War Games: Futuristic search and rescue vehicle

Teaching a robot to anticipate human actions

KurzweilAI

By Amara D. Angelica

“Hey, you spilled my last beer!” “Sorry, Frank, Kinect crashed.”

A robot that anticipates your actions (credit: Robot Learning Lab, Computer Science Department, Cornell University)

Why can’t a robot be like a servant (to paraphrase My Fair Lady)? You know, one who would anticipate your every need — even before you asked?
The folks at the Personal Robotics Lab of Ashutosh Saxena, Cornell assistant professor of computer science have gone and done just that.
When we last (virtually) visited the lab, we learned that the roboticists taught  “hallucinating” robots to arrange your room for you, and before that to pick up after you, These are important robot skills if you’re disabled, for example — or you live in a dorm.
Now they’ve taken the next step: they’ve taught a Cornell robot to foresee a human action, the person’s likely trajectory, and what it needs to do to help the person. Let’s say you’re walking toward a refrigerator carrying something with both hands; the robot could open the door for you (as shown in the video below).
Anticipating human actions
Understanding when and where to open the door (or when and how to pour a beer, also in the video) can be difficult for a robot because of the many variables it encounters while assessing the situation. But the Cornell team has created an elegant solution.

(Left) Robot’s video view. (Next) Heatmap of objects. (Next) Heatmap of trajectories (Right) Robot opening the door (credit: Robot Learning Lab, Computer Science Department, Cornell University).

For starters, the Cornell robot has access to a Microsoft Kinect 3-D camera and a database of 3D videos. The robot identifies the activities it sees, considers what uses are possible with the objects in the scene, and determines how those uses fit with the activities.
It then generates a set of possible trajectories or continuations into the future — such as eating, drinking, cleaning, putting away — and finally chooses the most probable. As the action continues, the robot constantly updates and refines its predictions.
“We extract the general principles of how people behave,” said Ashutosh Saxena, Cornell professor of computer science and co-author of a new study tied to the research. “Drinking coffee is a big activity, but there are several parts to it.” The robot builds a “vocabulary” of such small parts that it can put together in various ways to recognize a variety of big activities, he explained.
In tests, the robot made correct predictions 82 percent of the time when looking one second into the future, 71 percent correct for three seconds, and 57 percent correct for 10 seconds.
“Even though humans are predictable, they are only predictable part of the time,” Saxena said. “The future would be to figure out how the robot plans its action. Right now we are almost hard-coding the responses, but there should be a way for the robot to learn how to respond.”
This is amazing research, getting us closer to the robot butler in Robot & Frank and countless other science-fiction stories.
The research was supported by the U.S. Army Research Office, the Alfred E. Sloan Foundation and Microsoft.
Saxena will join Cornell graduate student Hema S. Koppula as they present their research at the International Conference of Machine Learning, June 18–21 in Atlanta, and the Robotics: Science and Systems conference, June 24–28 in Berlin, Germany.

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Cuba iniciará las pruebas para introducir progresivamente la televisión digital

Qué.es

A partir del próximo mes de junio se establecerá una "zona de demostración" del servicio de televisión digital terrestre en la capital cubana para realizar pruebas de trasmisión de señales y su recepción en hogares en condiciones reales, según la nota oficial publicada en el diario Granma, órgano oficial del Partido Comunista cubano.

Para estas pruebas se aplicará la norma china de Transmisión Digital Terrestre Multimedia (DTMB, por su sigla en inglés) y se utilizarán equipos donados por el gigante asiático.

Cuba desarrolla la transferencia de la televisión analógica a un sistema digital como parte de los acuerdos firmados entre los Gobiernos de La Habana y Pekín para fomentar la cooperación tecnológica.

La "zona de demostración" posibilitará adaptar "medidas técnicas, económicas y organizativas" para continuar posteriormente "el despliegue" de la televisión digital de manera "escalonada" y por regiones en todo el país, de acuerdo con las posibilidades económicas.

En los barrios seleccionados se distribuirán cajas decodificadoras, que permiten recibir y visualizar la señal digital en los televisores actuales en barrios seleccionados con el fin de lograr una adecuada dispersión geográfica y diferentes condiciones de recepción dentro de toda el área de La Habana, indica la nota.

