Those programmed quadcopters are getting even smarter. Not only can they fly in perfect formation, build things and cause all of us to worry about robots dominating the world. Now they can balance and juggle and toss a long thin object back and forth. What will they do next?
This took a lot of serious math to execute. It's created by researchers at ETH Zürich's Flying Machine Arena, who took into account all the variables that go into flying a couple of little machines, balancing them, and perfectly coordinating their movements with each other.
Future vision by Erwin van Lun
Robots will be everywhere! Every shape, every size. They will assist humanoid robots who will be our companions. Future robots of next generations quadcopters family can set up a whole festival terrain for thousand of visitors in just a few hours. Or build houses. Bridges. Or, even more imporant: dig tunnels under Africa spreading water all over the continent. Or to fly in other robots for a particular job. Whatever we want to achieve, we won’t need humans anymore. Not for the coordination, not for the man power. We only have to say what we want. Only our mind is our limitation. Not the future of tomorrow, but definitely of huge influence on mankind in the second half of this century.
Using new technologies like 3D spatial binaural audio, gesture interfaces, and super-high-resolution video, we will be able to build incredibly immersive (and relatively inexpensive) experiences for workers to connect more effectively. Even new technology that allows visually stunning projection of holograms will begin to find application in the meetings arena. Although this sounds like sci-fi, the idea of near-real remote communication is a Holy Grail for productivity.
Mind-blowing hand-controlled computing room from Oblong Industries. The guy behind it was the tech mind behind Minority Report. This is cool stuff. John Underkoffler, chief scientist, Oblong Industries, was the tech advice behind the film "Minority Report" and then he built his own company to make that science fiction real.
Tech journalist Robert Scoble went to the Oblong campus to talk with their chief scientist.
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Future vision by Erwin van Lun
What a great idea this might seem, it’s certainly not the end. All windows in every room will be displays and cameras at the very same time. This allows for 3D experience (giving your another perspective look from another angle to the very same display) and won’t make additional cameras necessary. We’ll not discuss numbers and graphs, but concepts and ideas. We’ll our whole body, including our voice, to communicate with virtual entities, virtual humans, ‘living’ on the other side of the screen. We can use our hands, feets, head and fingers to move content (objects) around, to resize or transform. Or we’ll fetch objects, ‘get it in’ the room, and suddenly find it holographically projected the middle of room. And the other way around, physical object, being analysed in real time and find themselves being shoot to the virtual world (being printed in 3D somewhere else). Creativity is endless. This is just a start.
How will we interact with our computers in just a few years from now? With touchscreens, trackpads and speech technology, mice are no longer the input devices of choice. And things are about to get a lot worse for the once-dominant computer controllers. With the rise of new technologies several companies offer new ways to physically interact with the PC and other computing devices: companies like Tobiii, Leonar3Do, Leap Motion and Oculus VR.
Future vision by Erwin van Lun
Soon after, sitting behind a desk will be passe. We’ll use our whole body to communicate. To shape ideas, like a sculpure. To interact with peers or with chatbots, having real contact. It will all be so different….
You might think augmented reality is the way of the future, but really, it has its roots in the 20th century. Morton Heilig, the "Father of Virtual Reality," patented the Sensorama Stimulator, which he called an "experience theater," on Aug. 28, 1962. Over time, the idea of using technology to create a layer over the real world has been honed and refined and put in our palms, thanks to the proliferation of smartphones.
Confused about what augmented reality is? In short, it's a way to use technology to redefine space, and it places a virtual layer over the world with geographic specificity ensuring a good fit.
Urban Exploration
In a new neighborhood or exploring another city? AR apps let you filter by category so you can find exactly what you're looking for, whether it's a coffee shop, restaurant or museum. And you won't need to worry about getting turned around by the map — the AR app will adapt based on what you're facing, so it'll tell you to turn right and get you to your destination.
Museum
Visiting a museum? AR "attaches" information to the art so you don't need to buy one of those audio tours.
