September 26, 2010

RAMPANT VIEW TURNS YOUR 5TH GEN IPOD NANO INTO A HEAD CAM

Sure, iPod nano watch straps may be the hot new accessory these days, but the folks at Rampant Gear aren’t leaving the 5th generation iPod nano behind just yet — the company’s just introduced its new Ramant View contraption that turns your nano into a head cam. Is it the best head-mounted camera option around? Probably not, but it is cheap at just $35, and it’s not very hard to find a deal on a previous-gen nano either if you don’t have one already. Head on past the break for couple of sample videos. Continue reading Rampant View turns your 5th gen iPod nano into a head cam Rampant View turns your 5th gen iPod nano into a head cam originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 26 Sep 2010 08:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | source Rampant Gear | Email this | Comments
September 25, 2010

ROBOT ARCHER ICUB LEARNS TO SHOOT ARROWS, PIERCES OUR MORTAL HEART (VIDEO)

How do you make a creepy baby robot downright cute? Give it an Indian headdress and teach it the bow-and-arrow, of course. The same team of researchers who brought us the pancake-flipping robot arm have imbued this iCub with a learning algorithm that lets it teach itself archery much the same as a human might do, by watching where the suction-tipped arrow lands and adjusting its aim for each subsequent shot. In this case, it obtained a perfect bullseye after just eight attempts. Watch it for yourself after the break, and ponder the fate of man — how can we possibly stop an uprising of adorable robots that never miss? Continue reading Robot Archer iCub learns to shoot arrows, pierces our mortal heart (video) Robot Archer iCub learns to shoot arrows, pierces our mortal heart (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 25 Sep 2010 18:28:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | source Petar Kormushev | Email this | Comments
September 25, 2010

CHIEF COOK AND KEEPON IN BOTS’ FUNK

Remember how Chief Cook tried to cheat at pong at ICRA in 2008 by going “hey, look over there, a dancing robot!” Well, now we know what he was pointing at. If you want more (you want more, right?) head over to Eric Sauser’s website to watch a video of Chief Cook dancing all around Switzerland (complete with table dances) to some sweet, sweet Buffalo Springfield. [ LASA @ EPFL ] [ BeatBots ]
September 23, 2010

ICUB LEARNS ARCHERY

Well, this is pretty awesome: You’re actually watching the extent of iCub’s learning process: it took the robot all of 8 trials to figure out how to hit the center of the bullseye. iCub is using a learning algorithm called ARCHER (Augmented Reward Chained Regression), which is optimized for tasks that have an easily definable goal and measurable progression towards that goal. Basically, hitting the center of the target equates to a maximum reward, and the algorithm builds off of past experience to estimate how to alter iCub’s hand positions to improve the aim of the arrow. In this case, the distance between iCub and the target is only 3.5 meters, but there’s no reason it couldn’t be scaled up to larger distances. Or bigger arrows. Or rocket launchers. This robot experiment was conducted by Dr. Petar Kormushev, Dr. Sylvain Calinon, and Dr. Ryo Saegusa at the Italian Institute of Technology (the same guys who brought you robot pancake flipping). You can read a bit more about it at the link below. [ Robot Archer iCub ] Thanks Dr. Kormushev!
September 22, 2010

MOBILE SENSING

Shared by Daniel paging Jon Lawhead
September 22, 2010

FESTO BIONIC HANDLING ASSISTANT

That elephant trunk robot arm thing from Festo that we spotted back in April has been fleshed out a bit, and if you ever wondered which robotic arm has the most practice handling giant eggs, well, you won’t after watching the video. I imagine that part of the reason that they chose eggs is to highlight how safe the arm is: since it’s not made of metal and uses air pressure instead of geared motors as its actuation system, you’re much less likely to get your skull fractured by a rogue movement. Unfortunately, the downside of using air pressure (besides the inevitable complexity of the valve system) is that precision movement becomes quite difficult. Festo probably leads the field when it comes to fine manipulation with air powered muscles, but still, you can see from the video that the arm isn’t that great at precise tasks. One solution (that some other groups are looking into) is to combine air muscles for macro scale movement with a wrist and gripper powered by conventional servos. That way, you’d get the best of both worlds, at the expense of, well, expense… But hey, nobody said robots are cheap. And they’re most definitely not. [ Festo Bionic Handling Assistant ]
September 18, 2010

