Israel Active

The team that manufactured the cardboard bicycle has now produced a cardboard wheelchair for less than $10. Made from recycled cardboard, plastic bottles and recycled tires, it supports up to 400 pounds, resists both moisture and humidity, and requires no maintenance.

The Israeli Army has been using unmanned vehicles for at least five years to protect Israelis. The IDF is to upgrade its driverless fleet, to include vehicles that will safely and autonomously transport weapons and equipment to soldiers already in the field.

Israel’s cooler for the Chemin chemical analyser was brought into action for the first time when the Mars Curiosity Rover began to analyse its first soil samples. The first results confirmed that some strange bright particles were of Mars origin and not debris from the landing.

(Thanks to NoCamels) Israel’s Flayvr is a free application that accesses your photo library and then automatically organizes your photos into separate albums and offers tools for quick, one-click sharing to social networks.

Israelis will soon be able to generate electricity independently, channelling electricity from solar panels directly into their homes. Eitan Parnass, director of Israel’s Renewable Energy Association, praised the Public Utility Authority decision. “This is the beginning of a revolution,” he said.

Representatives from both the Indian and Israeli governments, as well as leaders from around 50 Israeli renewable energy companies, gathered in Tel Aviv and agreed that India would be an ideal place for Israeli renewable energy innovators to take their business.

There used to be tremendous hostility to Israel on UC Irvine’s campus. But earlier this month over 300 attended “From Bluetooth to Brain Waves: the extraordinary ways we'll communicate in 2025” - the launch event of a 2-day Communications and IT conference in association with Tel Aviv University.

(Thanks to NoCamels) Israel’s Mobileye, which specializes in driver-assistance-systems, now is developing an automated driving system based on a combination of cameras, radars and audio sensors, which navigate the car even in a tight urban environment.

The American-Israel Chamber of Commerce organised a big event at IBM in Atlanta to explore Israeli innovations around “Big Data” - an area of interest major corporations. C-B4, Personetics and SafePeak explained their solutions to the big issues of data warehousing and large databases.

The Cleantech Group has ranked Israel as second in its 2012 Global Cleantech Innovation Index. With six companies in the Global Cleantech 100 list, it even beats the “top” country Denmark, which has only two companies in the top 100.