Wired Wednesday 007

This week on News 1130 radio in Vancouver, I spoke about these tech topics for Wired Wednesday with Ben Wilson:

• 3D Cameras Will Help Tokyo Cops Take Futuristic Mugshots (source)
  Soon, police stations could have a lot more dirt on you than just your fingerprints. Cops could soon be taking 3D mugshots that’ll give them unprecedented details of your face. Starting in April, all 102 of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department’s Stations will have 3D cameras that’ll snap your face, morph it into a Tron-like 3D rendering, and store it to an identification station that’ll corral all those images in a database, Asahi Shimbun reports.
• New Balloon-Like Material Could Make Smart Windows Affordable (source)
  The good minds at MIT have used a rubber-like polymer to predict how much light gets transmitted through a material, depending on its thinness and stretchiness. The material could lead to windows that automatically adjust the amount of light that’s let in.
• EHang 184 AAV – Life-Size Rideable Drone (source)
  The EHang 184 AAV is a life-size drone. A drone with a cockpit for a human passenger. A drone that flies itself. EHang says it created the 184 with the goal of “providing Medium-Short Distance communication and transportation solution[s].” The giant quadcopter’s main structure is built from composite material, carbon fiber, and epoxy, plus additional areas of aluminum alloy. It has 8 propellers, 1 on the top and bottom of each arm. It is 100% electric.