ROBOT INVASION WELCOMED IN JAPAN – NYTIMES.COM

David Guttenfelder and Hiroko Tabuchi found themselves facing existential questions as they met robot after robot.
September 18, 2010

AUDI ROBOT ARMS TAKE OVER LONDON WRITE MESSAGES WITH LEDS DAY AND NIGHT (VIDEO) — ENGADGET

Shared by Daniel love it Here’s yet another fine preview of the inevitable robot apocalypse — car-assembling arms in the city center overlooking us feeble humans. For now, t
September 15, 2010

RODNEY BROOKS: ROBOTICS IN THE NEXT 30 YEARS

For Discover Magazine’s 30th anniversary, they’re posting a series of predictions from eminent scientists about what’s going to happen over the next 30 years. One of these scientists is Rodney Brooks, a professor of robotics at MIT and CTO of iRobot, and he’s got some interesting things to say (besides the all too familiar “robots right now are like computers in the 80s”): One of the great things about the Roomba robot vacuum cleaner, which my company iRobot designed, is that it’s too cheap not to be autonomous. Military robots right now are too expensive to be autonomous—you can’t afford to have them screw up. If the Roomba misses a spot, no big deal, it can find it later. So there will be a lot more robot autonomy, but surprisingly it will start out at the low end. It will trickle up to the high end over time. Too cheap not to be autonomous… The ‘trickle up’ idea for robotics isn’t something I’ve heard people talk about much. The conventional way of thinking is that expensive and complex robots with expensive and complex sensors will provide the origins of autonomy, and then as the hardware gets cheaper and more accessible, robots offering the same autonomous capabilities will also get cheaper and more accessible. After all, this is what happens with computers. Brooks is right, though, in that to some extent, the more expensive a robot is, the less likely we are to trust it entirely to itself. In order for true autonomy to trickle up from the bottom, however, we’re going to have to overcome the hardware limitations and start getting access to more technology like the $25 SLAM system in the Neato XV-11. Cars will certainly be more robotic. There will be many more robots in our houses, in […]
September 10, 2010

OFFICIAL GOOGLE BLOG: WHAT WE’RE DRIVING AT

Shared by Daniel ” Also on the team is Anthony Levandowski, who built the world’s first autonomous motorcycle that participated in a DARPA Grand Challenge, and who also built a modified Prius that delivered pizza without a person inside.” Oh shit Ghostrider made it big! Also on the team is Anthony Levandowski, who built the world’s first autonomous motorcycle that participated in a DARPA Grand Challenge, and who also built a modified Prius that delivered pizza without a person inside.
September 9, 2010

QUALCOMM DEMOS AUGMENTED REALITY APP FOR DIGITAL PHOTO FRAMES (VIDEO) — ENGADGET

Want a glimpse of the future? How about one from Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs? What he demoed in London just now was a groovy concept
August 30, 2010

SHAWN SMITH BRINGS 8-BIT ART INTO THREE DIMENSIONS, ONE TINY BLOCK OF WOOD AT A TIME

Austin, Texas-based artist Shawn Smith creates sculptures of things like vultures, sharks and hats on fire, and they’re seriously awesome, 8-bit style extravaganzas. The pieces are largely created out of small blocks of wood, and then painted. Hit the source (the artist’s website) to see many, many examples of his stunning and beautiful work. Continue reading Shawn Smith brings 8-bit art into three dimensions, one tiny block of wood at a time Shawn Smith brings 8-bit art into three dimensions, one tiny block of wood at a time originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 30 Jun 2010 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink Environmental Graffiti | source Shawn Smith | Email this | Comments
July 12, 2010

