A man named John Romanishin, who was once doubted by a professor of his, now holds a research scientist title in MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. His vision that robots could climb, jump and move without use of any external moving parts is now manifested and known as M-Blocks. With magnetic sides and corners, they are hollow and have as mentioned, have no external moving parts, but that does not stop them from their most admirable traits. They are capable of climbing over and around one another, rolling around on the ground, leaping into thin air and even moving while suspended upside down. The one thing contained inside the cube is the flywheel, which can spin at speeds of 20,000 revolutions per minute! There could be a future for these little guys to do important things in dire situations. With the highest potential for droves of swarming cubes that can self-assemble. More exciting is the idea of “cube armies” repairing or building (things like roads or bridges) in times of emergencies; imagine them swarming into hostile or unsafe environments for humans to diagnose problems or report back what they may have recognized.

Gaming with lag is unacceptable in this day and age! However, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and Disney Research Pittsburgh have devised a motion tracking technology that could eliminate much of the lag that occurs in video games that use motion tracking. Called Lumitrack, it has two parts to it, projectors and sensors. A structured pattern, kinda looking like a bar code is projected over the area to be tracked. Then the sensor units which are either near the projector or on the object being tracked will then perfectly locate movements anywhere in that area. Lumitrack brings low latency to the table, plus it is so much faster than your average consumer system, with near real-time response.

The Nest Protect is the fanciest looking and most expensive smoke detector out there. Imagine a calm female voice alerting you, “Heads up! There’s smoke in the kitchen”. Does this sound better than the panic-stricken and sometimes painful sounding smoke detector noises? Nest, who’s previous product was their Nest Learning Thermostat, used for accurately adjusting your heating and cooling as it learns when you are away from home, introduced the new Nest Protect.The company was built around the notion that you shouldn't hate on your boring and complicated home sensors. Rather than loud beeping when smoke is detected, it tells you exactly what and where the smoke is coming from, and all you do to shut it up is wave your hand at it. Of course, if something more serious is happening in your home, Protect gets straight to the point and will say the word “emergency” while sounding a horn. This thing is $129 a pop, but having multiple detectors in your home could benefit you by smart communication between them. Like telling you there is smoke in a bedroom if you are in the living room for example.

Finally What the Tech this week includes a “Death Wristwatch” which calculates when you will die, then starts counting down. Next is the worlds first curved display smart phone from Samsung called the Galaxy Round which is only launching in South Korea for $1,013 dollars with no plans for us integration in sight. Finally, a real-life 'Iron Man' suit commissioned by US military has been reported and could quote “allow the wearer to literally walk through a stream of bullets”.