Last year at RoboGames was the very first Mech Warfare competition. Like, ever. And it was pretty cool. But this year was exponentially more awesome. Mech Warfare pits walking robots armed with airsoft rifles against each other in a detailed cityscape. The robots are controlled remotely, but the catch is that you can’t directly see your robot. Instead, competitors rely on wireless cameras mounted on the bots themselves to see where they’re going, kinda like the old Mech Warrior computer game. I’d tell you more about how it all went, but I’m sure you’d rather just watch the video.
One of the ironies of virtual reality is that the endless digital worlds which it provides require some real-life square footage in which to operate. Researchers and programmers have been battling this problem ever since VR's heyday in the '90s, coming up with weirder and weirder-looking contraptions to mask the fact that you're "walking" through a make-believe "world." German, Italian and Swiss researchers transcended differences in geography, culture and language to create a massive treadmill called The CyberWalk, the largest virtual reality platform in the world. A series of linear belts makes up the moving part of the omni-directional platform, which provides a synthetically boundless arena in which to get your VR on. The array can move as a whole while individual belts can move perpendicularly, creating 360 degrees of movement while keeping the user as close to the center as possible. We understand that you can't really create an expansive and realistic VR universe without some kind of ever-unravelling space in which to play. But watching this video reminds us strongly of another time in our lives, a time when we kept hamsters as pets and watched them scamper around and around their wheels for lack of either knowing better, or a more gratifying option. Source: Switched Festo's unveiled some pretty impressive tech over the years, from fluidic muscles to robotic flying penguins, but this next one has us a bit worried. The Bionic Handling Assistant is ostensibly patterned after the elephant's trunk, designed to be both agile and delicate... but have you seen the thing? We're pretty sure that it was patterned after the tentacles of Doctor Octopus, and that it will crush you and everyone you care about without a second thought. But if you're the trusting type, the company assures you that this is just the thing for all those delicate processes you've been meaning to automate but haven't been able to in the past: everything from handling fruit to animal husbandry is a cinch with this "hierarchically arranged system of muscles and evolutionary optimized movement patterns"! But don't take our word for it: peep the video after the break. "Robots in real action! Robots lighting your lamps and heating your wife's electric iron and oven! Would you have believed it ten, or even five years ago?" People living as early as 1920s envisioned a future where "amazing automatons" could rid mankind of tedium and hard labor. In this issue of the magazine, we covered robots that made speeches, answered telephones, and controlled street traffic while calling them "Mechanical Men — Our New Slaves"
Cleanternet is a parody that seriously delivers a message to us about internet censorship. Worth a look, because it's definately going to arrive sooner then you think. We're all more or less aware that we exist in a world that is largely invisible to the human eye. The machinations of physiology are too small to perceive, and the vast majority of the electromagnetic spectrum simply doesn't register with our peepers. But we're quite literally surrounded by electromagnetic waves, with radiation emitted by the sun and naturally-occurring radioactive particles from sources like radon. And, with the advent of the radio in the late 19th century, we began to produce more and more electromagnetic radiation that has exponentially exploded over the past century. Bengt Sjölén and Adam Somlai Fischer, along with artist-cum-researcher Usman Haque, have developed the Wifi Camera to explore this invisible realm and how we move about it. By pointing a series of Wi-Fi antennas at a given space, the "camera" records the signal strengths of wireless transmitters and visually maps their expanse and movement. Waves at the Wi-Fi wavelength act similarly to visible light, bouncing off of solid objects and passing through transparent ones. And since Wi-Fi operates on radio waves, radiation from microwaves and cell phones (which rely on radio, too) appear in the picture, as well. Check out a demonstration of one Wi-Fi Camera rig below. The team says on their site that they are working toward video capability; that would be fascinating indeed, since they are currently able to "see" people amidst the radiation, but only statically. Source: Switched Having a camera built into your phone isn't a big deal anymore. But when you combine that camera with the rich software applications that run on devices like the iPhone and Android, you get lots of cool new ways to put your cameraphone to good use. Cameraphones are becoming a form of digital photographic memory, helping you remember what level you parked on or the label on that fantastic bottle of wine. Now, with the right apps, you can also use your phone to scan barcodes and store them, and even translate and recognize text. Google Goggles is a brand new application for Android phones that lets you search the web with an image. You just point your phone at an artwork, a book, DVD, or CD cover, a landmark, or a logo, and Goggles will return search results for that item. You can even point your phone at someone's business card, and Goggles can automatically add that person's name, address, phone number, email address and web site to your address book. Eventually, Goggles will be able to translate written text as well. So you could point your phone at a sign or menu in another language and get back Google Translate's translation. Newer smartphones have such good cameras they can double as barcode scanners. ShopSavvy is an app available for both the iPhone and Android that can scan a barcode on any product and give you prices from all over the web as well as retail outlets near you. Google Shopper is a similar application on Android: point your cameraphone at either a barcode or a book, CD, or DVD cover, and Shopper will show you prices and review of that product from around the web instantly. A special kind of square bar code called QR Codes, are becoming a popular way to transmit information like web links and phone numbers directly to a phone without any typing. If your local coffee shop has a barcode in the window, for example, you could scan it on your phone and can instantly find reviews and more information without tapping a key. Speaking of barcodes, one of the most clever uses of a camerphone I've ever seen is to take and store images of membership cards or big box store club cards that you use over and over again. Instead of crowding your keyring with your grocery, pharmacy, and movie rental place club card, take pictures of each one and store them in an image file on your phone. Then when you're checking into the gym or checking out at the cashier, you can simply scan your screen. There are also dedicated apps for organizing your cards into different categories, and even setting alerts to remind you if, say, there is a special sale on a certain day every month. Source: Fastcompany The story goes on to say that the prototype device was found in an iPhone 3G box. According to the source was so early in its development that it even fails to boot, so details are scarce. These characteristics are a front-facing camera and 80 GB worth of storage. He went exactly how you like the device is switched on is a mystery, but let’s just pretend we did not notice and play here. The announcement of the 4th generation of mobile phone from Apple comes in a few months so we will know whether this is really a prototype or a fan-made mock-up. Actually, the truth about these wannabe iPhone 4G much earlier than the outside. The device was a Japanese knock-off that some fraudsters trying to sell to publications for 10 000 dollar. We told you something was wrong here. Kitty is a computer animation made by a group of russian physicists and mathematicians in 1968. They created a model of cat with a BESM-4 computer and were able to animate it. The result was printed out using alphabet symbols and then converted to the cinefilm. Imagine you could draw musical instruments on normal paper with any pencil (cheap circuit thumb-tacked on) and then play them with your finger. The Drawdio circuit-craft lets you MacGuyver your everyday objects into musical instruments: paintbrushes, macaroni, trees, grandpa, even the kitchen sink! Big thanks to Rayz0r for recommending this video ;) |
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