Geek Weekly: Our top weird tech stories for 6 November

Technology Decisions’ weekly wrap of IT fails, latest tech, new must-have gadgets, ‘computer says no’ moments and more.

Yes, it’s the Heathrow baggage system again. Those who have longish memories will recall many cautionary tales of the infamous Heathrow airport baggage system. Well, last week the computer gremlins struck again, bringing the baggage system to a halt and holding up dozens of flights for hours. Electronic signboards that tell the pilots which gate to pull into were also disabled. Some passengers were stuck inside aircraft on the tarmac for hours and, in the end, some flights (even international ones) took off without baggage, to try to ease the airport’s congestion. And yet, according to an airport spokesperson, no flights were delayed - not even by the hordes of pigs zooming by.

Virgin Galactic likely brought low by lever. Authorities investigating the crash of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShip2 say they’re looking at an ‘uncommanded’ movement of a handle or lever that unlocked the craft’s tail booms. The handle should only be used during descent from the apex of the craft’s trajectory, when it is descending back to Earth. It should not have been activated just after release from the mothercraft.

Chaps to blame for banking boo boo. The Bank of England has been forced to apologise (belatedly) for a computer failure that led to the clearing house automated payment system (CHAPS) going down for 10 hours, delaying hundreds of thousands of payments to individuals and businesses. The bank said the breakdown of the system, which normally processes £277 billion per day, was “related to some routine maintenance of the RTGS (real-time gross settlement system)”.

The price to pay for robocars. How much extra would you be prepared to pay to have a car that drove itself? A lot (US$8000) if you live in China, apparently, but almost nothing (US$465) in Japan. Aussies would pay US$2350, with those in the US, Britain and India a little bit less. Researchers were surprised by the Japan finding, thinking that the country’s apparent love affair with robots would make them more amenable to handing over control to a brainiac under the bonnet.

Maybe they’re waiting for see-through cars. Perhaps the Japanese are waiting for the day that they can see right through their cars’ doors, roof and floors. Researchers are working on a system that combines external cameras with internal video-projection devices to beam a view of the outside world onto the interior of the car. The result would make it seem like you’re looking straight through the car. Handy for seeing what’s behind you when reversing.

Hands off my drone. Google engineers are working on autonomous, flying drones that can deliver goods straight to the recipient’s hands by lowering them on a cable from a hovering position. But therein lies a problem - they’ve found that the recipients want to reach up and pull the packages down, jeopardising the safety of the drone and the recipients themselves. There are lots of other problems too, such as dodging powerlines, avoiding wind vortices near large buildings, and not being too noisy.

Microscallops will sail your bodily seas. You probably know the story of the Fantastic Voyage, where scientists in a submarine are shrunk down to microscopic size and go off on an adventure through the human body. Well, while we’re not quite at that stage, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems have developed a tiny robotic ‘scallop’ which they say could be used to swim through the fluid in your eyeball, or liquids in other parts of your body, and presumably do something useful. Feeling creeped out yet? Watch the video:

Image courtesy Paul Nelhams under CC.