Por tratarse de una prueba, estos dispositivos se entregarán a un precio de 7,35 pesos cubanos (poco más de 27 centavos de pesos convertibles cubanos equivalentes a igual cifra en dólares), en concepto de distribución y servicio técnico, sin cobrar el costo del equipo.

El Ministerio de Comunicaciones asegura que las transmisiones actuales de señales de televisión que utilizan la tecnología analógica se mantendrán sin alteraciones.

Cuba anunció en marzo pasado que ya estaba "preparada" para aplicar "exitosamente" una prueba de televisión digital en una "zona de demostración" con un método desarrollado por especialistas chinos, durante un Foro Internacional de televisión digital que se celebró en La Habana.

Un funcionario del Instituto cubano de Investigación y Desarrollo de Telecomunicaciones (Lacetel) dijo entonces que en la isla se impulsa la transferencia de la televisión analógica a un sistema digital bajo la norma china "al servicio de las necesidades de la sociedad".

China construira el edificio más alto del mundo con 838 metros

microsiervos

Si todo va según los planes, el Sky City de la ciudad de Changsha alcanzará los 838 metros de altura, se construirá en tan solo siete meses mediante unas técnicas especiales y requerirá el trabajo de unos 19.000 especialistas. Además, será un edificio altamente sostenible:

Sky City, según un diseño de Broad Sustainable Buildings

La técnica de diseño y construcción de estos rascacielos que han depurado en la empresa BSB incluye una eficiencia energética tremenda: consumen una quinta parte que un edificio convencional en calefacción y aire acondicionado, gracias a un revestimiento cuádruple en las paredes externas.

Primero construyeron un hotel de 30 plantas en 15 días, y como la ingeniería del asunto parece estar dominada, ahora planean levantar el rascacielos más alto del mundo en menos de tres meses.

Para superar el reto el plan consiste en erigir una gigantesca torre de 200 plantas en 90 días, lo cual equivale a crear un millón de metros cuadrados de espacio útil, todo ello interconectado por 104 ascensores para que la gente suba y baje. El coste del mega-proyecto podría rondar los 600 millones de dólares, aun así menos de la mitad que la construcción del Burj Khalifa de Dubai –actualmente el más alto del mundo– o la cuarta parte que la Torre Shanghái, la segunda más alta.

Respecto a la altura en sí, que en este tipo de cosas es lo que finalmente cuenta, la idea es que alcance los 838 metros, justo diez metros más que el Burj Khalifa.

Al parecer la técnica de diseño y construcción de estos rascacielos que han depurado los chinos de la empresa BSB incluye una eficiencia energética tremenda: consumen una quinta parte que un edificio convencional en calefacción y aire acondicionado, gracias a un revestimiento cuádruple en las paredes externas. En cuanto tengan luz verde se pondrán en marcha, probablemente en enero de 2013.

Future video games may react to your sweat, muscles

nbcnews

Yannick LeJacq NBC News contributor

Hasso Plattner Institute

The Hasso Plattner Institute's prototype requires players to attach electrodes directly to their forearms to stimulate the muscles, thus creating a sense of force feedback.

Imagine playing through a level of the popular zombie shooter "Left 4 Dead" on a system that tracks your heart rate, eye movements, even how clammy your skin is getting, all to measure just how scared you are.

For 250 lucky — or extremely unlucky — test subjects, fear-based gaming was a reality, at least in an experimental program led by the game studio Valve. If the game could sense that a player was already frightened and frantic, it might ramp up the difficulty to make the gameplay even more frightening and frantic. The point? To make "Left 4 Dead" more fun, of course.

Valve's resident experimental psychologist, Mike Ambinder, said at a conference in San Francisco that the bio-sensitive tests "worked pretty well."

Game makers have struggled to escape the confines of the console for decades, and countless failed products like Nintendo's "Virtual Boy" system show an industry that's still trapped. In the last five years, motion gaming from the likes of Nintendo's Wii and Microsoft's Xbox Kinect has excited audiences, but it's not hard core: the best titles tend to be party games and fitness apps. Motion control may have brought players closer to their consoles, but a future generation of consoles, wearable and bioaware, will get closer to the players — and maybe even inside of them.

More on nbcnews >>

10 breakthrough technologies of 2013

3-D Printed Pizza to Feed Mars Colonists?

