Tech for Tots: The Coolest Products for Kids at CES 2016

LAS VEGAS — Forget high-speed cameras and complicated smartphone apps: The latest tech is all about childlike simplicity. And that’s for a good reason. Many of the products that are making their mark at CES 2016 aren’t for tech-savvy adults; they’re for kids.
While high-tech gadgetry still has a place in the consumer technology world, some of the coolest products here at the annual consumer electronics show are designed for the elementary school set. Adorable robots with sweet bulging eyes and flickering lights welcome you around every corner. Colorful tablets with crayonlike styluses sit right next to Samsung’s latest mobile devices.
All of these tech toys are meant to promote learning and, more specifically, an interest in the STEM subjects — science, technology, engineering and math — according to the companies that manufacture them. Even well-known brands like Lego and Fisher-Price have come up with STEM-inspired electronics for grade-school students. Here are some of the coolest kid-friendly technologies we’ve seen so far at CES.
How Computers Help Biologists Crack Life’s Secrets
Once the three-billion-letter-long human genome was sequenced, we rushed into a new “omics” era of biological research. Scientists are now racing to sequence the genomes (all the genes) or proteomes (all the proteins) of various organisms – and in the process are compiling massive amounts of data.
For instance, a scientist can use “omics” tools such as DNA sequencing to tease out which human genes are affected in a viral flu infection. But because the human genome has at least 25,000 genes in total, the number of genes altered even under such a simple scenario could potentially be in the thousands.
Da Vinci’s Iconic Bridge Recreated in Ice
One of Leonardo da Vinci’s most stunning engineering plans is getting a decidedly chilly welcome to the modern world.
Students in the frigid hinterlands of Finland plan to recreate one of the Renaissance man’s many iconic sketches: a massive stone bridge spanning the Bosphorus River. But instead of relying on stone, the students plan to use a more local, sustainable material: ice. [5 Da Vinci Designs That Were Ahead of Their Time]
Leonardo da Vinci, who lived between 1452 and 1519, is perhaps most famous for painting the “Mona Lisa.” But the polymath also made impressive contributions to the fields of astronomy, engineering and anatomy. In 1502, da Vinci sketched the plans for a massive stone bridge, about 790 feet (240 meters) long, that would span the strait of Bosphorus, which separates Asia from Europe. The entire bridge is subject only to compressive loads, meaning all of the elements in the bridge get shorter with applied force, according to a statement from Eindhoven University of Technology. (Most real bridges experience both compressive loads and tensile, or lengthening, forces.) Despite its graceful lines and audacious design, the bridge was never built.
Space Bots & Android Waste Collectors: What’s Ahead for Robotics
It was a good year to be a robot.
In 2015, researchers in Korea unveiled a robotic exoskeleton that users can control with their minds, a four-legged bot in China set a new world record by walking 83.28 miles (134.03 km) without stopping and 3D-printing robots in Amsterdam started work on a new steel footbridge.
But these smart machines are capable of so much more. Researchers around the world are now designing and building bots that will complete more noteworthy tasks in 2016 and beyond. From exploring other planets to fighting fires at sea, here are a few skills that bots could pick up in the new year. [Super-Intelligent Machines: 7 Robotic Futures]
Travel to Mars
Space robots already exist. Robotic arms and hands on the outside of the International Space Station (ISS) assist astronauts during spacewalks, hoist equipment and perform other duties. A humanoid robot named Robonaut 2 also helps out around the orbiting laboratory, doing simple and sometimes dangerous tasks so that human astronauts can focus on other things. And then there are the Mars rovers, Opportunity and Curiosity, which serve as rolling robotic laboratories, exploring the surface of the Red Planet, collecting samples and relaying data back to Earth.
But NASA has plans to send a different kind of robot to Mars in the not-so-distant future. The space agency’s Valkyrie robot, or R5, is an updated Robonaut that was originally built to perform search and rescue operations as part of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Robotics Challenge. But NASA’s bot did not fair very well in the competition, never qualifying for the last round, which was held in June 2015. Yet the machine’s makers still think there’s hope for the humanoid robot.
NASA recently asked two universities, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Northeastern University in Boston, to work on further development of the R5 robot. Researchers at these institutions will receive funding and support from the space agency to create software that will make the bot more useful in space. The ultimate goal of this new Space Robotics Challenge is to develop a humanoid bot that could help humans explore Mars, NASA said.
Computers Plus Crowds Could Tackle World’s Toughest Problems
The world’s most dire problems, such as climate change and global conflicts, could be solved using a combination of human and computer intelligence, researchers say.
Human outperform machines at many tasks, such as recognizing images and thinking creatively. So, with the help of computers, crowds of people could collaborate in networks to achieve what neither people nor computers could do alone, a growing field known as human computation.
“What’s most exciting to me about human computation is that it gives us hope today,” said Pietro Michelucci, director of the Human Computation Institute in Fairfax, Virginia. Although many people have pinned both their hopes on artificial intelligence (AI), or super-intelligent machines, human computation provides an alternate view, he said.
Space Fuel: Plutonium-238 Created After 30-Year Wait
Scientists have produced a powder of plutonium-238 for the first time in nearly 30 years in the United States, a milestone that they say sets the country on a path toward powering NASA’s deep-space exploration and other missions.
Plutonium-238 (Pu-238) is a radioactive element, and as it decays, or breaks down into uranium-234, it releases heat. That heat can then be used as a power source; for instance, some 30 space missions, including the Voyager spacecraft, which explored the solar system’s outer planets in the 1970s, have relied on the oxide form of the plutonium isotope. (An isotope is atom of an element with a different number of neutrons.)
During the Cold War, the Savannah River Plant in South Carolina was pumping out Pu-238. “Those reactors were shut down in 1988, and the U.S. has not had the capability to make new material since then,” said Bob Wham, who leads the project for the Nuclear Security and Isotope Technology Division at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). [8 Rare Elements That You’ve Never Heard Of]