TECH HOUSE

               The sleek, egg-shaped capsule resembles a spaceship, complete with antennae and a layer of futuristic cells.But the striking design from Slovakian group Nice Architects represents a creative effort to offer housing solutions for this planet.             The ‘Ecocapsule’ is a mini apartment with all the conventional luxuries you would expect, but generates its own clean energy and can be situated anywhere, from city to tundra.            After six years of development, the capsule was unveiled to rapturous acclaim at a recent design festival. Nice Architects have already received thousands of pre-orders and the buzz has extended to celebrities.           The capsule marries form and function with stylish aesthetics. It powers itself through s...

                A humanoid robot named Pepper, standing just under four feet tall, and weighing 61 pounds. It is designed to read emotions as well as recognize tones of voice and facial expressions in order to interact with humans. With his array of cameras, touch sensors, accelerometer and other sensors in his "endocrine-type multi-layer neural network," Pepper has the ability to read your emotions as well as develop his own. He isn't a work robot, but more of an emotional companion for people.                    Pepper has his own evolving emotions which are influenced by people's facial expressions and words, as well as his surroundings."Pepper is at ease when he is with people he knows, happy when praised and scared when the lights go down."            ...

           Ather Energy gears up for the launch of its first scooter in 2016.Co-founder Tarun Mehta said that the scooter will be priced under Rs. 1,00,000, with a formal price announcement likely three months from now.            The co-founders believe that this space is ripe for disruption, as locally available electric-scooters lack either the speed or the smarts, with a majority of them running on lead-acid batteries.Typically we have electric scooters which have a top speed of 25-40 kmph, they have poor acceleration, and a battery life of 5,000-6,000 kilometres, and a 6-8 hour charging time. Unlike these, our scooter doesn't feel like a step down from a petrol scooter        Ather's smart scooter is spaced to deliver a top speed of 75kmph, and will do 0-60kmph in 11 seconds, have an estimated driving range of 50-100 kilometres, and recharge to about 90 percent ...

Google's Project Ara is a modular smartphone which could arrive in early 2015 to re-define the market Google might have gone a bit sideways with the Nexus 6, but before that the company has proved it clearly knows a thing or two about what your typical  Android  phone buyer wants from their devices; something that's not too expensive, not too fussy, and nicely tailored for a great experience on the Android platform. No frills, and no uneccessary bits that bump up the cost, essentially. So it's not too surprising that the firm  has looked into its crystal ball and realised that there's a market for a user-tailored phone experience. The modular  smartphone . Similar to the custom PC market, there will be users out there who want to simply buy the bits they need to do what they want to do, and to be able to upgrade/retrofit whenever they like. Google's solution is Project Ara...and it's coming inside 2015. The concept is a simple one –– you buy a basic...