Discovery News

By Ian O'Neill

One of the biggest challenges facing humanity in space is: how to cultivate food. Coincidentally, one of the biggest challenges facing the entire planet in the near future will be: how to cultivate enough food to support an ever-swelling population. Wouldn’t it be delicious if both challenges could be solved, or at least partially solved, using the same, open-source technology?
Enter the 3-D printer: your all-in-one solution to lunar habitat-building, gun-making and space pizza preparation! Now, the latter has grabbed the attention of NASA, which has approved a $125,000 grant for a mechanical engineer to develop a prototype of his universal food synthesizer based on 3-D printing technology.
ANALYSIS: 3-D Printed Space Food For the Gourmet Astronaut
3-D printing certainly isn’t new to the space technology arena. It has been pegged as a potential answer to building habitats on the moon and Mars, for example. A 3-D printer could be landed onto a planetary body ahead of a human mission and it could automatically construct habitable structures out of locally-mined materials.
Also, there’s some hypothetical ideas for the future of 3-D printed satellites. It seems that once the technology matures, complex components for machines and other space equipment could be manufactured in situ.
But what about food?
Launching supplies into space is, of course, costly. So the ultimate aim for any long-duration interplanetary trip or long-term human presence on the surface of Mars would be to develop sustainable food cultivation techniques. A supply of fresh veggies would be the backbone of any healthy colony! But before we see a renewable supply of Mars mushrooms and cosmic cucumbers, we’d need to change the way we see food. The 3-D printer could just do that.
ANALYSIS: Print Me a Condo on the Moon!
To Anjan Contractor, of Systems and Materials Research Corporation (SMRC) in Austin, Texas, food is just a collection of compounds that can be isolated in the form of a powder. These different varieties of powder can then be mixed with oils and water, combined by his 3-D printer. Governed not by a paperback recipe book, the printer would be controlled by software recipes. Food can then be printed to order.
Interestingly, an individual’s dietary requirements can be tightly controlled — in the future of Mars colonization, this could prove to be very useful. Colonists’ food could be easily fortified with vitamins or minerals they are lacking. One could imagine medicines being added to foodstuffs via computer commands. Once you strip down food into its barest of components, our future Mars colonists could keep very close tabs on their calorie intake and general health.
In an interview with Quartz, Contractor outlined his vision of eliminating food waste — the powder his system will use is shelf-stable for up to 30-years. For long-duration spaceflight, this would be a huge advantage.
“Long distance space travel requires 15-plus years of shelf life,” he said. “The way we are working on it is, all the carbs, proteins and macro and micro nutrients are in powder form. We take moisture out, and in that form it will last maybe 30 years.”
ANALYSIS: Domino’s Pizza Moon Plan is All Topping, No Base
With his NASA Small Business Innovation Research program grant, Contractor will build a “pizza printer.” Although that may not sound very appetizing, pizza is an obvious choice for a first 3-D printed food as it can be layered with ingredients. The first layer, the dough, will be printed onto a hot plate that will immediately bake the base of the pizza. Then, powdered tomato puree will be mixed with oil and layered over the top. A layer of protein will also be added.
This isn’t the first 3-D printed food concept to make it into the limelight. As reported by Discovery News’ Markus Hammonds in February, the company Fab@Home is also developing a 3-D printer to create foodstuffs out of “edible hydrocolloidal suspensions” (gel-like mixtures of solids and liquids). In their research, they’ve stumbled into an “uncanny valley of food” where the 3-D foods don’t feel quite right when eaten. More work is obviously needed to understand how to mimic not only the flavors, but also the texture of food.
Contractor hopes, however, that by making his 3-D food synthesizer open-source, that once his technology is matured and released to the world, others will innovate and develop the technology, perhaps overcoming this unsavory uncanny valley.
Although the applications in space are obvious — and even Jean Luc Picard would be impressed by this modest attempt at a Star Trek replicator — Contractor is acutely aware that this idea may, one day, transform the way we conceive food here on Earth. This in-turn may help feed the planet.
“I think, and many economists think, that current food systems can’t supply 12 billion people sufficiently,” he said. “So we eventually have to change our perception of what we see as food.”
So will the first manufactured food on Mars be a 3-D printed pizza from a 3-D printed Pizza Hut? If so, may I suggest the first family-sized pizza be called the “Olympus Mons-ter.”
via SPACE.com

Transmission of Classical & Medieval Manuscripts

LibraryOfCongress

New computational techniques show how modern digital philology is changing the way we think of the transmission of medieval manuscripts through space and time. Using the notes of the classical philologist Paul Krüger, whose manuscripts were recently rediscovered in the Law Library of Congress, complex three dimensional visualization techniques will be used to show how the medieval manuscripts making up the Codex of Justinian are spatially and temporally related to each other. The talk also highlights how these new techniques give scholars the tools to postulate what the structure of missing and destroyed manuscripts might have been--changing the face of even the most traditional of the humanities, classical philology.  

