This week on Engineering Update wirelessly charging 40 phones at once, unlocking guns with fingerprints, and creating fuel from the sun.
How to Wirelessly Charge 40 Phones at Once: The Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology developed a pretty unique charging station capable of wirelessly charging electronics from up to 16 feet away, and capable of powering multiple devices at the same time. And we’re talking about A LOT of devices, as in, up to 40 smartphones at the same time.
Unlocking Guns with Your Fingerprint: While Armatix – and several others – tote smartguns that rely on RFID-enabled watches to unlock them, Identilock unlocks with a swipe of your finger. According to Omer Kiyani, who developed Identilock, this could potentially address the complaints of gun rights activists, who claim that an RFID-enabled smartgun could malfunction at an inopportune moment.
Creating Fuel from the Sun: The SOLAR-JET, which stands for Solar chemical reaction demonstration and optimization for long term availability of renewable jet fuel, is designed to use concentrated sunlight to convert carbon dioxide into kerosene to be used as jet fuel.
Filed Under: Aerospace + defense