News
How Airbus Is Positioning Itself To Become First In Modular Flight
September 11, 2017
First class, coach, or coworking space? Here's why Airbus's customization effort is one of Fast company's 2017 Innovation By Design award-winners.
EXCLUSIVE: Inside Airbus' Modular Plane Concept, Transpose
July 11, 2017
Is this the thing that will make flying less terrible?
Look at the flying car Airbus is developing in San Jose
May 19, 2017
Airbus engineers working at a lab in San Jose say they’ve designed a flying car that they’d like to begin testing by the end of the year. The company’s A3 (pronounced “A cubed”) division this week published a concept video of a single-seater, eight-rotor aircraft called Vahana...
Trading Spaces: Could Modular Aircraft Cabins Allow Airlines to Swap More Than Just Seats?
April 07, 2017
Modular aircraft cabin designs ensure that seats aren’t the only furnishings being swapped on board. Proponents say swappable aircraft interiors could cut reconfiguration time for airlines from several weeks to mere minutes.
Google and Levi’s Project Jacquard jacket has restored my faith in wearables
March 12, 2017
The jacket, which Levi’s brought to SXSW this week in Austin, is made in partnership with Google’s Project Jacquard, a division within the company’s Advanced Technology and Projects, or ATAP, group. The Jacquard division pioneered conductive fibers that are woven directly into clothing, so that motions you make on the left cuff of the jacket’s sleeve register as touch inputs, as if it were a screen.
McDonalds Just Innovated The Hell Out Of Straws
February 15, 2017
It arrives in a glossy black box, its sensual shape traced in shadow. My fingers grasp at the perfectly positioned pull-tab and slide the box open. There it sits, the product of the creative minds that helped birth Google’s Project Ara modular smartphone and projects for NASA and DARPA.
Mounds of Moto Mods: We'll see at least 12 per year
December 04, 2016
Moto is investing big in Mods, those magnetic, snap-on accessories -- like a battery pack and external speaker -- that enhance the Moto Z, Moto Z Force and Moto Z Play. In fact, Lenovo's Moto execs told a small group of journalists this week, the company itself will commit to releasing at least 12 new Moto Mods a year.
Project Ara Lives: Google's Modular Phone is Ready For You Now
May 20, 2016
It's been more than a year since Google showed Ara to the public, and a lot has changed. The mission hasn't: Build a smartphone out of interchangeable parts that you can swap on the fly to make your phone exactly what you want right this second. Add a wide-angle camera module for your hike. Swap it for a telephoto—and add a larger battery—for the soccer game. Replace the screen with an E Ink display for reading on a long flight
How Formlabs went from a 3D Printer Kickstarter Campaign to an 80 Person Company
November 18, 2014
The Form 1 aims to serve as the world's first high-resolution 3D printer to be offered at an affordable price level — $3,299. The printer uses stereolithography technology to achieve resolutions traditionally only available from 3D printers costing tens — or hundreds — of thousands of dollars, the company says.
Why Google's Modular Smartphone Might Actually Succeed
April 07, 2014
On workbenches sit prototypes of memory modules, battery modules, and processor modules, all designed to slide easily in and out of an aluminum smartphone “endoskeleton.” A prototype infrared imaging lens module for night photography would protrude about a half-inch from the device. Another module would let you read your blood oxygen levels with a swipe of your finger.