Sheep gets metal heart made with rocket science in China

ITN

78,000 People Apply for One-Way Trip to Mars

By Time.com/ Ollie John

www.dailymail.co.uk

An ambitious project to establish a human colony on Mars has attracted applications from tens of thousands of would-be astronauts, just two weeks after applications opened.

The mission, a private venture by the Dutch non-profit organization Mars One, aims to send a crew to the Red Planet in 2022 – and, due to the physiological change in the human body after a stay on Mars, there’d be no coming back. That hasn’t deterred people, though: so far, over 78,000 people have applied to become one of Mars’ first immigrants (the company is expecting 500,000 applicants by the time applications close on August 31). “This is turning out to be the most desired job in history,” says Bas Lansdorp, co-founder of Mars One.

(MORE: Asteroid in a Bag: NASA’s Long, Strange Trip) 

Day-to-day life on Mars will be no picnic: The organization says that the daily routine on the planet would involve construction work on the colony (installing greenhouses, for example), maintenance of the settlement’s systems and research into Mars’ climate and geological history–all in an inhospitable environment with unbreathable air and an average temperature in the planet’s mid-latitudes of around -58 degrees Farenheit.

But Mars One says it is not looking for applicants with specific skills, such as a science degree, that might be useful during an interplanetary posting. Instead, they are looking for people who “have a deep sense of purpose, willingness to build and maintain healthy relationships, the capacity for self-reflection and ability to trust.” They also want volunteers who are “resilient, adaptable, curious, creative and resourceful.” Candidates will receive a minimum of eight years training before leaving Earth, the company says.

(MORE: Dirt Found on Mars! Why the Red Planet Makes Us Crazy)

“Gone are the days when bravery and the number of hours flying a supersonic jet were the top criteria for selection. Now, we are more concerned with how well each astronaut works and lives with the others–and for a lifetime of challenges ahead,” said Norbert Kraft, a former Senior Research Associate at NASA and Chief Medical Director for Mars One in a statement published on Mars One’s website.

Candidates hailing from over 120 countries (although the vast majority are from the U.S.) uploaded a video to Mars One’s website explaining why they’re suitable for the mission. Kyle, a 21-year-old grocery store clerk from the U.S., says he wants to be “an explorer and pioneer at the forefront of history.” Steven, a 43-year-old American who works in electronics, has even higher hopes for the mission: “I would like to go to Mars… to discover new life,” he says.

In addition to people skills, successful applicants must be good fundraisers too: Mars One plans to raise much of the mission’s $6 billion estimated cost through a reality TV show following the applicants as they undergo preparations for the one-way trip to Mars. They’ve got a little way to go yet, though: as of April 29, the money raised through donations and merchandise stood at $84,121.

Read more: http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/05/09/78000-people-apply-for-one-way-trip-to-mars/#ixzz2Soc185i8

3D-printed ‘bionic’ ear melds electronics and biology

KurzweilAI

Scientists at Princeton University have used a 3D printer to create a functional ear that can “hear” radio frequencies up to microwave frequencies.

Scientists used 3-D printing to merge tissue and an antenna capable of receiving radio signals (credit: Frank Wojciechowski)Añadir leyenda

The researchers’ primary purpose was to explore an efficient and versatile means to merge electronics with tissue. The scientists used 3D printing of cells and nanoparticles, followed by cell culture to combine a small coil antenna with cartilage, creating what they term a “bionic ear.”

There are mechanical and thermal challenges with interfacing electronic materials with biological materials, as Michael McAlpine, an assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Princeton and the lead researcher points out.

Response of the bionic ear to radio frequencies in terms of the forward power
transmission coefficient (credit: Manu S Mannoor et al./Nano Letters)

However. McAlpine’s team has made several advances in recent years involving the use of small-scale medical sensors and antenna. Last year, a research effort led by McAlpine and Naveen Verma, an assistant professor of electrical engineering, and Fio Omenetto of Tufts University, resulted in the development of a “tattoo” made up of a biological sensor and antenna that can be affixed to the surface of a tooth.

