still had to rely on a paper manual for help, as there are no instructions in the app. Maybe I'm a little spoiled at this point by products like Kamigami and Labo, but one of the advantages of making something app connected is the ability to have interactive diagrams that animate where to place each piece and even allow you to rotate the image for a better look.

The one thing I know from going to the Consumer Electronics Show over the past few years is that every time you go, you will find at least one Chinese company that you've never heard of … and that makes just about every kind of electronics gadget you can imagine. This year that one Chinese company was Haier. If the name sounds vaguely familiar, that's because Haier bought General Electric's appliance business in 2016. And if it doesn't, that's because the company hasn't really announced itself under its own brand widely. I did a walk-through of the company's booth, and it's worth skimming through despite the extremely authentic CES chaos, bustle, and noise.

The discovery of new materials can bring enormous societal and technological progress. In this context, exploring completely the large space of potential materials is computationally intractable. Here, we review methods for achieving inverse design, which aims to discover tailored materials from the starting point of a particular desired functionality. Recent advances from the rapidly growing field of artificial intelligence, mostly from the subfield of machine learning, have resulted in a fertile exchange of ideas, where approaches to inverse molecular design are being proposed and employed at a rapid pace. Among these, deep generative models have been applied to numerous classes of materials: rational design of prospective drugs, synthetic routes to organic compounds, and optimization of photovoltaics and redox flow batteries, as well as a variety of other solid-state materials.

The use of natural wood, hand-knitted fabrics, and leather lend a rustic hand-made vibe to the Maverick.Cavalier Cavalier Audio is a New Jersey-based designer and manufacturer of voice-controlled speakers. The company's latest product is Maverick portable Bluetooth and Wi-Fi speaker with Amazon Alexa voice control. Maverick blends a hand-crafted finish and immersive sound to a market that's positively crowded out with'me-too' products produced from mass-produced plastics and so-so design. The Maverick has been designed to stand out from the crowd by using authentic materials, stylish design while incorporating the latest audio technology. Maverick was dreamed up by a team of musicians and engineers with the aim of offering world-class acoustics to life via a 20W stereo speaker system featuring two active drivers and dual passive radiators that the designers claim will produce true room-filling experience.

Drones have become a mainstream product for businesses and consumers over the past five years, as functionality has expanded and pricing has dropped below $999. Companies like DJI, Yuneec, and Parrot have achieved significant market growth in the space, with affordable, relatively easy-to-use drones capable of capturing high-resolution (even 4K-class) content that would have previously required highly specialized equipment. Today I wanted to take a look at Redwood City-based startup Skydio's new R1 drone--a product that I believe has the potential to disrupt the crowded $5 billion drone market. Positioned essentially as a "self-driving camera," the R1 is embedded with 13 cameras. While this makes the R1 the definitive "follow me" drone, is it worth forking over the $2,499 asking price?

Accurately predicting the future health of batteries is necessaryElectrochemical batteries, such as lithium-ion and leadacid to ensure reliable operation, minimise maintenance cells, experience degradation over time and during costs, and calculate the value of energy storage investments.usage, leading to decreased energy storage capacity and The complex nature of degradation renders datadrivenincreased internal resistance. Being able to predict the approaches a promising alternative to mechanistic rate of degradation and the remaining useful life (RUL) modelling. This study predicts the changes in batteryof a battery is important for performance and economic capacity over time using a Bayesian nonparametric reasons. For example, in an electric vehicle, the driveable approach based on Gaussian process regression. These range is directly related to the battery capacity. For energy changes can be integrated against an arbitrary input sequence storage asset valuation, depreciation, warranty, insurance to predict capacity fade in a variety of usage scenarios, and preventative maintenance purposes, predicting forming a generalised health model. The approach RUL at design stage and during operation is crucial, and naturally incorporates varying current, voltage and temperaturethe investment case is strongly dependent on the degradation inputs, crucial for enabling real world application.

A group of roboticists at the University of Tokyo have created a flexible, flying "drone-robot" that could see a multitude of uses. The Dual-rotor embedded multilink Robot with the Ability of multi-deGree-of-freedom aerial transformatiON, is (thankfully) better known by its acronym, DRAGON. As illustrated in the video below, it can change its shape mid-flight and fly through tight spaces. The current version of DRAGON consists of four modules, each equipped with a set of maneuverable thrusters. Battery-powered hinged joints link the modules.

How it works: Control hot water and heating from your smartphone. How it works: A lightbulb you can dim, or turn on and off, using your phone. How it works: A smart speaker you control by speaking to Alexa, an intelligent'virtual assistant'. Functions include answering questions and playing music. How it works: Be alerted on your phone when someone rings your doorbell, and speak to that person via a video link, regardless of where you are.

Unsurprisingly, it has been China – not Europe – that has proposed, with little success, forming a common front against Donald Trump's trade tantrums. Even Washington's bullying cannot awaken European policymakers from their slumber – or, as seems more likely, their moderately lubricated afternoon nap. Hardly a week passes without a new alarming announcement that Beijing has managed to outmanoeuvre Brussels in yet another domain. Last week brought three such developments. First, China Merchants Group, a state-owned company, joined forces with SPF Group and Centricus – asset managers based in Beijing and London respectively – to form a $15bn fund to compete with SoftBank's $100bn Vision Fund, launched to invest in the most promising technology firms worldwide.