NOTES ON AN INTERNATIONAL FLIGHT

I watched a full episode of Chuck. There goes that New Year’s resolution. I was wrong about the flight path; the plane went North over the Hudson, just put its nose into the Artic Circle over Alaska, then back south through Russia into China. Didn’t see a single polar bear. I also watched Date Night (lame), How to Train your Dragon (lame), and parts of The Ghost Writer (fell asleep). Xanax When the Miley Cyrus vehicle “The Last Song” came on, I switched to the New Wave in-flight radio station. It was amazingly awesome, even though it repeated itself every hour. I made it a point to look around to see if any cute girls were nodding their head to New Order with me. No one was. Total completed Sudoku puzzles: 3 Total lectures planned: 5 (of 7) Seriously, Xanax. Especially because booze is free on international flights, and the combination is like cotton candy for adults. I spent about 6 hours of a 15 hour flight sleeping, and another three or so in a dopey haze picking at terrible food. I bought one of those neck pillows and slept like a (drunk, intoxicated) baby. All announcements on the plane were in English, Cantonese, and Mandarin. I know how to say one word in both languages (Thank you in Cantonese is “doh tsay”, Hello in Mandarin is “ni hao”). I desperately tried to pick out these words from the flurry of language, but failed miserably. To be fair, I think the flight attendant who made the announcements in Mandarin had a speech impediment. In any case, I now know that thank you in Mandarin is “shi shi”. The other in flight station worth listening to was the pilot’s communication channel with ground control. I don’t know why they were broadcasting […]
July 13, 2010

NOTES ON MY FIRST NIGHT IN HONG KONG (PART 1)

Being alone in this place has made me feel like a huge tourist, and I haven’t had the courage to go whole hog and snap pics of everything. Plus, I didn’t know how long my phone would last, and I didn’t have wifi anyway, so I kept my first trip fairly low tech. Future notes will definitely have pretty pictures. After a 15 hour plane ride, I had to negotiate the Hong Kong metro system to the University with luggage in tow. This required: Exchanging money at the airport. My rule of thumb is that US$1 = HK$8, roughly, but the airport was exchanging at a rate of 1 to 7, which sucks. But I knew I had some trains to catch and maybe a cab ride or two, plus I was starving, so I changed out 60 bucks, figuring that would get me around and fed for the night. Three train changes. There’s a special train from the airport into the city, and then a metro across the city, and another across the bay into Kowloon. A cab ride from the train station into the university. I had to do all this without a working phone, which is basically the only thing that keeps me alive on a daily basis. Luckily I saved a map of the university, and directions to my building; otherwise, I was depending on the public transportation system and the kindness of strangers. So first of all, the Hong Kong subway system is amazing. The trains are huge, maybe 50% wider than New York trains, they all have clear wifi signal (but have to pay for it, and I didn’t), and clear cell reception (half the people on the train were on their phones). The loudspeaker system was clear as a bell, the trains were […]
July 13, 2010

NOTES ON MY FIRST NIGHT IN HONG KONG (PART 2)

By the time I was settled in my room, it was nearing 9pm. the minibusses run to campus until midnight, and the trains until 1am, so I didn’t have very long to look around. The closest MTR station to campus is Hang Hau, which is on the purple line way in the bottom right corner of the map. Hong Kong proper is on the island down the Blue Line, Kowloon is on the mainland and just sprawls on forever. I didn’t know where I was going, I had no plans whatsoever. I jumped on the train in Hang Hau, transferred to the Blue Line at North Point, and was planning to go all the way down to Central (downtown Hong Kong) and then walk back. The train was pretty much empty until I got to Causeway Bay, where a huge flood of people were waiting to get on the train. It reminded me of the Times Square subway stop, so I figured it was where I wanted to be as my first tourist experience. I jumped off the train, and was greeted with an endless row of lights and tiny shops and hundreds of people walking around. Food everywhere, sweltering hot humid air. This was the city, with flavors of Blade Runner or that scene in Attack of the Clones where they are chasing after the bounty hunter, but with this weird Joel Schumacher neon hideousness throughout. Lots of teenagers getting froyo or kebabs, lots of cars cruising around. I walked a bit north until I saw the water to get my bearings. There are several roads that run parallel to the water; I picked one a block south of the water that looked relatively lively and started walking west. I occassionally moved a block south or north, but kept […]
July 15, 2010