Standard tissue engineering involves seeding types of cells, such as those that form ear cartilage, onto a scaffold of a polymer material called a hydrogel. But the researchers said that this technique has problems replicating complicated three-dimensional biological structures. Ear reconstruction “remains one of the most difficult problems in the field of plastic and reconstructive surgery,” they wrote.

To solve the problem, the team turned to 3D printing, its first use to interweave tissue with electronics, the researchers say. The technique allowed them to combine the antenna electronics with tissue within the highly complex topology of a human ear.

The researchers used a Fab@Home 3D printer to combine a matrix of hydrogel and calf cells with silver nanoparticles, which form an antenna. The printed bioelectronic hybrid ear construct was then cultured in vitro to enable cartilage to grow.

The finished ear consists of a coiled antenna inside a cartilage structure. Two wires lead from the base of the ear and wind around a helical “cochlea” — the part of the ear that senses sound — which can connect to electrodes.

(Top) Optical images of the functional materials, including biological (chondrocyte cells), structural (silicone), and electronic (AgNP-infused silicone) used to form the bionic ear. (Bottom) 3D printer used for the printing process. (Credit: Manu S Mannoor et al./Nano Letters)

McAlpine cautions that further work and extensive testing would need to be done before a version of the technology could be used on a patient for normal hearing. He said the ear in principle could be used to restore or enhance human hearing.

He said electrical signals produced by the ear could be connected to a patient’s nerve endings, similar to a hearing aid. The current system receives radio waves, but he said the research team plans to incorporate other materials, such as pressure-sensitive electronic sensors, to enable the ear to register ordinary acoustic sounds.

Support for the project was provided by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, NIH, and the Grand Challenges Program at Princeton University.

The Drone Shield:Tiny Device Will Detect Domestic Drones

Pat Dollard

Excerpted from US NEWS
By Jason Koebler

Worried about drones spying on you? Soon, a device might be able to send you text and email alerts that let you know when a drone is nearby.A Washington, D.C.-based engineer is working on the “Drone Shield,” a small, Wi-Fi-connected device that uses a microphone to detect a drone’s “acoustic signatures” (sound frequency and spectrum) when it’s within range.

The company’s founder, John Franklin, who has been working in aerospace engineering for seven years, says he hopes to start selling the device sometime this year. He is using the Kickstarter-like IndieGoGo to finance the project.

The device will cost $69 and will be about the size of a USB thumb drive. It will use Raspberry Pi – a tiny, $25 computer – and commercially available microphones to detect drones. He says he imagines that people will attach the Drone Shield to their fences or roofs to protect their home from surveillance.

“People will get the alert and then close their blinds,” Franklin says.He is currently working on an open-source database of drone sounds that the detector will check what it’s hearing against. Other devices with motors, such as lawn mowers and weed-whackers, will also be included to reduce false positives. Drone owners will be asked to record the sound of their drones to be included in the database. When the Drone Shield identifies a drone, it’ll flash and send an email and text message alert to a homeowner.

Franklin says that most commercially available drones have to come relatively close to a home in order to spy. More sophisticated drones, such as Predators, would fly too high to detect.

He got the idea for the device after getting into a bit of hot water with his neighbor, which Franklin says alerted him to the reality of people’s concerns about drones.”I bought a [drone] from Amazon and was going to use it to look at my roof. The wind took it and I crashed it into my neighbor’s yard. It freaked him out once he noticed it had a camera on it,” Franklin says. “It sort of dawned on me that it’s so easy to invade someone’s privacy with a couple hundred dollar drone.”

Evgeny Morozov on technology: The folly of solutionism

EconomistMagazine

UnderstandingSociety: Skilled work

UnderstandingSociety

By Daniel Little

Watch an active construction site for a few minutes and you will see some amazing examples of skilled work and deft problem solving. That was true today in Ann Arbor where I happened to see one complicated step in the construction of a new wing of a five-storey building. The problem was this. A fifty-foot girder was lifted by crane to its intended location within the vertical steel frame. Already I was impressed with the skill of the crane operator, who deftly maneuvered the beam into position where two steel workers were waiting on the existing beam. The crane suspended the beam in place and the steel workers bolted the near end to the frame. So far so good. But the far end was to attach to an isolated vertical beam fifty feet away, and I couldn't picture how that end would be attached. The steel worker answered that question quickly. He scuttled the length of the beam to the isolated vertical while the beam was suspended by the crane cable and the attached end. But now the resistance of the material world intervened -- the beam was a little too long to fit. The worker used two crow bars he'd brought with him to lever it into place -- no good. It was just half an inch too long given the position of the vertical. So are we stymied? Need to send it back? No. The worker stood up on the beam and started gently rocking the vertical. After two or three oscillations he was able to lever the beam into place, and quickly bolted it down.

