This is the µFRII, the latest in Epson’s family of flying microrobots. The machine has 30 per cent more lift than its predecessor, which was unveiled last November, thanks to a more powerful version of Epson’s thin ultrasonic motors and a more efficient rotor shape. Mass has been reduced by using a gyro one-fifth the weight of its predecessor and ...

This is the world’s smallest and lowest-cost 13.56MHz RFID tag reader, claims Wokingham-based Innovision Research & Technology which developed it. Known as ‘io’, it includes an on-board Risc processor allowing it to be programmed to accommodate changes in the emerging near-field communications (NFC) standards. “The io reader’s small size and future-proofing opens up the possibility of RFID applications in completely ...

Spansion, the joint venture into flash memory by AMD and Fujitsu, has opened a development centre in Paris to work on security applications for its MirrorBit NOR technology. The firm is also adding systems engineering staff to its facilities in Paris, Dresden and Seoul. Spansion’s executive vice-president Tom Eby said the firm has until now had a “frankly pretty modest ...

A facility allowing firms to test WiMAX technology is set to open in Swindon at Intel’s Innovation Suite. WiMAX is the metropolitan area broadband access technology that could deliver 100Mbit/s over tens of kilometres. “We’re working to establish a WiMAX centre,” said Martin Curley, Intel’s global director of IT innovation. “I would expect it to be running within the next ...

Lauterbach has teamed up with Emtrion, a company which manufactures embedded boards using SH processors, to offer coordinated board and debugging design tools. The aim is to offer pre-built configurations containing the appropriate board and debugger setup files. The partnership will guarantee the mutual compatibility of the TRACE32 tools from Lauterbach with the HiCO.SH4 boards from Emtrion and also the ...

Dartmouth Robotics Lab, part of New Hampshire’s Dartmouth College, claims to have developed the first control methods that guarantee self-reconfiguring robots will not fall apart as they change shape or move across a surface. “It is possible to develop self-reconfiguration capabilities in a way that has analytical guarantees,” said robotics scientist Daniela Rus. “Understanding exactly how your system works and ...

Flexibot is a robotic arm from Staffordshire University which can walk on its own, end-over-end, along a row of docking stations. “The robot is a symmetrical arm with five degrees of freedom,” inventor professor Mike Topping told EW. “The idea is that it can have a series of docking stations. Once it is plugged into one of them, it references ...

Florida researchers have devised a novel way to get sensors into dangerous environments, and have made a prototype. The idea, from a team of engineering students at the University of Florida, Gainesville, is to put the sensing electronics inside a sticky-tipped projectile and shoot it into the environment with an off-the-shelf compressed gas gun – normally used in paint ball ...

A European project to develop an intelligent real-time surveillance system that automatically identifies violence on underground transport has finished, with a demonstration installed in the Barcelona metro. The system could find an eager market: Last week the British Transport Police released figures showing that last year violent crime on the London Underground rose by 22 per cent. The three-year project, ...

Increasing satellite communications traffic has seen Inmarsat launch the first of its third generation models. These have...