Hasta La Gadget!

It takes years for a person to learn how to write Japanese or Chinese characters. There’s good news though. Robots can do it a lot quicker. A research group has developed a ‘bot that can identify and mimic detailed brush strokes that are required to write these kinds of characters.

The Motion Copy System was developed at Keio University by Seiichiro Katsura. It stores the gestures associated with traditional Japanese calligraphy, and copies them. All that one needs to do to train the system is to guide the robot’s arm with their hand, and it can precisely replicate their recorded brush strokes. Unlike traditional system, the robot can record and reproduce the force applied to the brush similarly to when people touch something.

The calligraphy replication ‘bot was presented at the 2012 Combined Exhibition of Advanced Technologies in Tokyo, Japan.

[via DigInfo.TV via designboom]

I’m really looking forward to checking out Tim Burton’s Frankenweenie. Early buzz is that it’s pretty great, and I just love Burton’s dark humor and animation style for his latest Disney flick. While we wait to get to the theater to check it out, why not relax and enjoy some cupcakes? I think I will…

These truly impressive Frankenweenie cupcakes were made by Death By Cupcakes, and feature the likenesses of all the major characters from the movie, including Mr. Rzykruski, Nassor, Elsa, Edgar, Victor, Persephone, Toshiaki, Weird Girl, and of coruse, Sparky the dog.

Each cupcake was lovingly hand-painted with incredibly accurate detail, and if they taste 1/10th as delicious as they look, I’d eat the whole plate if I could. Then I’d try to bring them back to life by jolting them with electricity them so I could eat them all over again.

[via Between the Pages]

Styluses aren’t just for Samsung devices, there are plenty available for iPads and iPhones. While most of them are pretty crappy, the most interesting are the ones that can connect to your iPad via Bluetooth and convey pressure sensitive information.

Ten One Design’s Pogo Connect will start shipping this October. You’ll get months of battery life from a single AAA battery, and thanks to Bluetooth 4.0, there’s no need to turn it off. It uses solid state pressure sensing, offering hundreds of levels of sensitivity with no moving parts. Unfortunately, the stylus still has to have a relatively fat 7mm tip in order to work with the iPad’s capacitive screen.

If you don’t have the new iPad, there will be an app available that will allow you to make the Pogo Connect work with the iPad 1 and 2 as well – but this requires access to an iPhone 4S (or the upcoming new iPhone 5) to act as a Bluetooth 4.0 bridge. The Connect relies on third-party app makers to build support for it, as Apple doesn’t offer any system-level protocol for dealing with pressure sensitivity over Bluetooth. However, there are already a number of apps, including Paper, Procreate and Sketchbook Pro, which will be compatible with it.

The stylus retails for $79.95(USD), and if you’re one of the first 2,000 pre-orders, then you’ll get custom laser engraving on the pen as well.

[via TechCrunch]

Oh, to sit in a darkened room all day and get paid to do art. No phone calls, no stress, and no technology except for a PC and a brand new $1,999 Wacom Cintiq 22HD tablet display (and maybe also a pair of equally well-engineered Beyerdynamics). Alas, only our Distro magazine crew get to live like that — the rest of the Engadget team must make do with spec sheets and quick hands-on impressions, which are precisely what you’ll find after the break.

Continue reading Wacom announces Cintiq 22HD pen display, we go hands-on (video)

Filed under: Displays, Peripherals

Wacom announces Cintiq 22HD pen display, we go hands-on (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 10 Jul 2012 00:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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