Meet the concept iPhone Air and iPhone 6C

Here's a new concept video for the next iPhone that takes thinness to an extreme.

The video from Set Solution offers its take on a theoretical "iPhone Air," and another envisions an iPhone 6C (the C here stands for curve, not colour).

The videos offer some beautiful renderings, particularly of the imagined iPhone Air, which it posits would be 1.5 millimetres thin at the top and 3 millimetres thick at the bottom, weigh 70 grams, and feature an edge-to-edge glass display.

The iPhone 6C concept features a number of different colours like the iPhone 5C, but a pronounced curve on the screen similar to that of the LG G Flex, though the back is flat. Some of these videos have been floating around for a while, but are worth a look.

While the videos are impressive, they are no way based in reality, and perhaps a little too good to be true. They also aren't the first concept videos to take a crack at an iPhone Air.

We'll see if Apple comes out with something that looks like the products in these videos -- or perhaps something that looks even better.

NASA unveils 6-foot 'superhero robot' Valkyrie

What if NASA's Robonaut grew legs and indulged in steroids? The result might be close to what NASA has unveiled: Valkyrie is a humanoid machine billed as a "superhero robot."

Developed at the Johnson Space Center, Valkyrie is a 6.2-foot, 275-pound hulk designed to compete in the DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC).

It will go toe to toe with the Terminator-like Atlas robot from Boston Dynamics in what's shaping up to be an amazing modern-day duel.

In an interesting twist, Valkyrie seems to be a girl. While officially genderless, "Valkyrie" (a nickname, since the official designation is R5) evokes the goddess-like females of Norse myth.

"We really wanted to design the appearance of this robot to be one that when you saw it (you'd say) 'Wow. That's awesome,'" Nicolaus Radford of the NASA JSC Dextrous Robotics Lab says .Its Iron Man-style glowing chest ring nestles in a pronounced bosom that contains linear actuators for waist rotation.

"When we were designing the robot, we were thinking about the competition from day one, and we wanted a very modular system. Specifically with the arm, we can yank one bolt and one connector, and we can take the arm off. It happens in a matter of minutes."

Valkyrie has 44 degrees of freedom, or axes of rotation in its joints, meaning it's a relatively flexible machine in terms of movement. Its power source is a battery stored in a backpack that can provide it with about an hour of juice.

Its sensors include sonar and LIDAR, as well as head, arm, abdomen, and leg cameras so operators can see whatever the robot is doing from multiple viewpoints.

Developed with the University of Texas and Texas A&M University, Valkyrie can walk around untethered, and pick up and manipulate objects, which are essential skills for the DARPA challenge.

The DRC is designed to help evolve machines that can cope with disasters and hazardous environments like nuclear power plant accidents. Participants will be presented with tasks such as driving a utility vehicle, walking over uneven terrain, clearing debris, breaking through a wall, closing a valve, and connecting a fire hose.

NASA, however, sees the DRC as part of its mission to explore space.

"NASA saw a considerable overlap between what the DRC was trying to accomplish and NASA's goals as an agency," says Radford. "We want to get to Mars. Likely, NASA will send robots ahead of the astronauts to the planet. These robots will start preparing the way for the human explorers, and when the humans arrive, the robots and the humans will work together."

Ford's self-driving car unveils itself

Ford Motor unveiled its first self-driving car this week -- well, a prototype anyway. The Automated Fusion Hybrid Research Vehicle, developed with the University of Michigan and State Farm insurers, will help the storied US auto maker "test the limits of full automation and determine the appropriate levels for near- and mid-term deployment," Raj Nair, group vice president, Ford global product development, said in a statement.

Ford's 2013 Fusion already offers adaptive cruise control, which can bring the car to a full stop, and a lane-keeping system that steers the car back into its lane if a driver lets it drift. It can also parallel park automatically. But the research vehicle takes things to the next level -- according to the statement from Ford, the car:

...adds four scanning infra red light sensors -- named LiDAR (for Light Detection And Ranging) -- that scan the road at 2.5 million times per second. LiDAR uses light in the same way a bat or dolphin uses sound waves, and can bounce infra red light off everything within 200 feet to generate a real-time 3D map of the surrounding environment.

The sensors can track anything dense enough to redirect light -- whether stationary objects, or moving objects such as vehicles, pedestrians, and bicyclists. The sensors are so sensitive they can sense the difference between a paper bag and a small animal at nearly a football field away.

Amazing Batman graffiti discovered inside abandoned nursing school

A Redditor exploring the streets of Ronse, Belgium stumbled across some spectacular art. Hidden inside an abandoned nursing school were walls full of Batman graffiti, featuring various incarnations of the Dark Knight alongside the Joker, Bane, and many others from the DC universe. The Redditor, sneakylawyer, says the school has been abandoned for about a decade — plenty of time for it to be reclaimed by an enterprising artist. The Batman graffiti is the work of Pete One, and you can see more of his graffiti at this online gallery.