Showing posts with label presentation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label presentation. Show all posts
Could future devices read images from our brains?
As an expert on cutting-edge digital displays, Mary Lou Jepsen studies how to show our most creative ideas on screens. And as a brain surgery patient herself, she is driven to know more about the neural activity that underlies invention, creativity, thought. She meshes these two passions in a rather mind-blowing talk on two cutting-edge brain studies that might point to a new frontier in understanding how (and what) we think.
Feel textures on a screen
Fujitsu have been demonstrating a prototype tablet that features haptic technology which gives the user the ability to feel the texture of the on screen image.
The Fujitsu uses ultrasonic inducers on the screen to vibrate it at different frequencies, creating a cushion of high-pressure above the screen that can be varied based on your fingertip's position on an X-Y axis. Match that with an onscreen image and you have something pretty magical - different 'surfaces' in images feel different to the touch.
"This technology enables tactile sensations — either smooth or rough, which had until now been difficult to achieve — right on the touch-screen display," Fujitsu said in a statement. "Users can enjoy realistic tactile sensations as they are applied to images of objects displayed on the screen."
The technology currently works only with a single point of contact, too - the whole screen reacts to that point of contact, and feedback can't be more accurately localised - but it's very early days and will undoubtedly evolve. Down the line, a version that could replicate a two-thumb control pad on screen would transform mobile gaming.
Fujitsu's track record with bringing its technology experiments to market, either in its own products on licensed to other vendors, is excellent - about 90% see manufacture. It hopes this one will hit retail in 2015.
The Fujitsu uses ultrasonic inducers on the screen to vibrate it at different frequencies, creating a cushion of high-pressure above the screen that can be varied based on your fingertip's position on an X-Y axis. Match that with an onscreen image and you have something pretty magical - different 'surfaces' in images feel different to the touch.
"This technology enables tactile sensations — either smooth or rough, which had until now been difficult to achieve — right on the touch-screen display," Fujitsu said in a statement. "Users can enjoy realistic tactile sensations as they are applied to images of objects displayed on the screen."
The technology currently works only with a single point of contact, too - the whole screen reacts to that point of contact, and feedback can't be more accurately localised - but it's very early days and will undoubtedly evolve. Down the line, a version that could replicate a two-thumb control pad on screen would transform mobile gaming.
Fujitsu's track record with bringing its technology experiments to market, either in its own products on licensed to other vendors, is excellent - about 90% see manufacture. It hopes this one will hit retail in 2015.
High speed robot hand
This short video is of a series of demonstrations of a highly capable robotic hand executing tasks that humans could never match in terms of pace. It dribbles so fast all you see is a blur. Rice isn’t too small, and watching the hand catch a phone is not just wild, it’s downright creepy. The lack of overcompensation in its responses to complex, three-dimensional motion data is off – we could never replicate it as lowly humans.
Lisa Harouni: A primer on 3D printing
2012 may be the year of 3D printing, when this three-decade-old technology finally becomes accessible and even commonplace. Lisa Harouni gives a useful introduction to this fascinating way of making things -- including intricate objects once impossible to create.
A Multiverse of Exploration: The Future of Science 2021
Invisibility cloaks. The search for extraterrestrial intelligence. A Facebook for genes. These were just a few of the startling topics IFTF explored at the recent Technology Horizons Program conference on the "Future of Science." More than a dozen scientists from UC Berkeley, Stanford, UC Santa Cruz, Scripps Research Institute, SETI, and private industry shared their edgiest research driving transformations in science. MythBusters' Adam Savage weighed in on the future of science education. All of their presentations were signals supporting IFTF's new "Future of Science" forecast, laid out in a new map titled "A Multiverse of Exploration: The Future of Science 2021." The map focuses on six big stories of science that will play out over the next decade: Decrypting the Brain, Hacking Space, Massively Multiplayer Data, Sea the Future, Strange Matter, and Engineered Evolution. Those stories are emerging from a new ecology of science shifting toward openness, collaboration, reuse, and increased citizen engagement in scientific research.
Download the Map as a pdf here
via IFTF
Isaac Asimov - Visions of the Future
Two years before his death, Asimov recorded a pilot for a TV series synthesizing his visionary ideas about where humanity is going. When he passed away in 1992, the pilot for the series was adapted into a tribute documentary titled Visions of the Future, now available on YouTube in four parts, totalling 40 minutes of rare footage and biographical background on the great thinker.
Asimov’s thoughts on computers may seem like common sense today but in fact presage the modern applications of computing, from mobile technology to consumer electronics to artificial intelligence, by two decades.
"Perhaps the most revolutionary development of recent years has been that of the computer. Because for the first time we’ve discovered a machine that can substitute, at least in part, the human brain. Before that, it was just a matter of saving human muscles, of using machinery to spare what human muscles couldn’t do very well.”
Asimov’s thoughts on computers may seem like common sense today but in fact presage the modern applications of computing, from mobile technology to consumer electronics to artificial intelligence, by two decades.
"Perhaps the most revolutionary development of recent years has been that of the computer. Because for the first time we’ve discovered a machine that can substitute, at least in part, the human brain. Before that, it was just a matter of saving human muscles, of using machinery to spare what human muscles couldn’t do very well.”
All-new ASIMO (Nov 2011)
Honda unveiled "All-new ASIMO", a new version of their humanoid robot. It can run at 9kph and hop on one or both legs, and more.
More info:
http://world.honda.com/news/2011/c111108All-new-ASIMO/index.html
http://www.plasticpals.com/?p=30620
Spherical Flying Machine
Incredible spherical flying machine developed by the Japanese Ministry of Defense:
"Because the exterior is round, this machine can land in all kinds of attitudes, and move along the ground. It can also keep in contact with a wall while flying. Because it's round, it can just roll along the ground, but to move it in the desired direction, we've brought the control surfaces, which are at the rear in an ordinary airplane, to the front.
In horizontal flight, the propeller provides the propulsive force, while the wings provide lift. For the machine to take off or land in that state, it faces upward. When it does so, the propeller provides buoyancy. At that time, too, the control surfaces provide attitude control. After landing, the machine moves along the ground using the control surfaces and propeller.
In our aircraft R&D, we have a plane that can stand up vertically after flying horizontally. But the problem with that plane is, take-off and landing are very difficult. As one idea to solve that problem, we thought of making the exterior round, or changing the method of attitude control. That's how we came up with this machine, to test the idea.
All we've done is build this from commercially available parts, and test whether it can fly in its round form. So its performance as such has absolutely no significance. But we think it can hover for eight minutes continuously, and its speed can go from zero, when it's hovering, to 60 km/h."
How Google's Self-Driving Car Works
This is part 2/3 of the keynote presentation by Sebastian Thrun and Chris Urmson on self-driving cars at IROS 2011.
Part 1/3 is here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7ub5Doyapk
Part 3/3 is here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOWhu_aa9kM
Read more: http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/artificial-intelligence/how-google-self-driving-car-works
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