What burrowing owls have to do with San Francisco’s housing protests, a luxury apartment for horses in Manhattan, and Boston looks back on the transformation of its civic identity, one year later. Plus, a recap of Gizmodo’s Utopia Week. Climb aboard this week’s Urban Reads.
We’ve been traveling all across this great nation of ours over the past year, and now it’s time to pay a visit to Beantown. Our pals at gdgt will be joining us next month to bring our electronics event to Boston’s Space 57. Come and check out exhibits from Nokia, Microsoft SkyDrive, TiVO, iRobot and more. And as with past Engadget + gdgt Live events, we’re holding a startup competition for smaller companies looking to get in on the action. Details for that — and ticket registration — can be found in the source link below. We’ll see you guys on October 10th!
Filed under: Announcements
Source: gdgt
After the Boston Bruins lost the NHL championship to the Chicago Blackhawks Monday night, fans consoled themselves with porn, according to stats from PornHub. You might not have a Stanley Cup win, but you always have amateur adult films!
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While riding her bike on Sunday, May 19th, at approximately 3:30pm, highly accomplished and well-regarded robotics researcher Dr. Kanako Miura was struck by a large truck near Charlesgate Park in the Fenway-Kenmore neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. Dr. Miura, 36, died at the scene. Official reports conclude that it was simply a terrible accident on a busy road.
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A guest of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Dr. Miura arrived last October for what was planned to be year of research at the world-class MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). She had been invited to share her pioneering work on improving the understanding of human bipedal locomotion and applying that practical knowledge to advanced humanoids, i.e., Dr. Miura made robots that walk like us.
“She was really part of the fabric of our group. She was not just a visitor in our group, she became a close friend and a member of our family. The energy she brought to her work was contagious, and her enthusiasm was easy to see. She loved giving tours, and showing off the lab, and she had an unfailing optimism in the future and importance of humanoid robots.”
-Professor Russ Tedrake, Director; Center for Robotics, CSAIL
Dr. Miura held a B.E. in Aerospace Engineering and an M.E. and Ph.D. in Information Science from prestigious Tohoku University. She also earned an additional Ph.D. in Electronics and Automation from equally renowned Université Louis-Pasteur in 2004. Such certifications alone evidence a formidable intellect; factoring in the linguistic challenges between Japanese, French, and English – well, that pushes the dial up a bit further.
The considerable expertise Dr. Miura brought to MIT arose from post-doctoral research at Tohoku University, a subsequent research position with communications giant NTT Docomo, and her eventual ascent to senior researcher at Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) in the Intelligent Systems Research Institute’s Humanoid Robotics Department.
While at AIST, Dr. Miura worked on the world-famous HRP-4C Future Dream robot (nicknamed “Miim,” from the Japanese). You might not know the name, but chances are you’ve seen photos or video of the agile and strikingly human robot:
HRP-4C has also “met” with the highest levels of foreign government:
With the above robot as the platform and Dr. Miura as the lead researcher, the AIST team made several valuable and distinct contributions to mobility and agility in humanoid robotics. The video below, for example, demonstrates the “slip turn” motion. “Slip turn” is very human-like movement that allows a biped to rapidly change direction with minimal change in body orientation. How is this an advancement? Well, think about the baby steps a robot like ASIMO has to take when changing direction, as opposed to this:
Another project led by Dr. Miura was the development of a more human-like gait for bipedal robots. When we walk, movement in the pelvis precipitates and works in conjunction with movement in the knees. A natural human step ends with the back foot balancing and pushing off the toe, and this leads to the standard leg-swing motion of the human stride. Here’s that recreated in robot form – and again, sorry ASIMO, but your flat-footed shuffling must yield:
Dr. Miura also led a project that would allow a robot to mimic human movement based on motion capture technology.
After contributing so much to her field, in addition to eventually being courted for the year of study and collaboration at MIT, she was also recognized here at home with the 2010 AIST President Award:
Such is the noble reality of robotics research. No single person can crank out a perfect human facsimile, and there are no Tony Starks – there are researchers like Dr. Miura, diligently working through small but profound iterations and laying the foundation for generations of robotics research to follow.
Unfortunately, no one at Akihabara News or Anthrobotic.com knew or had ever met Dr. Miura. However, through the words of Professor Tedrake and other public and private discussions, it is easy to appreciate that she was not only a brilliant and motivated scholar, but also a warm and engaging person. How we wish to have had the pleasure of interacting with such a comprehensive intellect.