Shopping
Augmented reality lets you browse a virtual catalog of clothes from your favorite brands, shop directly
Travel and History
If you're looking for budget "travel" options or a quick "getaway," you could find a solution in augmented reality. Just plop the Eiffel Tower or the Leaning Tower of Pisa right in your backyard and unlock monuments during a sort of virtual vacation, and you could learn tidbits about each one as you go. It's be a great way to teach your kids, too
Customer Service
No one likes having to call customer service — you'll be put on hold and stuck listening to a script recited by a rep. But in the future, if you're having trouble setting up Apple TV, or your cable cuts off, you can have customer service come to you.
Safety and Rescue Operations
Emergencies are a fact of life, and first responders, police and firefighters often arrive at chaotic scenes and need to make sense of the environment and navigate a place they've never been. Wouldn't it be cool if they could see a virtual map of the site or have "X-ray vision" to see underground water and power lines?
Moving & Decorating Your Home
There's no worse feeling than buying furniture, paying the delivery fee, having someone schlep it up five flights of stairs, only to have it a) not fit through the doorway or b) look like a Gulliver-sized sofa in a lilliputian living room. What if you searched through an app and pulled up the Macy's bedframe, IKEA dresser.
Is augmented reality the future? How would you like to use augmented reality? Are you excited by the technology?
Future vision by Erwin van Lun
Many out there are looking for applications of augmented reality. The real aspect is actually: all aspects of life! Let’s regard this from a human point of view:
A better future for our children: Education (=learning from previous generations) walk outside and learn about everything you see. Biology, history, sociology, technology, languages. You’ll get information and virtual teachers (virtual humans specialized in a certain area) giving you answers to all the questions you might have, and are the best story tellers at the same time.
Building a safe environment: any construction can be carried out by any human. Everyone can build houses, everyone can build cars, and parts are generated by 3D printers. The next step is obviously that robots will build houses, assemble cars. Although the application will be part of our future, it won’t last long.
A group of European researchers has created a cloud platform designed to serve as a central processing and data-access brains for robots located throughout the world.
Essentially, they’re treating robots like any other device — desktop, tablet or mobile phone — running web applications, only robots can learn from each other and can do a lot more than just update screen displays.
Future vision by Erwin van Lun
Future humanoid robots will not have one intelligence somewhere in their hardware, like humans do, but they are connected to one huge AI. Everything that’s invented once will be immediately available on any place on earth.
Nick D’Aloisio, a 16-year-old iOS developer based in London, England, is the mastermind behind this amazing iPhone app. Summly thrives on a high end algorithm. The Summly algorithm accomplishes this using a number of machine learning techniques and “genetic” algorithms — a search heuristic that mimics evolution.
D’Aloisio says that Summly works best with well-formulated articles that conform to a consistent structure. This lets the algorithm learn what’s important — and where to find that important information — more easily. Tech articles and news articles tend to marry well with Summly’s algorithm, as does the consistently organized content from the New York Times and the BBC. The app doesn’t do quite as well with narrative text written in the third person, but D’Aloisio says that there are no areas that are seriously troublesome to his algorithm.
Future vision by Erwin van Lun
Computer try to understand in much more details what we find important and this is a step in this direction. This will immediately be followed by connecting it to social media: what do our friends, our family, our colleagues find important? People want to know about the news before they hear it from others. That’s where news coaching brands tap into.
Facebook has recently totally redesigned their search function called Graph Search. Search becomes social!
Instead of 'trail running' you'll find yourself searching for 'my friends for like trail running', friends who like 'road trips', 'friends who like dancing', 'bands my friends listen to', 'friends who work at my company and like to ski', 'national parks my friends have visited', 'photos of my friends before 1995',
Running in beta now, but this will drastically change consumer buying behavior just with a few simple next steps.
Future vision by Erwin van Lun
It’s just a next step in the media evolution. Soon Facebook Graph search will be available andbe voice activated, like Apple Siri and Google Now. And the effect will even be stronger when coaching brands start to connect with Facebook allowing for sharing even more details about consumers interactions with brands.
