The 'flying car' will be airborne

         A flying car is a type of personal air vehicle or road able aircraft that provides door-to-door transportation by both ground and air. The term "flying car" is also sometimes used to include hover cars.A basic flying car requires the person at the controls to be both a qualified road driver and aircraft pilot. This is impractical for the majority of people and so wider adoption will require computer systems to de-skill piloting.

            

           These include aircraft manoeuvring, navigation and emergency procedures, all in potentially crowded airspace. Fly-by-wire computers can also make up for many deficiencies in flight dynamics, such as stability. A practical flying car may need to be a fully autonomous vehicle in which people are present only as passengers.

         

           Many prototypes have been built since the first years of the twentieth century using a variety of flight technologies and some have true VTOL performance, but no flying car has yet reached production status. Flying cars were planned to enter Russian market in 2018. A practical flying car must be capable of safe, reliable and environmentally-friendly operation both on public roads and in the air. For widespread adoption it must also be able to fly without a qualified pilot at the controls and come at affordable purchase and running costs.

Robots May Start Moon Base Construction

            A recent NASA-sponsored report says two remote-controlled droids could build a landing site for a lunar outpost in less than six months—offering a safer, cheaper alternative to human-powered construction in the early phases of the project. NASA plans to have a moon base fully operational by 2024. One of the key challenges is first preparing a landing area, because the launchpads would have to protect nearby human habitation, to be built later, from being sandblasted by spacecraft.

            The researchers say they need more information about soil conditions at the lunar poles—the likeliest sites for an outpost—before they could build prototype construction robots. “NASA has identified blast debris from takeoffs and landings to be a hazard for its planned moon outpost,” said David Gump, president of Astrobotic Technology, Inc., which undertook the new study along with researchers from Carnegie Mellon University.

        “The problem is real, and the question is how NASA will choose to solve it”.  The study concludes that a pair of 330-pound (150-kilogram) robots the size of riding lawn mowers would best get the job done.Gump estimates that two of the bots plus the landing vehicle and pads would cost U.S. $200 to $300 million—and the robots could continue to provide value for the expense after the landing site is complete.

Ultra-Thin OLED's

OLED stands for Organic Light Emitting Diode screen are often touted for their incredible picture quality, which is considered by videophones to be superior to traditional Liquid Crystal Displays (LCDs). Display tech moves incredibly fast. There will certainly still be some “antique” LCD monitor screens hanging around in 2020, but as far as new stock is concerned, it’s easy to see the entire industry shifting to paper-thin OLED surfaces, many with touch capability.

 Malleability of OLED screens that has captured the public’s attention, and will create a paradigm shift in how we use displays in the near future. That’s because OLED displays can be created not only from glass substrates (as is common right now) but also on bendable plastic materials that allow for a host of other applications. LG showed off a 55-inch OLED display that is so thin it can stick to a wall using nothing more than a magnet, as well as an 18-inch screen that can be rolled, just like the one inside the pen. And that’s just a taste of what’s around the bend.

Imagine a device about the size of a pen that can replace your smartphone, tablet, and even your wearable devices. Hidden inside this slender canister is a large, roll able touch screen with unparalleled resolution and contrast that will let you Skype, watch movies, or map out directions, and it’s all powered by a battery that lasts for days, not hours.