Amazon is inching ever closer to making its long-awaited decision on where to build its second North American headquarters, with the company entering “advanced discussions” to set up shop in Arlington County, Virginia’s Crystal City, with additional facilities in nearby Potomac Yard in Alexandria, the Washington Post…
Not all wireless headphones are created equal — some are more unique than the others, bringing with it a slew of features that you will not be able to find anywhere else. SHIVR, a leading brand of high fidelity personal audio devices, has recently announced the launch of its very own SHIVR noise cancelling 3D wireless headphones for those who would want to enjoy a whole new immersive experience when it comes to audio, home theatre, and gaming.
Industry trends have moved in the direction where 3D immersive audio has ended up as the new standard for enjoying music, home theater and taking advantage of the latest audio effects in the gaming industry. With 3D audio, listeners will enter a world of its own, as separation between audio details is created while surround sound is enhanced, resulting in a feeling of space that allows the listener to feel as though he/she is ‘inside the music’.
The method which SHIVR used to deliver incredible sound to the listener is created through a clever combination of a world-leading hybrid digital ANC (Active Noise Cancelling) technology as well as its very own advanced algorithm. This combination will effectively enhance audio surround sound and sense of space, enabling the listener to accurately sense sound from different sources. The patented algorithm will be leveraged to achieve low latency aptX and high-fidelity sound quality, in addition to perfect integration of all levels of audio frequencies.
The presence of an advanced hybrid noise cancelling circuit will further eliminate distracting noises in the listener’s surroundings, ensuring that you enjoy a premium 3D listening experience. Popular surround sound modes are also supported, while the lightweight nature of it alongside an adjustable and ergonomic design provides a better fit for everyone. A customized built-in gyro sensor and advanced circuitry is also thrown into the mix, eliminating in-head-localization that normally results in dizziness when using 3D headphones for long periods of time.
With an on-board 600 mAh lithium-polymer battery, you get to enjoy more than 25 hours of listening and go-anywhere portability over the latest Bluetooth protocol.
[ SHIVR reveals new noise cancelling 3D wireless headphones copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]
Not long after the introduction of its new iPhones, Apple has now started selling refurbished units of the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus. These certified refurbished models are available for purchase through the company’s online store for the first time. Both models can be purchased with the 64GB storage configuration in multiple color options.
Customers can save some money in the process if they decide to pick up a certified refurbished unit. That’s one of the main reasons why people decide to purchase refurbished units in the first place. They’re priced approximately 15 percent less than the full retail price. The refurbished units start at $499 for the iPhone 8 and $599 for the iPhone 8 Plus.
Apple’s refurbished units get their certification after they have made it through a strict process. There’s an expectation that customers have from Apple products that the process is there to ensure that it can be delivered even with refurbished products. The company also provides original accessories with the models in addition to a one-year warranty. Customers can even purchase additional AppleCare coverage.
Those who are interested in picking one up can now head over to Apple’s online store and get a certified refurbished iPhone 8 or iPhone 8 Plus. They stand to save a decent amount of money compared to the full retail price of these handsets.
Apple Is Now Selling Refurbished iPhone 8 And iPhone 8 Plus , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.
They’ve made the choice clear.
Robots just want to get things done, but it’s frustrating when their rigid bodies simply don’t allow them to do so. Solution: bodies that can be reconfigured on the fly! Sure, it’s probably bad news for humanity in the long run, but in the meantime it makes for fascinating research.
A team of graduate students from Cornell University and the University of Pennsylvania made this idea their focus and produced both the modular, self-reconfiguring robot itself and the logic that drives it.
Think about how you navigate the world: If you need to walk somewhere, you sort of initiate your “walk” function. But if you need to crawl through a smaller space, you need to switch functions and shapes. Similarly, if you need to pick something up off a table, you can just use your “grab” function, but if you need to reach around or over an obstacle you need to modify the shape of your arm and how it moves. Naturally you have a nearly limitless “library” of these functions that you switch between at will.
That’s really not the case for robots, which are much more rigidly designed both in hardware and software. This research, however, aims to create a similar — if considerably smaller — library of actions and configurations that a robot can use on the fly to achieve its goals.
In their paper published today in Science Robotics, the team documents the groundwork they undertook, and although it’s still extremely limited, it hints at how this type of versatility will be achieved in the future.