It's not a completely amazing instance of problem solving on the job, but it is impressive nonetheless. Certainly the users' manual doesn't have a section on what to do in this circumstance. But given his prior training, experience, and embodied skills, the worker was able to come up with a solution that worked.

Richard Sennett describes this kind of artisanal intelligence in The Craftsman. He describes craftsmanship as "the skill of making things well" (8). Further,

The Craftsman explores these dimensions of skill, commitment, and judgment in a particular way. It focuses on the intimate connection between hand and head. Every good craftsman conducts a dialogue between concrete practices and thinking; this dialogue evolves into sustaining habits, and these habits establish a rhythm between problem solving and problem finding. The relation between hand and head appears in domains seemingly as different as bricklaying, cooking, designing a playground, or playing the cello— but all these practices can misfire or fail to ripen. (9)

A part of the interest of Sennett's work here is the help it provides in redressing the idea that mental work is professional and cognitive, while manual work is repetitive and rote. Sennett gives many contemporary examples of work that is both head and hand, both cognitive and skilled, both creative and manual. Sennett gives many examples of this kind of artisanal intelligence. Here is one from the construction of a large shopping mall in Atlanta.

The lighting in these aboveground car-houses turned out to be uneven in intensity, dangerous shadows suddenly appearing within the building. Painters had added odd-shaped white strip lines to guide drivers in and out of irregular pools of light, showing signs of improvising rather than following the plan. The craftsmen had done further, deeper thinking about light than the designers. (44-45)

Sennett's point here is that the implementation of a complex space is not simply the translation of a computer-generated architectural drawing into material form. Rather, it is a process that requires real workers to find solutions to the inevitable fact of gaps and inconsistencies in the plan--in this case, the fact that the lighting didn't fully illuminate the space, leading to risks for pedestrians and drivers.

A dominant tradition of philosophy identifies our human essence with our ability to think and reason. Descartes represents this line of thought ("cogito ergo sum"). But there is another tradition that places labor and our capacity to transform the material world at the center of the human essence. Hegel represented this line of thought, as did Marx. It is the homo faber tradition -- man the creator -- and all in all, it seems to do a better job of defining us. Labor and skilled intelligence lie at the core of human capacities. And that is a good thing to remember on May 1, the international day celebrating labor.

Hands on: 18 hours with Google Glass

Fox News

The author's first experience with Google Glass, a futuristic headmounted computer that Google hopes will change the world. (FoxNews.com / Perry Chiaramonte)

