Changespotting: Wireless bicycle brakes

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Computer scientists in Germany have attempted to demonstrate the plausibility of having a completely fail-safe wireless system in the future. To illustrate their point, they have created a wireless bicycle brake and their testing found that it works 99.999999999997 per cent of the time. Although there may be some practical application to their wireless bicycle brake, the main purpose of the exercise was to identify whether wireless systems could become completely fail-safe.

Solar-powered sailing drones to clean up oil spills
Environmental clean-ups are at the top of the priority list in New Zealand at the moment, and it is also of considerable concern to a man named Cesar Harada who hopes to create a robotic sail boat capable of withstanding ocean turbulence and absorbing oil floating on the surface of the sea. These drones will be agile enough to tack efficiently and will ultimately run on wind and solar power.

Robots will one day be able to build other robots
If the crew at the Modular Robotics Lab have anything to do with it, robots will one day have the capacity to build new robots. This article includes a video of a robotic "cart" creating a quadruped robot out of insulation foam. One of the suggested possibilities for this technology is the deployment of robots to Mars that can then create additional robots to help with their missions.