iCandy: June 2010

The newest contraption from a local inventor in southwest China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, this 3.8-meter-long fish-shaped submarine was tested in the swimming pool at Guangxi University of Technology, in Liuzhou City. The trial run, during which the submarine failed to submerge completely, took place on 21 May.

This unassuming kit, deposited by European researchers in a secret bunker near Gstaad, Switzerland, on 18 May, is actually a time capsule of machines that will allow future generations to read data that’s been stored using obsolete technology.

No, that’s not a cat carrier. At the Asia Funeral Expo, a forum for the fulfillment of “postmortem needs,” which took place 13 through 15 May in Hong Kong, an attendee tried out a machine that its creators claim stimulates cell and tissue growth using nanotechnology.

This penny-size origami crane, constructed from a printed sheet of titanium hydride ink, sits on the desk of University of Illinois materials science and engineering professor Jennifer Lewis. It’s a demonstration of the novel techniques she and her team developed for making microsystems.

Frenchman Raoul Parienti’s creation, the Top-Braille pocket scanner, instantly transcribes a printed document into Braille or reads it aloud to aid blind and visually impaired people. The device, which won the Concours Lépine 2010 invention competition in Paris, works in seven languages.

In the not-so-distant future, you may be able to purchase mobile phones with lightweight, flexible screens that wrap around things as narrow as a pencil. This particular ultrathin roll-up organic LED display, from Sony, has a resolution of 121 pixels per inch.

Playing with your food can be productive, according to EepyBird duo Fritz Grobe and Stephen Voltz, who constructed the Rocket Car pictured above. By harnessing the combustive power of 108 two-liter bottles of Coke Zero and 648 Mentos mints, EepyBird propelled a passenger more than 67 meters.

Maja, an aerial robot from German company Bormatec, joined the European Land-Robot trial (ELROB) on 18 May at an army base in Hammelburg, Germany. ELROB, a veritable robot boot camp, tests the abilities of robots in rough terrain and real-world military scenarios.