Maintenance

​A lot of effort goes into keeping our our cities in working order. But a new project could soon see many labor-intensive tasks taken care of by an army of drones that keep a watchful eye over our streets, tending to cracks in our urban environment the moment they begin to appear.

Grundorf's portable GMT-004 folds out to accommodate acoustic or electric guitars, includes compartments for stowing away tools, strings and supplies, and features a pop-up support for the instrument's neck.

For most people, the "check engine" light in their car is pretty useless, providing no info about what the problem is or its severity. A new app wants to provide US drivers with exactly that information. Fixd provides notifications if a problem arises, along with the potential consequences and cost.

How many gears are too many for the average commuter vehicle? If you’re pulling a load of cattle across Saskatchewan, then a semi-tractor unit with nine gears should suffice. But if you’re Volkswagen, then the magic number for your upcoming models is in fact 10.

The Fraunhofer Institute for Machine Tools and Forming Technology IWU in Chemnitz, Germany wants to bring airplane construction into the 21st century with a snake-like robot that can reach into the narrow, hard to reach cavities inside aircraft wings.

The Hong Kong Polytechnic University is to release details of a 7-year program to monitor a 36-km stretch of rail line using special fiber optic sensors. The system has detected "anomalous vibrations" 30 times, allowing the early rectification of problems that could have gone on to cause accidents.

Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Physical Measurement Techniques have come up with a car-mounted laser scanner the size of a shoe box that can survey the contours of road services at speeds of 100 km/h.

SkySweeper is a wire inspection robot built with off-the-shelf electronics and plastic parts printed on an inexpensive 3D printer.

Researchers have developed a team of robots to autonomously strip paint and other exterior coatings from military aircraft using a continuous wave laser.

The Lubricheck analyzes the capacitive and resistive properties of engine oil samples, to determine if an oil change is needed.

The MAGDRIVE project is tasked with creating a mechanical transmission with no touching parts, for use primarily in spacecraft.

Norwegian projector manufacturer Projectiondesign has created the FR12 Remote Light Source (RLS) projector that relocates the lamp from the projector to a rack-mount enclosure up to 30m from the projector head.