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Awesome tech you can't buy yet: UV shoe sanitizers, smart mounts, fish tank tech

At any given moment there are approximately a zillion different crowdfunding campaigns happening on the Web. Take a stroll through Kickstarter or Indiegogo and you’ll find no shortage of weird, useless, and downright stupid projects out there – alongside some real gems. We’ve cut through the Pebble clones and janky iPhone cases to round up the most unusual, ambitious, and exciting projects out there this week. Keep in mind that any crowdfunded project — even the best intentioned — can fail, so do your homework before cutting a check for the gadget of your dreams.

BlueJay — In-car smart mount for mobile devices

 

Bluejay is the “world’s first” in-car smart mount for phones. Constructed from high grade CNC aluminum and carbon fiber, the smart mount features Bluetooth Smart technology and comes with an app that activates the moment you place your mobile device on the mount. It’s designed in such a way that it can work with just about any smartphone, and functions as a safe, easy way to access contacts, music, GPS, and more with just a few swipes of the finger.

The mount itself uses a magnet and nano-pad to hold the device, and and can adhere to your car via a vent clip, suction cup, or adhesive pad. Once you’ve got it installed, the BlueJay can do much more than just hold your phone. It can also act as a “find my car” beacon, give you parking-meter notifications, offer roadside assistance, track your driving data, and even connect to your smart-home devices. With the right gear, you could link this thing to your house so that your door unlocks and your lights come on when you pull into the driveway.

Read more here.

Ossic X — 3D audio headphones

While plenty of headphones offer surround sound, they don’t really emulate 3D space around you. For example, as soon as you move your head, the sound moves with you, instead of staying relative as it would in an actual space.  The Ossic X claim to be the world’s first true 3D headphones, capable of recreating sound the same way you hear it in the real world. If the reaction to the Kickstarter campaign is any indication, plenty of people are very excited about what this could mean for the future of audio.

Ossic says that 3D sound isn’t as simple as using a multi-driver array — like the eight drivers used in the Ossic X — you need to take relative space and even the shape of the listener’s ears into account. The Ossic X automatically calibrate themselves to your head and torso as soon as you put them on, enabling more accurate sound placement.  The real difference comes when you move your head. Instead of the sound moving with you, as with most headphones, the sound stays put — turn your head to hear something behind you, and suddenly it’s coming from in front of your face, at least as far as your ears are concerned.

Read more here.

UV Pro Shoe Sanitizer — Ultraviolet shoe sanitizer

If you’re tired of spending a small fortune on powders, sprays, and odor-absorbing pods just to keep your shoes smelling fresh, then you should definitely check out the UV Pro Shoe Sanitizer. Recently launched on Kickstarter, this brilliant contraption utilizes the power of ultraviolet light to keep your shoes clean — and because it’s rechargeable, it’s infinitely reusable.

The technology that makes it work is the exact same technology you’ve seen before in other UV sanitizer devices, such as the infamous SteriPen. Simply stick the device into your shoe, switch on the light, and let it sit therefor a while. While you’re off doing more important things, the UV Pro Shoe Sanitizer beams a bunch of UV-C light into your shoe. This light scrambles the DNA of any microbes living in your kicks, and prevents them from reproducing. Over the course of a day or two, this inability to multiply causes the smelly bacteria population to dwindle and eventually die off completely.

Read more here.

FishBit — Smart fish tank monitor

Keeping a goldfish in a bowl is one thing, but tending to a world-class saltwater aquarium is a whole ‘nother can of worms. At a certain point, you’re not just keeping a few pets in a tank — you’re managing an extremely delicate and complex ecosystem that requires careful monitoring and maintenance.

Depending on the types of fish, coral, and invertebrates you’re tending to, there’s a lot of stuff to worry about: pH levels, salinity, ORP, temperature, and a myriad of other tank conditions. Keeping track of it all can be a dizzying experience, but there’s a new gizmo that just surfaced on Kickstarter that aims to make the process easier than ever before. Fishbit, as it’s called, is a network-connected, app-enabled smart aquarium monitoring system. It’s certainly not the first tank monitor that’s ever been created, but it’s one of the first to bundle water composition measurement tech with network connectivity and a super slick user interface.

Read more here.

Luup — The world’s best litter box

Cleaning your cat’s litter box is arguably one of the worst household chores in existence. It’s messy, it’s time consuming, and it stinks in every sense of the word. But it doesn’t have to be like this. Thanks to the work of some brilliant designers, there’s finally a litter box that makes finding and removing your cat’s waste a relatively simple process.

