NASA has officially revealed its first all-electric X-plane, the X-57 Maxwell, which is currently being prototyped in several phases of operation at the Armstrong Flight Research Center located inside the Edwards Air Force Base. In addition to being NASA’s first piloted X-plane in two decades, this configuration boasts a skinny, high-aspect ratio wing, designed specially to boost efficiency by reducing drag in flight.
The UPS drone delivery subsidiary, UPS Flight Forward (UPSFF), announced that it has partnered with German drone-maker Wingcopter to develop the next generation of package delivery drones for multiple uses. Both of these companies will now step up to earn a regulatory certificate for a Wingcopter unmanned aircraft to make commercial delivery flights in the United States.
University of Zurich researchers have demonstrated an autonomous drone that can detect and avoid fast-moving objects, thanks to event cameras equipped with smart pixels that work independently of each other. In other words, the pixels that detect no changes remain silent, while the ones that see a change in light intensity immediately transmit information, thus only a tiny fraction of the all pixels of the image will need to be processed by the onboard computer to greatly speed up computation speed.
Apple officially revealed their newest MacBook Air, which offers faster performance, the new Magic Keyboard, twice the storage and a new lower starting price of $999. For starters, it boasts two times faster CPU performance, up to 80 percent faster graphics performance, at least 256GB of storage, and of course a brilliant 13-inch Retina display, along with Touch ID for extra security.
Photo credit: Evan Blass
Motorola is set to release the Edge Plus, One Mid, and Moto G8 Power Lite in the very near future. New images have surfaced of the Edge Plus, which is claimed to be their new flagship. Boasting a curved 6.67-inch AMOLED FHD+ (2340 x 1080 pixels) hole-punch display, Snapdragon 865 processor, up to 12GB of RAM, a triple rear camera setup consisting of a 108-megapixel sensor / 16-megapixel wide angle / 8-megapixel telephoto, and a 5,000mAh battery.