Yes, everything is small in Japan but this is extreme!
Thanko released an extremely small functional camera that looks like a mirrorless interchangeable lens camera. Despite it’s super small size (38x33x28m, 17g), it is capable of taking photos and movies. Photos and movies can be saved on a microSD card. Battery charge is done via a USB port.
It also features a strobe that detects darkness and flashes automatically and a “Motion-sensing” function that starts taking about 2 minutes of video by detecting body movement. It’s a more useful camera than expected.
Price: 5,980 yen (including tax) Size: 28 x 33 x 28mm Weight: 17g Accessories: USB cable, strap, small bag for the camera Saving format: Movie – AVI, Photo – JPEG Resolution: Movie – 1280×720, 1 mega pixel, Photo – 2560×1920
The Oculus Rift virtual reality headset is becoming more of an actual reality now. The company announced today that developer kits of the Oculus Rift are now shipping out to developers. In fact, the company says that units actually started shipping out Wednesday, so some developers may have already gotten theirs.
It feels like yesterday when we were hearing about the prototype of the VR headset, and after an extremely successful Kickstarter campaign back in August, the Oculus Rift has made headlines all other the internet. The company even made an appearance at CES, where it showed off the VR technology to attendees.
The company says they shipped over 10,000 developer kits, so we should be seeing quite a surge in support for the VR headset before it officially ships out to Kickstarter backers and the general public. The first game, however, to receive official support for the VR headset is Valve’s Team Fortress 2.
Furthermore, with dev units shipping out, Oculus has opened up its developer portal on its website. There you’ll find everything you need to get started creating content for the VR headset. In the meantime, if you’re not a developer, you get the honor of waiting it out before the public will have the chance to receive their own units.
We’ve been hearing a lot about motion tracking as of late, the Leap Motion being the most popular device that is making its way to the public. However, a new mechanism is looking to gain some ground and has popped up on Kickstarter. The DUO 3D sensor claims to be the “world’s first and only DIY 3D sensing solution.”
The DUO 3D sensor is open source, meaning that you can do anything with it that you please. It comes with open hardware plans, and you can get it in kit form where you assemble it or you can get fully assembled devices. The drivers and SDK are also open source, so there’s quite a bit that you can do with it right off the bat.
The company even claims that the sensor is practically plug-in-play, where you just plug it in, download the necessary software, and start playing around with it “within minutes.” From the video itself, the DUO looks to be extremely accurate, tracking fingers with every slight move. From the looks of it so far, it’ll definitely give the Leap Motion a run for its money.
The “DIY” portion comes into play with the open source hardware blueprints that you can purchase (or “back” in this case). The hardware plans will provide you with everything you need, but it’ll be up to you to get the parts and assemble it. However, you can modify the plans however you wish and truly make it your own.
Pledging $10 gets you the SDK, while $20 will get you the hardware plans, as well as the SDK. $40 will get you everything previously, as well as a custom-molded case for your 3D sensor. $140 will get you a fully-assembled kit, while $110 will score you all the parts you need to assemble it yourself.
Gesture control is heating up, with a host of new entries finally following Microsoft’s example with the Kinect, including Leap Motion and MYO. A German company called pmdtechnologies has also been in the space for a few years (they’ve been working on their tech for 10 years, in fact), and their latest reference design, the CamBoard pico, is a 3D depth sensor based on what pmd calls its “time-of-flight” tech to delivery extremely accurate depth measurement for gesture control of PCs.
The CamBoard pico follows the CamBoard nano, the company’s previous reference design, and improves on pmd’s existing depth sensor by offering more accurate, touch-free gesture control. It works by offering a “3D interaction volume,” made up of a point cloud, which pmd says means it can be more accurate than Leap Motion, which just identifies points for fingertips to help it determine relative spacial distance.
pmd offers its designs for sale to consumer electronics companies and other clients (it creates a lot of car safety and industrial robotics sensors, for instance) to help them build their own gesture sensing devices, which means the tech found in the CamBoard pico reference design could find its way to modules integrated into notebooks, into webcams, or into dedicated motion controllers from to OEM brands.