PICTURES FROM MONG KOK

Before I left the states I went to Best Buy and bought a converter for Hong Kong electrical outlets (which, for the record, are exactly the same as those in Great Britian). When I got into my room and plugged it in, the power bar for my laptop started buzzing and chirping, and then started flashing green lights. I totally fried the cord, leaving me with a drained laptop battery and a useless hunk of silicon with all my valuables on it. Luckily, the converter worked just fine for my phone, which has been doing the majority of my computing work along with the complimentary laptop (running IE7 (not 6, still sucks) and a Chinese version of Vista that I can’t navigate for the life of me). My phone kicks so much ass it isn’t funny, the battery lasts forever even when I am using it hard, and it is basically the only thing keeping me sane. Bestest purchase ever. Which is why I broke down in a panic the last time I went into the city. My plan was to buy a power cord for my laptop from the Computer Center in Mong Kok, and a sim card for my phone so it would actually work as a phone and not just a mini tablet, without paying the absurd international roaming rates AT&T chrages. Seriously, AT&T charges $15/megabyte for international usage. I use, on average, 1.5 gigs of data a month, not including all the time I am at home on wifi. That means normal usage would cost me over $22,500 a month. Just slightly below my yearly gross income. At the MTR station in Hang Hau was a PCCW kiosk (a major phone and internet/wifi provider for the city) charging reasonable rates for a sim card, so I […]
July 21, 2010

WHY I BOUGHT MCDONALDS IN HONG KONG

There is no excuse for buying McDonald’s in Hong Kong. But I did, and I will try to explain. My first night in Hong Kong led me, quite randomly, to the best Chinese food I’ve ever eaten, hands down. So good, in fact, that I have gone back to the same place twice since, and tried to make nice with the wait staff there. The fact that this place is right around the corner from a row of strip clubs has nothing to do with my frequenting this establishment. Honestly. I’ve also tried other places, with mixed results. I am currently convinced that I don’t really like the taste of Chinese barbecue; it is sweet and gummy in a way that just doesn’t appeal to me. I’ve also decided that I don’t really like rice noodles either; again, its mostly a texture thing. I’ve been on the look out for some fresh sea food, but no luck so far. This is high on my list of priorities for the weekend. I’ve run into a lot of sushi places, but since I’ll be in Tokyo in a few weeks I want to save my appetite for the real deal. The point is that its not from a lack of trying new things. I’ve become quite bold at stepping inside small, steamy restaurants, pointing randomly at the menu, and hoping for the best. Although the city is designed to be bilingual, I’ve found myself in a number of situations interacting with people can’t speak more than a few words of English, and so it is a crap shoot every time. I’ve also started working a lot, and running into the city to try new food isn’t always an option. I’ve gone hungry a few nights from just working past the time when […]
July 21, 2010

BLURRY PICTURES FROM A PLANE

The Artic Circle: Random Cities in Mainland China: Hong Kong International Airport:
August 3, 2010

SHAM SHUI PO

Today is my last day in Hong Kong. I just left the graduation ceremony, there is a dance party for the students in an hour, and I will leave from there to catch a bus to the Airport and head to Tokyo. I want to get one more blog post up at the airport so I can dump some of these pictures to the cloud. There are definitely some stories that need to be told. In this post, I will chronicle my rather turbulent experience with electronics in Hong Kong. I came to Hong Kong with the intention of buying a laptop, hoping I’d get it for cheaper here than in the states. was wrong; I’ll get better warranty coverage and default software in the states. In Mong Kok I did some price checking at a store called Broadway, which is basically the Hong Kong answer to Best Buy and is literally on every other street corner in Mong Kok. The prices were comparable to anything you could get online in the states, though I saw a lot of KIRFy tablets and MIDs and other fancy video devices that will never be available in the US. But if you want a serious computer market in Hong Kong that isn’t just a chain outlet, and it is clear that there is only one place to go: the Golden Computer Arcade in Sham Shui Po. Sham Shui Po has several blocks of open air markets down roads that are mostly closed to traffic, and is generally far less crowded than other places in Hong Kong. It is also far less commercial; although it is easy to find a KFC or a McDonalds, most of the restaurants are tiny local places, and this is pretty far north in Kowloon away from the more […]
August 15, 2010