By Jeremy A. Kaplan
Today is my first full day as a cyborg.
I’ve spent the past 18 or so hours wearing Google Glass -- the Internet giant’s vision of an always-on, digitally connected future, disguised as a pair of glassless eyeglasses.
Looking past the double-takes and outright stares from everyone looking at me, it’s easy to see the potential of this crazy gizmo. But for now, well, it’s weird being one of the borg.
Glass is a lopsided yet oddly comfortable hunk of plastic, silicon and titanium. The brains of my device were housed in two hunks of gray plastic, all on the right side (and no, there’s currently no option to swap sides). Google has versions in a variety of colors, including a gorgeous bright orange. If you’re going to call attention to yourself, may as well do it in style.
At the back is a battery and a tiny speaker that rests against your head, and uses the bones in your skull to amplify its output. The front contains the camera, processor and a tiny display screen -- your interface to the world of Google.
I picked mine up from Google’s temporary Glass office in New York. And after a 90-minute walkthrough with several “Glass guides,” I was ready to set out in the world.
I found using Glass to be remarkably intuitive and straightforward. Others who tried it had mixed luck, however, which mainly revealed an eagerness to play around without knowing what exactly to do. The lesson: Read the directions.
Tap the touch-sensitive temple piece or simply tilt your head up and the screen activates, displaying the time and two words: “Ok Glass.” Speak them aloud and the voice-activated device gives you a menu with a few simple options: Google, take a picture, record a video, get directions, send a message, make a call, hang out.
Ask the device to Google something and, thanks to a Bluetooth link to your smartphone or the built-in Wi-Fi, it will search the Web almost immediately. I tried Googling the length of the Golden Gate bridge (8,980 feet), how to say “I love you” in Japanese (“Watashi wa anata o aishite”), and checking the weather (“No, it isn’t raining in New York, the weather is 58 and clear”).
The future is a robotic voice literally telling me to skip the raincoat, apparently.
Pictures with Glass are reasonably good; it has a 5 megapixel camera, comparable to that of a newish smartphone. That’s not the greatest quality, but it works. I immediately found myself wanting to edit images, crop out the backgrounds and boost the colors. You can do that all on Google+, of course, but there’s little interface directly through Glass itself.
The real charm of Glass comes in sharing, however, not touching your temples. Glass integrates deeply with Google+, which you’re probably a member of already, like it or not. It’s no Facebook, sure, but it does have tens of millions of users.
Using the simple MyGlass smartphone app, you can configure the Google+ sharing features on Glass: Which of your contacts you want ready access to, which groups you want to share videos and pictures to, and so on. For what it’s worth, Google+ actually does social networking better than Facebook in some ways, and sharing pics with groups and individuals is as easy as taking them.
On the other hand, social networking is both a Glass strength and its Achilles Heel: Everyone I saw while wearing Glass stared, then eventually asked me if I was recording them. Are we live right now? Is this online?
For the record, no, Glass is not violating your privacy. No, it is not surreptitiously recording you. No, it does not do face recognition. No, I am not seeing through your clothing.
While Google’s wild invention does raise those questions, the device is designed to skirt them all: To start recording a video or snap a shot, you need to actively turn it on. And there’s no red light on the front to indicate activity, but whoever you’re speaking with should be able to see the active screen.
And Google told me face recognition would require some processing power that’s simply out of the question, at least for now.
That said, what it does do is tantalize. Want directions? There they are. Want to share a picture of your trip? Done. Need a fact to wow a dinner party? There it is.
Just don’t wear Glass during the dinner party. At least, that’s what my wife says.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2013/05/01/hands-on-18-hours-with-google-glass/#ixzz2S472dMGr

Laser scanner that can produce three-dimensional maps with unprecedented speed and accuracy [Video]

ReutersVideo

Researchers at Australia's CSIRO have developed a hand-held, spring-loaded laser scanner that can produce three-dimensional maps with unprecedented speed and accuracy. Called Zebedee after a French, spring-propelled television puppet of the sixties, the scanner fires laser light, giving surveyors and archaeologists a powerful new tool for discovery.  

America's engine of the future to get 'Made in China' label

mazautolv 

Fox News

Thanks to generous support from a foreign backer, there is renewed hope for an American attempt to revolutionize, modernize and sanitize the automobile engine.

The catch?  The finished product will be stamped “Made in China.”

EcoMotors, a startup engineering company based in Allen Park, Mich., plans to produce up to 150,000 of its opposed-piston, opposed-cylinder (OPOC) two-stroke engines annually in a factory funded by Zhongding Power. The facility will be located in China’s Anhui Province, west of Shanghai.

EcoMotors CEO Don Runkle told FoxNews.com that Zhongding has committed to building a plant for the engines with the hope of supplying generator companies and builders of medium-duty trucks.

“We have talked to a number of automobile manufacturers in the United States, as well as in China,” Runkle said.  He added that EcoMotors has “a letter of intent with Generac,” an American manufacturer of generators that currently buys engines from John Deere and Iveco.

Although Chinese-built generators and motorcycles are becoming more common in the United States, engines produced there have rarely seen duty in American automobiles. The first was when General Motors dropped a Chinese-made 3.4-liter V-6 into its 2005 Chevrolet Equinox and Pontiac Torrent crossovers.

In 2010, when Zhongding agreed to invest up to $18 million toward engineering costs for the OPOC engine, Runkle announced that “this initiative will create a range of high-skill R&D jobs here in southeast Michigan, further underscoring the region's critical role as the incubator of tomorrow’s high-efficiency powertrain solutions.”