The robot itself, called SMORES-EP, might be better described as a collection of robots: small cubes (it’s a popular form factor) equipped with wheels and magnets that can connect to each other and cooperate when one or all of them won’t do the job. The brains of the operation lie in a central unit equipped with a camera and depth sensor it uses to survey the surroundings and decide what to do.
If it sounds a little familiar, that’s because the same team demonstrated a different aspect of this system earlier this year, namely the ability to identify spaces it can’t navigate and deploy items to remedy that. The current paper is focused on the underlying system that the robot uses to perceive its surroundings and interact with it.
Let’s put this in more concrete terms. Say a robot like this one is given the goal of collecting the shoes from around your apartment and putting them back in your closet. It gets around your apartment fine but ultimately identifies a target shoe that’s underneath your bed. It knows that it’s too big to fit under there because it can perceive dimensions and understands its own shape and size. But it also knows that it has functions for accessing enclosed areas, and it can tell that by arranging its parts in such and such a way it should be able to reach the shoe and bring it back out.
The flexibility of this approach and the ability to make these decisions autonomously are where the paper identifies advances. This isn’t a narrow “shoe-under-bed-getter” function, it’s a general tool for accessing areas the robot itself can’t fit into, whether that means pushing a recessed button, lifting a cup sitting on its side, or reaching between condiments to grab one in the back.
A visualization of how the robot perceives its environment.
As with just about everything in robotics, this is harder than it sounds, and it doesn’t even sound easy. The “brain” needs to be able to recognize objects, accurately measure distances, and fundamentally understand physical relationships between objects. In the shoe grabbing situation above, what’s stopping a robot from trying to lift the bed and leave it in place floating above the ground while it drives underneath? Artificial intelligences have no inherent understanding of any basic concept and so many must be hard-coded or algorithms created that reliably make the right choice.
Don’t worry, the robots aren’t quite at the “collect shoes” or “collect remaining humans” stage yet. The tests to which the team subjected their little robot were more like “get around these cardboard boxes and move any pink-labeled objects to the designated drop-off area.” Even this type of carefully delineated task is remarkably difficult, but the bot did just fine — though rather slowly, as lab-based bots tend to be.
The authors of the paper have since finished their grad work and moved on to new (though surely related) things. Tarik Tosun, one of the authors with whom I talked for this article, explained that he’s now working on advancing the theoretical side of things as opposed to, say, building cube-modules with better torque. To that end he helped author VSPARC, a simulator environment for modular robots. Although it is tangential to the topic immediately at hand, the importance of this aspect of robotics research can’t be overestimated.
You can find a pre-published version of the paper here in case you don’t have access to Science Robotics.
It was a little over a year ago when Amazon announced it would be looking to build a second headquarters somewhere in North America, in turn kicking off an unofficial competition with cities biding to lure the internet giant with tax and other incentives. Then in January the company announced it had narrowed down the list of candidates to 20 … Continue reading
The new 2019 A-Class sedan is a gateway car, and Mercedes-Benz aren’t being coy about it. They’ve designed it to draw in a new, younger generation of buyers and get them hooked on the brand, filling the sedan with enticing new tech you’d normally have to pay through the nose for. “It is significant in that it’s the first car … Continue reading
Politicians and tech executives are split on San Francisco’s Proposition C, which would impose an annual 0.175 to 0.69 percent tax on businesses with over $50 million in gross receipts and would double the city’s current spending on services for the homeless. And while many have spoken out about their position ahead…
Motorola One is the company’s Android One smartphone. This handset was released in markets across the globe several months ago. The company has now announced that it’s bringing the Android One device to the United States. It will be available for purchase in the country exclusively from Best Buy.
The Motorola One has a 5.9 inch notched display with 720×1520 pixel resolution. Despite the notched display, it has enough of a chin for the company to put its logo on there. There’s a Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 processor under the hood with 4GB RAM, 64GB of storage, and a 3,000mAh battery. The device also features a 13 megapixel rear and 8 megapixel front camera.
This is an Android One device. What that means is that it will receive updates swiftly. It also guarantees a vanilla Android experience on the device. The device ships with Android 8.1 Oreo and Motorola has confirmed that it will receive the Android 9 Pie update in due course. It will eventually get the Android Q update as well when it arrives.
Interested customers can order the device online from November 9th exclusively via Best Buy. It will be available in stores from November 11th for $399. The unit being sold in the United States is GSM unlocked so it will not work on Verizon or Sprint.
Motorola Android One Smartphone Headed To The U.S. , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.
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