It wasn't long ago that the idea of printing something in three dimensions sounded like science fiction. But over the past decade, 3D printers have become widespread and are now used to create everything from decorative baubles to robot parts to medical devices.

Still, using a 3D printer isn't always simple: The machine is frequently housed within a box the size of a microwave, and it requires technical software and, in some cases, a detailed knowledge of design. But now, a company called 3Doodler has transformed the standard 3D printer into a pen, allowing people to draw 3D creations freely in the air — without the need for a computer or any software.

In 2012, Maxwell Bogue and Peter Dilworth, co-founders of 3Doodler along with Daniel Cowen, were trying to come up with the next greatkids' toy. They said they frequently used 3D printers to craft prototypes of their designs, and one night, they spent 14 hours printing a dinosaur leg, only to find that the printer had missed a section, leaving a gap in the model. [Best Educational Toys & Games for Kids]

The two wished they "could just take the nozzle off the 3D printer and fill in the missing gap," Bogue, now CEO of the company, told Live Science. So, the inventors set out to design a product that could do just that.

Bogue and Dilworth took apart a 3D printer and added a computer chipto the nozzle so that they could control the device. When that rudimentary model worked as a proof of concept, the team set out to streamline the design to create a more user-friendly pen, they said.

The first prototypes came straight from a standard 3D printer. "We printed the shells and the casings and everything that's held together," Bogue said.

When it was done, they pulled the hot nozzle off the printer and used it in their pen. Over about eight months, they refined the design, finally producing the first version of the product, Bogue said.

In a lot of ways, the 3Doodler works like a sophisticated hot-glue gun: A heating element melts plastic, and it is extruded out through a nozzle. But glue guns use a hand pump to push the plastic out of the tip, which can make it clump. The challenge with the 3Doodler was to find a way to make the plastic flow steadily and smoothly, so the inventors designed the pen with a motor to propel the plastic filament, they said.

The heater inside the 3Doodler runs about 355 degrees to 460 degrees Fahrenheit (180 to 240 degrees Celsius) to effectively melt the most common plastic filaments (known as PLA and ABS). But at that temperature, the plastic would take a long time to cool, making it impossible to draw in the air, Bogue said. As a result, Bogue and Dilworth added a cooling fan to the 3Doodler, which brings the temperature of the plastic down to about 280 degrees to 300 degrees F (140 to 150 degrees C) when it leaves the pen, and the plastic hardens within seconds, Bogue said. [The 10 Weirdest Things Created By 3D Printing]

The inventors ran a wildly successful Kickstarter campaign to raise money for the project, collecting more than $2.3 million from more than 26,000 backers. The pen is now in its third version, known as the 3Doodler Create, and it has been used for a variety of creations, including artwork, clothing and wallets.

But despite its early success, the initial iterations of the 3Doodler still didn't satisfy Bogue's original mission. "This would be an awesome kids' toy, but it's too hot," Bogue said.

The 3Doodler Create far exceeds the 127-degree F (53 degrees C) maximum temperature allowed for children's products, as set by the EU Toys Safety Directive. So the company teamed up with materials scientists to develop an entirely new type of plastic, and after three years, they created a biodegradable, food-safe plastic that melts at between 113 degrees and 122 degrees Fahrenheit (45 to 50 degrees C). This means that it is safe for kids and can even be used to draw directly on the skin without causing burns, according to the company.

The new pen, known as the 3Doodler Start, is designed for kids ages 8 and older. The rechargeable battery and 16 different colors of filaments make the pen ideal for not just recreational use but also classroom use, the inventors said. In particular, the company is hoping that the new pen will significantly enhance STEM education, Bogue added.

The full line of 3Doodler products can be purchased on the company's website. The 3Doodler Start is available for preorder starting at $49.99, and will start shipping in July.

Original article on Live Science.

Two robotic rally cars are tearing up a dirt track in Atlanta, in an effort by researchers to learn how self-driving vehicles can stay in control when they slide, spin or jump.

In addition to making self-driving cars safer in collisions and hazardous roadconditions, the work could be applied to other types of autonomous systems that may need to make decisions in rapidly changing or unstructured environments, the researchers said. These systems could include robots in human homes or workplaces.

Each of the two custom-designed robotic rally vehicles carries a quad-core computer equipped with a powerful graphics processor. This computer performs the heavy processing required by the software controlling the car. Forward-facing cameras, a GPS receiver, inertia sensors and wheel-speed sensors continuously monitor the location and trajectory of the vehicle. Each car measures about 3 feet (0.9 meters) long and can reach speeds of up to 90 mph (145 km/h). A reinforced aluminumframe protects the equipment from damage in rollovers. [Photos: The Robotic Evolution of Self-Driving Cars]

The researchers, from the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) in Atlanta, said the key to the project has been developing an algorithm that can quickly make control decisions with limited computing power, and very limited time.

The algorithm, called "model predictive path integral control" (MPPI), uses the rally car's onboard graphics processor to analyze data from the sensors in real time and predict the trajectory of the vehicle up to 2.5 seconds in the future. It does so by comparing more than 2,500 possible trajectories in less than 1/60th of a second.

