future

Forget the hoverboard. Forget the self-lacing shoes. The ultimate "Back to the Future" fan prop is a DeLorean, the stainless steel machine that zipped around through time.

When DeLoreans first went on sale in the early 1980s, they cost around $25,000. Buying a used one today will set you back about $50,000 due to their rarity and mechanical fickleness. Now you can pick up a DeLorean for just $5,500, but there is a catch. It's a bike.

The DeLorean Bicycle is a collaboration between DeLorean Motor Company and Marc Moore, a cyclist and former … Read more

Grabit, a spinoff from research institute SRI International, has developed a way for robots to pick up objects by using electroadhesion technology. It works by charging a flexible plastic film embedded with electrodes.

At the Future of Robotics in Silicon Valley and Beyond forum, SmartPlanet's Sumi Das recently got a look at how the technology works and learned what benefits it has over other methods.

This video originally appeared on SmartPlanet with the headline "Sticky fingers for robots."

Robots -- they save lives, save time, and fascinate us all at once.

The Future of Robotics in Silicon Valley and Beyond, an event held last week, explores the possibilities of how we'll use robots at sea, in space, and everywhere in between. SmartPlanet's Sumi Das reports from the forum, which aims to advance the state of robotics in the Bay Area.

This video originally appeared on SmartPlanet with the headline "Robots help sea and space exploration."

SAN FRANCISCO-- Building a freemium service? You might want to pay attention to this tidbit: The mobile bill-payment service PageOnce is dropping its $4.99 subscription fee and going to an a la carte model.

PageOnce CEO Guy Goldstein told me at the Future of Money conference that the company has been testing different price points for its paid service. While getting financial account data and seeing bills remains free, helping users pay bills is where the company makes money. To date, PageOnce has charged $4.99 a month for this. Starting in early May, the per-month fee will be … Read more

This is dedicated to all those of youthful vigor and adventurous spirit.

I wish to warn you of amusements that will, apparently, exist in 2050. For, by then, all prostitutes will be robots.

I know there will be some who have craved this notion since the first time they failed to charm a girl at high school. However, this prediction -- made by scientists at New Zealand's Victoria University -- offers that one of the greatest benefits of a prostibot is, well, cleanliness. … Read more

Concertgoers who attended last week's Coachella music festival apparently had their minds blown by a "hologram" performance by the late rapper Tupac Shakur. The centuries-old illusion made it seem that Snoop Dogg and Tupac were sharing the same stage.

That got us thinking about what the future of concerts will look like. We've already seen some jokes about the next "all hologram Coachella lineup," but will the concert experience 50 years from now allow us to watch the show from the comfort of our homes? We can only hope to still be rocking out when we're that age -- minus the skull head-tattoo. … Read more

In case you missed it, the U.S. government recently filed an antitrust lawsuit against Apple and five of this country's largest publishers, alleging they conspired to limit competition for the pricing of e-books. Three of the five -- HarperCollins, Hachette and Simon & Schuster -- opted to settle the case, while Penguin, Macmillan, and Apple didn't.

So where does that leave us?

Well, if you've spent any time reading through the terms of the settlement, you quickly realize not everything's all that black and white and is in fact quite muddled. For starters, a judge … Read more

Are you disappointed or psyched that so many new technologies draw inspiration directly from films and TV? First it was Samsung citing "2001: A Space Odyssey" as an influence for their Samsung Galaxy tablet and all the reports of "Minority Report" tech coming soon. And now Google looks like it watched too many Star Trek episodes while designing its augmented-reality glasses.… Read more

Webcams and video-conferencing software like Skype have really enhanced the way we communicate with friends, family, and colleagues around the world. Even so, talking to a floating head on a computer screen can still feel pretty cold, and it doesn't look like we're going to get a teleportation device any time soon (le sigh). However, researchers at Stanford University are hoping to make that interaction a little more lifelike with a computer that can mimic human motions.

David Sirkin and Wendy Ju from Stanford's Center for Design Research created a motorized flat-screen display that copycats various human motions like shrugging, nodding, and laughing. The team did so by adding motors to the Apple iMac G4 and then linking it to software that reads a person's movements and instructs the G4's moveable arm to perform one of nine motions. … Read more