NeatTrix

…make me some pancakes.  Rosie the robot’s great-great-great-great-great-grandmother shows off her laundry folding skills. Something to note: the video says 50x which means this 2 minute video took one hour 40 min to film.

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Finally, I no longer have to feel inferior to those swarthy human lifeguards.  EMILY, or EMergency Integrated Lifesaving lanYard (why do people love acronyms so much, especially when they have to go to such linguistic lengths to have it come out as the desired word; apparently we can just pick letters at random to get the desired effect [LOVE or Leave grandma in the nursing hOme two states oVer and wait for her to diE] but I digress) EMILY uses sonar to track a drowning person, jets over to them at 28 mph, and then either takes them to shore or waits for the puny human lifeguard to get there. (continue reading…)

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Lumino is an concept for interacting with touch screen computer in 3D. With a system of glass-fiber-filled objects, Lumino is able to discern the particular block, or stack of blocks and modify the output accordingly. So it not only knows what’s sitting on it surface, it knows what’s sitting on top of that. Check it out.

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Is this the next step toward really useful wearable computing? Yes, there are other projected keyboards, but this seems like it would work better. Making the projected display sunlight readable may be a challenge relative to battery power requirements (It always boils down to batteries, doesn’t it?). The acoustic sensing requires the skin taps and makes a mouse-like pointing device problematic.

Why not just project on a flexible multi-touch surface?

More information.

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The Wiimote controlling drum machines, by which I mean, machines that play the drums. A quick read of his website tells me that he’s using Arduinos to control the machines, plus some custom stuff. Pretty nice.

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NeatTools (an open-source project I work on) is finally (thanks to me) getting some documentation and media, out there on the web.  It’s early days yet, but there is a new wiki and a YouTube Channel both with growing amounts of information.  Here’s the first video to get you started:

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Here’s the official propaganda from Microsoft, and it clearly say that this is only the “project vision” and that the actual functionality will most likely vary.  Some of the things seem silly without some kind of a prop in your hands.  I agree that things like hand to hand combat would be much more natural with no controller, but things that have always had a physical element, like driving a car, just become ridiculous without something in your hands.  It certainly warrants keeping an eye on.  More than just gaming, as one element in a “smart” house, this could be very cool.

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I have my doubts about this one.  Seems like it would have the same frustrations of voice recognition (hello computer) but like all new game technologies, it all depends on people writing good games for it.  It could be a gimmick or it could be a whole new experience that changes the way we interact with computers. The AI behind the kid seems a little too polished, like maybe he says the exact same things every time.

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Cohda Wireless, an Australian company, has been awarded a huge contract with several European countries to begin testing their automobile to automobile communication system.  This isn’t some new technology that will let you send threatening text messages to that jerk behind you, this will actually be your car talking to other cars.  And what will your car be saying? Things like, “I’m going really, really, fast and I’m coming right for you”, or “I’ve just run a red light”, or “the guy behind my wheel is a crazy person, perhaps you should take a side street”.  Now your car, equipped with a similar device will let you know that something’s coming up and to be aware of it.  At least for now, that’s all it’s going to do.  Future versions, they claim, will include things like helping you to brake, if you’re too slow, or swerving around things in the road.  One thing they metioned was the having the car drop a curtain over the windshield  so you won’t freak out and do something rash (really?).

A nice idea.  The technology behind the autonomous car stuff, I think is the most interesting part, although they’re not testing that.  Another thing they should do, for every vehicle not using this device is in high traffic areas and build (or in most cases just repurpose) stationary radar detection/camera systems and give access to that data.

Here’s the article:http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article6294866.ece

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These guys have come up with a really neat 3D electrostatic or E-field mouse. The whole thing is a few chips with a PIC microcontroller (one with USB support) as the brain. The big brains at the MIT Media Lab had a smaller implementation going in 1998 (MIT Media Lab Device Video and web page). Still, pretty damn neat.

3D Computer Interface from Free Flow on Vimeo.

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In keeping with the recent “green” theme, here’s Botanicalls (botanicalls.com), a device that senses soil moisture in a potted plant, and then send you an e-mail or voice message when it needs water. This device is sold as a kit and is available from a number of sources including Adafruit (adafruit.com; http://neattrix.com/?p=175) for around $100.
(continue reading…)

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Not sure what, if any, the practical applications of this would be, but it’s kinda neat.

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