Though something small, we hope it a fitting memorial to share her work here. That awareness of her contributions might inspire others toward learning about robotics, engineering, or science of any kind, is a fitting legacy.
Seems safe to assume she’d agree.
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Reno J. Tibke is the founder and operator of Anthrobotic.com and a contributor at the non-profit Robohub.org.
Sources: Boston Police Twitter; Boston Police Department; Universal Hub; Boston.com; MIT News; CSAIL Computer Science and AI Laboratory News; IsolateCyclist Blog; Fenway-Kenmore Patch; Worldjournal.com (Chinese); IT Media (Japanese/日本語)
Photos: LinkedIn; AIST; The White House
Okay, I actually don’t know if you could have produced these images with an 8-bit system, or if you would have needed a 16-bit one, but I still love the way these retro styled cityscapes look, no matter how many bits they required.
These illustrations were created by Miles Donovan of The Daily Robot, and are currently available in Chicago, Boston and Seattle versions. They kind of remind me of the sort of thing I might have drawn with Deluxe Paint on my old Atari ST, but they were painstakingly drawn with Adobe Illustrator.
Each print measures 12-inches square, is printed on heavy cover stock and is signed by the artist. You can choose from the day time scenes shown here, or a sunset version if you’d prefer. Since they are all vector art, the images could possibly be enlarged too, though you’ll need to ask the artist if he can get them printed in bigger sizes.
Head on over to The Daily Robot’s Etsy shop to order yours now.
We’ve been eager to try out Aereo’s TV streaming service, which sends live broadcast content to devices over the internet. But the service has had at least one significant flaw: it’s only available to subscribers in the New York City area. That will soon change when it heads to Boston on May 15th, though, and the streaming service has now announced that the rates will be changing slightly then as well. The base plan, which includes unlimited streaming and 20 hours of DVR storage, will remain unchanged at $8 per month, but the $12 monthly tariff will include 60 hours of storage, compared to the 40 hours Aereo previously offered.
And that’s it — no more $1 daily or $80 yearly plans, though that latter option is still available until the new structure goes live on Wednesday. The service is supported on iOS, Chrome, IE 9, Firefox, Safari, Opera and Roku devices, though those geographic restrictions keep the access pool quite limited. New Yorkers can take the service for a spin today, Bostonians will get the green light come May 15th, and the rest of you can see what you’re missing in the demo video after the break.
Filed under: Home Entertainment, Internet, Software, HD
Source: Aereo
Good news, Bostonians: yours is the second major US city to get Aereo live television access via the web, and it’s starting on May 15th. Aereo announced its next city expansion this morning, and said the service will go live to pre-registered parties on May 15th. It will eventually become widely available to Boston’s “designated market area,” which includes “more than 4.5 million consumers in 15 counties in Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont.” We’ve got the full list of counties after the break if you’re interested.
Of course, this is just the tip of the iceberg for Aereo, which has plans for expansion in 22 cities just this year. The OTA network internet streaming TV service launched in New York City early last year. Traditional broadcast networks have voiced concern over Aereo’s TV model, even threatening to move to cable should the nascent internet company gets its way in an ongoing legal battle.
Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds, Home Entertainment, Tablets, Internet, HD
Yesterday’s Boston Marathon was ended prematurely as two bombs were set off close to the race’s finish line, injuring over a hundred people and killing three as of this writing. But at the height of the chaos, a number of reports claimed cellphone service was shut down by law enforcement as a way to ensure additional bombs wouldn’t be set off, which turns out to have been false according to a number of wireless carriers.
According to wireless carriers Sprint, AT&T and Verizon, cell phone usage within the area during the bombing spiked, which resulted in a disruption of service. “Verizon Wireless has not been asked by any government agency to turn down its wireless service. Any reports to that effect are inaccurate,” said a spokesperson for Verizon Wireless. Both Sprint and AT&T have also reassured the public the disruptions its customers experienced yesterday was also due to an increase of calls, not due an order to cut communications. (more…)
By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Motorola Making ‘Just Right’ Sized Smartphones With Stock Android Software, CyanogenMod 10.1 Nightlies For Xperia Z And ZL, 
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Following the explosions at the Boston Marathon, all cell phone service has been suspended in the Boston area to prevent the remote detonation of any (possible) remaining explosives, according to an unnamed AP source. More »
Boston Dynamics—the folks behind the brick-tossing BigDog—has released some new footage of one its other incredibly unsettling robotic creations. Petman’s designed to serve as a testbed for hazmat suits and other military garb, and is so realistic it’s hard to believe there’s not a real dude inside that suit. More »
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