ONJUKU, JAPAN

The next two days were wonderful and strange. I was taken to a large house in a beach front town named Onjuku in the prefecture of Chiba, where my Great Uncle, Tomoshisa Aoyama (my maternal grandmother’s youngest brother) owned a house that he designed himself on a half acre of land. It was a mixture of traditional Japanese design with a modern twist, so there was lots of open space in the central living area, which was unique to Japanese architecture. You can see something of the layout of the house in the Facebook pictures. You can make out in the pictures that the only real furniture in the house was a long wooden board that served as the main dining table, propped up on cardboard boxes and lined on both sides with pillows, and a very expensive looking leather sofa set and a fancy wood table. Furniture in Japan is always expensive, and this seemed particular classy. So classy, in fact, that my uncle Tomo was featured in the official Onjuku community brochure. If you go to this page and click on the first link with the “NEW” animated gif, you get the official brochure in pdf format. On the second page is a picture of Tomo in his leather couch, answering some question in Japanese and generally looking like a VIP. Soon after I arrived and met the people as best I could without sharing a common language, and was able with some complicated gestures to work out the family relations, Tomo took out an old scrap book of pictures of my mom’s family, which I looked through carefully and pointed and shared some laughs with the family. I was also offered a beer, which I drank and then began to feel quite sick. Unfortunately this was also […]
August 15, 2010

JAPAN DAY 1

My plane left Hong Kong just after midnight. I spent my last hours in China wandering the halls of the Hong Kong International Airport. The shops were all closed, the lights were dim, the cast cosmopolitan. I should have taken more pictures, but I wanted to find an outlet to charge my batteries and spend my last few precious minutes online, since I had no idea what my access would be like in Japan. The smoking room at HKIA was small and filthy, but it also had the highest ratio of beautiful young women to lonely old men I’ve seen. Near the smoking room was a prayer room, where I snapped this. I landed at Haneda at 5 am, after passing by Mt. Fuji just as the sun was rising. It was beautiful. The international terminal at Haneda is tiny, no more than two dozen chairs in the waiting area. I made it through customs quickly and looked around for Kosuke. I didn’t really know who I was looking for, but I didn’t see anyone who looked like they were looking for me. After a few laps around the terminal I decided to find somewhere to hang out for a while. I sat down and made myself visible and failed to find a wireless signal and didn’t really know what to do with myself. I went to the bathroom, which had both a traditional Japanese toilet and a robotic toilet from the future that was clearly labeled “Western Style”. The fact that I was in Japan with no idea where I was going and no back up plans or internet to coordinate any back up plans suddenly began to sink in. Around 6am I started worrying that either Kosuke showed up at the wrong terminal or expected me to meet […]
December 7, 2010

THE LIST

I have decided to maintain a list of corporations, organizations, and politicans who have pulled support for Wikileaks, or have otherwise bowed to political pressure against Wikileaks, and those who have openly supported Wikileaks. I haven’t found a comprehensive list online, but there is so much noise right now that it is hard to find good info. There are questionable accusations being thrown at Twitter and Facebook (for blocking all links to torrent sites), and I’d like some clean, well-sourced data. I see a lot of references to “Amazon, PayPal, and the like” without listing the organizations that are actively suppressing Wikileaks. I think it is important for us to track who is one what side of this debate, since the lines being drawn over Wikileaks are the same lines that divide the larger debate over the future of the internet. I don’t care if there are legitimate reasons for pulling support, if the decision was independently made with no political pressure, or if it is some massive conspiracy to destroy the internet. I just want to take stock and provide sources for who falls on what side of this issue. Here we go. If anyone can add to this list as things develop I’ll try to maintain it. Wikileaks Mirrors Pulled support or spoke out against: – Amazon – EveryDNS – PayPal – Visa – MasterCard – Sen. Lieberman – Tableau Software Publicly supported: – Glenn Greenwald – Ron Paul – XipWire – Anonymous/Operation Payback – The Pirate Bay – DataCell Hedged bets: – Facebook – Twitter – OVH
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