Trend observations, analysis and future predictions since 2005
Colt: copy text with hyperlinks
Colt is a great Firefox add-on that allows bloggers to copy and paste text from other sites, including source code of the hyperlinks. CoLT (short for “Copy Link Text”) is great! It speeds up the publishing process of bloggers.
Resonate Robot Predicts Human Behavior
The EU Joint-Action Science and Technology project (JAST) is developing robots that can engage in joint activities with humans or other robots, to complete tasks through teamwork. Their latest demonstration (see video above) shows their progress with a robot that observes and predicts a human working on a project. The robot identifies the components the human is using and the likely result of assembling the components. The robot then assists the human with the work, locating parts as they are needed, and providing them to the human. The idea is to give robot the capacity for "observation and mirroring (resonance)".
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Greenpeace assisting you selecting toilet paper
Greenpeace has introducted an Iphone application that gives users a quick and handy guide to finding the greenest toilet paper, tissues, paper towels, and paper napkins sold at the supermarket. Ideally, the best products contain 100 percent recycled content (at least 50 percent of which is from post-consumer materials) and avoid the use of chlorine or chlorine compounds in the whitening process. Products that meet this criteria include Green Forest, Natural Value and Seventh Generation while products from companies like Kleenex, Charmin, Angel Soft, Cottonelle, Brawny, and Scott fall short. The application is free to download.
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New Xbox: Full body and gesture recognition
Microsoft's Project Natal is the first game console without a controller. The system has a 3D camera that maps the exacts position of your hands, your fingers, your feet, your header, your nose, everything in a 3D map. This allows you to control the game with only your body, in great detail, and no controller needed. Furthermore, it recognises voice and faces and supports complex video chat.
Steven Spielberg: . "This is a pivotal moment that will carry with it a wave of change, the ripples of which will reach far beyond video games"
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Augmented reality Star Trek
Sticky robots for cleaning windows
The ability to scale walls and hang off the ceiling with gecko-like ease may be within reach - for robots at least. Metin Sitti and Ozgur Unver of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, say their new robots - a sticky-tracked wall climber and a 16-legged ceiling walker - could tackle many jobs in the home including painting ceilings and clearing cobwebs. They could also play a part in exploration, inspection, repair and even search and rescue.
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Robot eyes signal their intentions
But Bilge Mutlu and colleague's team at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, have robots that "leak" non-verbal information through eye movements when interacting with humans. The eyes of a robot may not provide a window into its soul, but they can help humans guess the machine's intentions.
Humans constantly give off non-verbal cues and interpret the signals of others – but without realising it at a conscious level, says Mutlu. The trembling hands of a public speaker betray their nerves even before a word is uttered, while poker players leak subtle signs such as eye flickers or twitches that can be used to spot bluffers.
But when faced with a robot all our interpretive skills are irrelevant. Robots leak no information, so it is virtually impossible to read their intentions, which makes them hard to get along with.
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Artificial muscles inspired by octopus
‘Nanoball’ batteries could recharge car in minutes, your mobile in seconds
THE next generation of plug-in hybrid cars could recharge in minutes, thanks to a new type of battery.
Lithium ion cells are used in portable gadgets and the latest hybrid cars as they are light and can be repeatedly charged and discharged with little degradation. But as with all batteries, charging takes some time. That's because it involves detaching lithium ions from the cathode at one end of the battery and absorbing them at the anode; pulling the ions from the cathode is normally a slow process.
Now Byoungwoo Kang and Gerbrand Ceder at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have revealed an experimental battery that charges about 100 times as fast as normal lithium ion batteries. Their battery contains a cathode made up of tiny balls of lithium iron phosphate, each just 50 nanometres across. The balls quickly release lithium ions as the battery charges, which travel across an electrolyte towards the anode. As the battery discharges, the lithium ions move back across the cell to be re-absorbed by the nanoballs.
Micromachine power problem solved with magnets
Using magnetic fields to remotely power and control microscopic machines.
TellMe: voice commands for Windows Mobile 6,5
TellMe for Windows Mobile 6.5 isn't just an app, it's a one-button hub for voice commands of all kinds, including text messaging, making calls, and also jumping to Microsoft Live Search with natural language queries like "weather in San Francisco, California," "pizza in Kansas City" or "mother's day gift ideas."
Robot shows emotions through posture
There have been a variety of robots that emulate emotional expression through their facial features. Tmsuk has now created a humanoid robot that puts its whole body into the act, emoting like a silent film actor. KOBIAN is a descendant of the WABIAN-2R research humanoid and the WE-4R robot head, developed at the Takanishi Laboratory. The video above shows KOBIAN cycling through a variety of stock emotional expressions. Tmsuk claims the robot's postural emoting will make it better able to interact with humans.
Face mining Startrek
The company PittPatt has face mined the TV series Star Trek. Specifically, they applied algorithms in face detection, face tracking and face recognition to 67 Star Trek episodes over three seasons. This process automatically extracts all visible face tracks, and clusters these into a small number of same-person groupings. Currently, PittPatt recognize frontal or near-frontal tracks. In the near future, we will extend our results to non-frontal tracks as well.
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Apple patents automated video answering (video mail)
This patent for automatically sending an audio or video reply to an iChat call is only useful for computer to computer calling, but also for iPhone to computer calling, or computer to iPhone calling.
The server could additionally be set to store video responses, such that when a person comes back online, they could view one or more clips recorded by their peers. To facilitate this, Apple proposes creating a generic video mailbox which could be accessed from iPhones or a website.
3D webcam girls
Fleshbot discovered that Jess of UndressJess just started recording her Camgirl videos in 3D, allowing her viewers to get the sense that she's actually sticking out of their monitors a slightly bit. Using a fancy little Minoru webcam, she's started recording some of her videos.