Welcome to the thirteenth roundup in this series. And not to worry, thirteen is by no means an unlucky number here. To the contrary, this week is full of exciting innovations that can turn the world upside down: the Farnborough International Airshow happened, and it gave us some exciting tech news.

Robot ‘bugs’ to inspect and repair aircraft engines

Rolls-Royce (not the car manufacturer, but the UK engineering firm) is creating ‘bugs’, tiny robots modeled after cockroaches, to get into aircraft engines to search for problems and help engineers to look inside the engine without opening it up. After a while, they could even be trained to do repairs independently. Right now, they’re still a bit too big for their intended use, so the team is busy recreating their prototype in the right size. Kristin Houser on Futurism gives bugs a better reputation.

Flying taxis, for real this time

Yes, we talked about flying taxis before but those were more floating taxis going really fast. Sallyann Nicholls on Euronews now tells us about the real thing, another Rolls-Royce effort: small aircrafts designed to bring passengers from point A to B within large cities, just like normal taxis, but in the air. It would be able to skip traffic, it would be fully electric, and be really cool. The technology is here, now all that needs to be done is work out the rest of the pesky details. Fly away here!

Revolutionary X-Ray scanning

If you ask a bunch of New Zealand researchers, we’ll soon be done with black and white X-rays, and get rid of some surgeries required to investigate the human body. Their new scanner creates detailed 3-D color images of the scanned body-part, which makes it much easier to identify problems and anomalies. Such imaging can also help map out a better route to a cure rather than attempting different treatments or having to perform a battery of tests to find the best solution. Emily Baumgaertner from The New York Times explains how we will soon be able to see the inside of our bodies clearly, without having to cut them open.

Sidewalk scanner for traffic management and environmental safety

The Ekin Spotter is a small device that can be placed on sidewalks everywhere to perform a number of useful tasks. It can perform the same tasks as speed cameras, for example, but instead of taking a simple photo of the speed offense and offender, this spotter can gather data and learn from those in order to help law enforcement take action. Next to traffic regulation, it functions as a high-quality surveillance camera with facial recognition, and as a measuring device for air quality, temperature, and humidity. With all that data, it becomes impossible not to make cities better, and safer. Kristin Musulin on Smart Cities Dive explains how this device could meet all the needs of smart city data collection. Read more here.

Thank you for reading, and as always, subscribe to remain up to date on the latest news. See you next time!