The Luup system, as it’s called, is comprised of three identical tubs. Each of these are outfitted with a slotted bottom panel, and are designed in such a way that they can be stacked on top of each other. When stacked in the same direction, the slots on the bottoms of the tubs line up and let litter granules fall through. However, if you stack them in an alternating fashion, the slots become offset, and wont let anything fall through. To use it, you simply stack them in an alternating fashion and fill it with kitty litter. When it comes time to clean it up, just pick up the top tub, give it a good shake, throw out the clumps, and then put the empty tub on the bottom of the stack.

Read more here.

Drew Prindle
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Drew Prindle is an award-winning writer, editor, and storyteller who currently serves as Senior Features Editor for Digital…
Star Wars legend Ian McDiarmid gets questions about the Emperor’s sex life
Ian McDiarmid as the Emperor in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.

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Waymo and Toyota explore personally owned self-driving cars
Front three quarter view of the 2023 Toyota bZ4X.

Waymo and Toyota have announced they’re exploring a strategic collaboration—and one of the most exciting possibilities on the table is bringing fully-automated driving technology to personally owned vehicles.
Alphabet-owned Waymo has made its name with its robotaxi service, the only one currently operating in the U.S. Its vehicles, including Jaguars and Hyundai Ioniq 5s, have logged tens of millions of autonomous miles on the streets of San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Austin.
But shifting to personally owned self-driving cars is a much more complex challenge.
While safety regulations are expected to loosen under the Trump administration, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has so far taken a cautious approach to the deployment of fully autonomous vehicles. General Motors-backed Cruise robotaxi was forced to suspend operations in 2023 following a fatal collision.
While the partnership with Toyota is still in the early stages, Waymo says it will initially study how to merge its autonomous systems with the Japanese automaker’s consumer vehicle platforms.
In a recent call with analysts, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai signaled that Waymo is seriously considering expanding beyond ride-hailing fleets and into personal ownership. While nothing is confirmed, the partnership with Toyota adds credibility—and manufacturing muscle—to that vision.
Toyota brings decades of safety innovation to the table, including its widely adopted Toyota Safety Sense technology. Through its software division, Woven by Toyota, the company is also pushing into next-generation vehicle platforms. With Waymo, Toyota is now also looking at how automation can evolve beyond assisted driving and into full autonomy for individual drivers.
This move also turns up the heat on Tesla, which has long promised fully self-driving vehicles for consumers. While Tesla continues to refine its Full Self-Driving (FSD) software, it remains supervised and hasn’t yet delivered on full autonomy. CEO Elon Musk is promising to launch some of its first robotaxis in Austin in June.
When it comes to self-driving cars, Waymo and Tesla are taking very different roads. Tesla aims to deliver affordability and scale with its camera, AI-based software. Waymo, by contrast, uses a more expensive technology relying on pre-mapped roads, sensors, cameras, radar and lidar (a laser-light radar), that regulators have been quicker to trust.

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uber may mobility av rides partnership

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Uber has already taken serious steps towards making autonomous ride-hailing a mainstream option. The company already works with Waymo, whose robotaxis are live in multiple cities, and now it’s welcoming May Mobility’s hybrid-electric Toyota Sienna vans to its platform. The vehicles will launch with safety drivers at first but are expected to go fully autonomous as deployments mature.
May Mobility isn’t new to this game. Backed by Toyota, BMW, and other major players, it’s been running AV services in geofenced areas since 2021. Its AI-powered Multi-Policy Decision Making (MPDM) tech allows it to react quickly and safely to unpredictable real-world conditions—something that’s helped it earn trust in city partnerships across the U.S. and Japan.
This expansion into ride-hailing is part of a broader industry trend. Waymo, widely seen as the current AV frontrunner, continues scaling its service in cities like Phoenix and Austin. Tesla, meanwhile, is preparing to launch its first robotaxis in Austin this June, with a small fleet of Model Ys powered by its camera-based Full Self-Driving (FSD) system. While Tesla aims for affordability and scale, Waymo and May are focused on safety-first deployments using sensor-rich systems, including lidar—a tech stack regulators have so far favored.
Beyond ride-hailing, the idea of personally owned self-driving cars is also gaining traction. Waymo and Toyota recently announced they’re exploring how to bring full autonomy to private vehicles, a move that could eventually bring robotaxi tech right into your garage.
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