The OPOC two-stroke engine is a markedly different concept than the four-stroke engines fitted to most modern automobiles. While two-strokes are generally lighter, have fewer moving parts and a higher power density than comparable four-strokes, they are often not as durable and burn a lot of oil, resulting in worse emissions. EcoMotors claims to have overcome these hurdles with its new technology.

The EcoMotors-designed power plant does without valves and cylinder heads, and places two pistons facing one another in each cylinder like boxers' gloves, with the pistons in turn connected to identical counterparts in an adjacent cylinder. The expansion stroke on one side creates a compression stroke in the other.

“Our innovation is an unusual engine architecture,” Runkle said.

The company says the motors can be configured to run on a variety of fuels, including gasoline and diesel, and will be cheaper to build while delivering between 20 and 50 percent better fuel economy than conventional internal combustion engines, depending on their application.

Production of the OPOC is set to begin in 2014.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2013/04/24/america-new-engine-future-to-be-made-in-china/#ixzz2RPLVRI4O

Secret weapon? How thermal imaging helped catch bomb suspect

usnews

www.worth1000.com

Thermal-imaging devices have been used to seek out pot-growing operations, map Martian geology — and now, to watch the prime suspect in this week's Boston Marathon bombings as he was holed up in his last hiding place.

Authorities said helicopters equipped with thermal imagers spotted the heat signature of a person inside a tarp-covered boat, sitting in a backyard in Watertown, Mass. Police used the sensors after a woman in the area reported seeing a trail of blood leading to the boat. The thermal readings confirmed that there was someone under the tarp, and that the person was still alive.

"Probably been there all day," a senior police official told NBC News. "He wasn't moving at first. He is now."

After monitoring the body in the boat for more than an hour, police moved in and seized the wounded bombing suspect, 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

Thermal imagers can spot the signature of a body or other heat source even if it's inside a house, a vehicle, or in this case, a vessel. Walls may stop visible-light wavelengths, but infrared wavelengths can still pass through. The variations in heat emissions can be picked up by camera chips designed to be sensitive to the infrared part of the spectrum. The signature would be particularly noticeable when there's a significant difference between the background temperature and the temperature of the heat source.

Police have long used such devices to find out whether marijuana is being grown inside a house, using heat lamps. In 2001, the Supreme Court ruled that the use of thermal scans to monitor heat sources inside a person's home should be considered a "search" under the Fourth Amendment, and thus would require a warrant. The court said such scans could reveal private details about the homeowner, including the time of night when "the lady of the house takes her daily sauna and bath."

Thermal imagers have been taken to other worlds — for instance, aboard NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter, which analyzes variations in the composition of the Red Planet's surface using the Thermal Emission Imaging System, or THEMIS.

Immigration authorities have used thermal scanners to look for the signs of fever among arriving passengers, and researchers have been experimenting with them as a lie-detector technique.

In 2009, FBI investigators used thermal imagers to search for bodies in the neighborhood where Cleveland serial killer Anthony Sowell lived. That may well have been the most notorious case where the technology was brought to bear. Until now.

Hovercraft golf cart

MultiAngelVideo

Is Ford building an inflatable car?

Fox News

We’re guessing this will come with a very big fix a flat kit.
Ford has filed trademark applications for something called an Inflatable Light Urban Vehicle, or iLuv.
Classified under “vehicles; apparatus for locomotion by land, air or water,” there’s little more information about what it could be.
The outlet that first discovered the applications, Ford Inside News, suggests that they could be intended for use on some sort of small, collapsible personal urban transportation device, rather than a traditional car, but Ford isn’t saying. A spokesperson tells FoxNews.com that the company regularly trademarks various names and won't comment on any speculation surrounding these.
Mercedes-Benz has shown a prototype vehicle fitted with inflatable steel beams in its doors that expand in the event of a crash to absorb energy, while a San Francisco startup company called XP Vehicles has proposed a car made from flexible panels filled with lightweight expandable foam.
As for a blow-up Ford, the only one we’ve seen was a car-shaped airbag used during the demonstration of a crash test avoidance system, and it was not called iLuv. As least not as far as we know.
Nevertheless, while you can’t yet buy an inflatable Ford, you can get one with rear seatbelts that inflate during an accident to help cushion the blow.
An air-filled vehicle that goes on “land, air or water” sounds like more fun.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2013/04/09/is-ford-building-inflatable-car/#ixzz2Q4ds1ZN1