One of the lead researchers on the project, Panagiotis Tsiotras, a mechanical engineer at Georgia Tech's School of Aerospace Engineering, told Live Science that the researchers began by examining how expert human drivers control carsat the edges of the vehicles' handling limits, the moments just before cars lose their grip on the road.

"The interesting thing is that human expert drivers are really good at doing these types of maneuvers," Tsiotras said. "So we thought to ask for help from some expert rally drivers, trying to understand how the vehicles operate in those regimes. And if we understand how they operate, maybe we will be able to autonomously control the vehicle in a similar way to how these expert drivers control the vehicle."

Among the researchers' discoveries was a mathematical description of the equilibrium of forces that allow a vehicle to "power slide," or drift while maintaining a high speed. That research had been the subject of a thesis by one of the students involved with the research.

Some early work on the project was funded by the Ford Motor Company, which wanted to improve the active safety systems, such as anti-skid braking, on the company's passenger cars. For the last five years, the work has been sponsored by the U.S. Army Research Office, which is interested in autonomous vehicles that can operate off-road, Tsiotras said. "We call it 'aggressive mobility for autonomous vehicles’." [Self-Driving Cars: 5 Problems That Need Solutions]

"We're using this algorithm to predict in the very near future how the vehicle is going to behave, and this is not very different than the way human beings do such planning," Tsiotras said.

The research has applications for other autonomous and robotic systems, not just self-driving cars, he added.

"The driving application is interesting — people relate to it because there's a skill factor. But there are a lot of fundamental questions related to controlling autonomous systems in general," Tsiotras said. "Any time that you want to make a decision in terms of sensing, perception and control, that has to be made with limited resources and at very fast timescale. This is an example where these algorithms can be used."

The robotic rally research at Georgia Tech is led by Evangelos Theodorou, a robotics specialist at the School of Aerospace Engineering. The development of the MPPI control algorithm was led by machine-learning specialist Jim Rehg, a professor at Georgia Tech's School of Interactive Computing.

A paper describing the research was presented at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation, which was held in Stockholm, Sweden, in May. The findings were published online in May by the IEEE Robotics & Automation Society.

Original article on Live Science.

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NASA will test-fire a booster for the world's most powerful rocket Tuesday morning (June 28), and you can watch the explosive action live online.

A solid rocket booster for NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) megarocket — which the agency is developing to blast astronauts toward Mars and other deep-space destinations — will fire for 2 minutes Tuesday at a facility in Utah, beginning at 10:05 a.m. EDT (1405 GMT). You can watch it live here at Space.com, courtesy of NASA TV; coverage starts at 9:30 a.m. EDT (1330 GMT).

NASA will hold a press conference at 11 a.m. EDT (1500 GMT) Tuesday to discuss the results of the test. You can listen to audio of the press conference here at Space.com as well, courtesy of NASA.

NASA to Test-Fire Booster for Megarocket Tuesday

A gem of a meteorite found in Antarctica is studded with pieces of opal, a crystal that is associated with water. The discovery lends greater strength to the idea that meteorites brought water to asteroids and may also have seeded the Earth with the liquid necessary for life to evolve.

"This is more evidence that meteorites and asteroids can carry large amounts of water ice," lead author Hilary Downes said in a statement. Downes, a geochemist at the Birkbeck Institute of Earth and Planetary Sciences at the University of London, announced the results today (Monday, June 27) at the National Astronomy Meeting in Nottingham, England.

"Although we rightly worry about the consequences of the impact of large asteroids, billions of years ago they may have brought the water to the Earth and helped it become the world teeming with life that we live in today."

On Earth, opal is made up of silica — a common ingredient in sand — and water. As water runs across the planet, it picks up sand and other pieces of silica. When it evaporates, it leaves behind traces of that material that build up to form opals. Scientists have only found one other meteorite carrying the mineraloid — a rock that traveled from Mars. While the Red Planet has opal-like deposits on its surface, none have been found on asteroids.

Downes and her colleagues found that the meteorite EET 83309 is made up of thousands of broken-up rocks and minerals, suggesting that it came fromthe surface of an asteroid. Research on the meteorite by other scientists reveals that the rock was exposed to radiation from the sun, solar wind and other cosmic sources. Since an asteroid lacks an atmosphere to shield it from deadly radiation, its surface is constantly dosed with the deadly rays.

Bits and pieces of other asteroids were also embedded in the meteorite, suggesting that the parent asteroid was struck by numerous impacts. As a result of one of the many impacts, water could have been delivered to the surface of the asteroid, forming opal.

"The pieces of opal we have found are either broken fragments or they are replacing other minerals," Downes said.

If early meteorites carried water to asteroids, they could also have broughtwater to the Earth.

"Our evidence shows that the opal formed before the meteorite was blasted off from the surface of the parent asteroid and sent into space, eventually to land on Earth in Antarctica," Downes added.

Follow Nola Taylor Redd on Twitter @NolaTRedd or Google+. Follow us at@Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

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