What about:
Cable providers my friends like?
Insurances my friends have?
Banks liked by my friends?
Supermarkets liked by my friends?
Restaurants nearby my friends like?
Airlines preferred by my friends ?
What is the rating of my friends of this sports shoes?
Cars my friends like
Sunglass brands my friends like
Best holiday hotel in Ibiza according to my friends?
Facebook Graph Search is of the most important innovation since the introduction of the Internet. This will change buying behavior of consumers forever.
In this 4 page article (1, 2, 3, 4, 4x3MB in pdf) for FoodMagazine I'm outlining what retailers can do to anticipate the social media trend.
Key is that they will integrate their customer loyalty cards with Facebook. This will allow them to recommend what friends of consumer advice them to buy. It will change the landscape of retail forever.....
KLM recently announced that it will be changing its baggage policy for European flights. For tickets booked as from 22 April 2013, check-in baggage will be a paid option for all passengers travelling in Economy Class. An exception to this rule has been made for our valued Flying Blue Ivory members (like me).
Future vision by Erwin van Lun
The end of the 4P (or 5P) marketing mix of Kotler in near . It was introduced when we started to think seriously about combining new mass production manufacturing technique with mass communication.
Now, everything will be customised to the individual customer, and ‘personal pricing’ is part of the game. Soon, we won’t be able to purchase any product without getting a personal price. Yes, also in the supermarkets around the corner.
A breakthrough in energy: Professor Muammer Yildiz, visiting the Delft University of Technology, where I studied myself, demonstrates a magnet motor that taps into the zero field, and thus doesn't need a battery, nor natural resources or voltage plugs at all!! Isn't that revolutionary? Check out the video (first minute is in Dutch, rest is in English or English subtitled).
Applications are obviously unlimited. But what about having those machines all over Africa? Wouldn't that speed up developments? Certainly when combined with media technology.
Hopefully this invention will not be hold back by the powerful and lobbying energy companies all over the planet this time :-s. A patent can easily be bought for a huge amount and then disappear in a drawer somewhere to get back to the oil business. That's one of the disadvantages of patents.... It stops innovation..
This LED grid created by students of the Delft University of Technology contains 66x28x28=76032 pixels. It contains animations of rotating flowers and more artitic experssions.
Future vision by Erwin van Lun
In the future, these grids will be unlimited detailed. Now 76,032 pixels seems a lot, but at that time we’ll easily have 76,032,000,000 pixels. The pixels will be so small that our human eye won’t be able to distinguish them from each other.
Applications will be countless. We’ll have conversations with other humans on a distance, or even interact with virtual humans. Prototyping, education, and brand interaction. Everything will change with technologies like these.
Above you'll find a recommendation by Maria Rita Fiasco of Gruppo Pragma after I've presented during their road show in Rome, Milan and Trieste for the the launch of their new conversational agent / virtual assistant platform Intoote.
Amsterdam Airport Schiphol has automated the baggage drop-off. Passengers who have already checked-in are now required to put their baggage in a machine which gives instructions how to label the baggage. No personal any longer involved! Most of us have to get used to it however.
Future vision by Erwin van Lun
ALL repeating tasks will be automated. Either by virtual humans, or (humanoid) robots. As a result, society will totally change. The world wide population will be extremely productive and we will have to work less. It is even unavoidable for us all to work less to guarantee that at least a certain percentage of the population has a job, which is a requirement to keep the earth peaceful, and we all can contribute to society and we are all appreciated. This example demonstrates our journey in that direction.
Today, I'll be speaking in Italy for a new chatbot company: Intoote during their launch campaign called Aks Me Please. It's a joint venture by Gruppo Pragma and Dialobot.
I always predicted this industry would have a huge future and therefore I'm very pleased to present to the press, potential clients and anyone interested in this new startup.
If you are in Rome, Milan or Triest.the coming days, please find a moment to drop by!
Today, I'll be speaking in Italy for a new chatbot company: