Tech Tuesday: SoftStop and NASA’s 3D Printed Pizza

This week on News 1130 radio in Vancouver, I talked about these items:

• Using water and light to stop truck accidents: Not unlike what recently happened in Washington State, after too many over height trucks crashed and caused damage in many tunnels, authorities in Sydney, Australia implemented “Soft Stop” technology. If a driver ignores the height limit signs, a tunnel entrance will be blocked with a curtain of water and a giant Stop sign will be projected onto the water to ensure the driver gets the message.
• NASA funds bio-printing project: Initially funded to look at 3d printing food for astronauts, this initiative will also potentially help with world hunger. Instead of ink, NASA’s 3d printers will use several culinary building blocks, from oil to protein powder, then mixed and deposited to ‘print’ food. As this technology is based on printing individual layers, the first food they are looking at making is pizza.