The gesture control market is definitely picking up steam, and that means some companies like pmd which have been around for a long time but have largely served niche industries will get a chance to move more to the foreground. With something like a new mode of interaction, quality of experience is the key to stickiness, however, so both veteran and rookie players here will sink or swim based on how pleasant or frustrating using their devices proves to be.
As Leap Motion dev units have begun shipping out, developers have been toying with the motion-tracking device to find unique uses for it. One developer in particular ended up using his unit to help him out with his music recording. Stephane Bersot used the Leap Motion to play air drums, change the pitch of his guitar, and even control the EQ on his piano keyboard.
Essentially, the Leap Motion is able to change the pitch of the guitar chords based on the position of the guitar’s headstock, meaning that there’s no need for players to use a tremolo bar or bend the strings while playing. The device can also track specially-made drum sticks that allow the Leap to track the end points of the sticks to play the beats.
However, that seemed to be Bersot’s most difficult challenge. He says “it wasn’t easy to play drums with it,” and it actually needs more work to make it more stable. Essentially, Bersot used the velocities and positions of the drum sticks on the X axis, and had it play the note at just the right time during the down motion.
We’re assuming Bersot’s project is just for fun, since it doesn’t seem like he plans to release something like it anytime soon, but it goes to show the potential of the Leap Motion device. While it can be used to track your hands to move objects on a screen, the implications of such a device go way beyond what one might think.
This week we got the opportunity to take a peek at the newest Moen water distribution system for your sink, the MotionSense Touch-Free faucet. Moen’s own Maribeth Kwasniewski showed this system off with us at ShowStoppers during CES 2013, revealing the multiple ways you’re able to activate it when you get it for yourself in the very near future. The first of these is the Wave Sensor – that black dot at the top of the neck of the faucet, able to toggle the water’s flow when you move your hand over or across it.
What this wave sensor being able to “toggle” means here is that if you wave your hand over the faucet once, the water turns on, if you wave your hand over it again, the water turns off. Whichever state the water flow is in when you wave your hand over it, it’ll be the opposite when you’ve waved. If you wave once to turn the water off and walk away, the water will automatically shut off in 2 minutes.
Next is the Ready Sensor, this feature turning the water flow on when you place your hands under the faucet. This works like the sensor you’ll see it massive amounts of bathrooms in restaurants, hotels, and everywhere in between right this minute. The third way to work with this faucet is with its one handle – pull the handle out and it turns on, pull back or push forward and the water becomes hot or cold.
As for the temperature of the water when you use one of the sensors: that’s controlled by a control box that you set (under the deck, aka under your countertop) when you first install the faucet. You can set and re-set this controlled temperature but can also control the temperature above the deck with the handle as described above. This system sticks to the controlled temperature you’ve set whenever you initiate the flow of water with one of the two sensors.
This faucet starts at $399 USD and is available right this minute from a variety of retailers and online (if you know where to look). Have a peek at the rest of our CES 2013 coverage in our giant CES hub or check just the ShowStoppers hands-on posts in our ShowStoppers 2013 tag portal – it’s all good!
Leap Motion has been working hard the past several months to get its gesture control technology in the hands of developers. It’s doing a great job so far, and it looks like all that hard work will pay off, because the company just partnered up with ASUS to bring the Kinect-like technology to the desktop.
ASUS will be bundling Leap’s motion control technology with select notebooks and desktops that will ship later this year, including the company’s all-in-one PCs and high-end notebooks. The Leap Motion app store will also come pre-installed on all of the qualified computers, and since ASUS will be shipping the products internationally, it will mark Leap’s international debut.
If you’re not sure what the heck Leap Motion does exactly, we’ll give you a quick refresher. The company’s motion-tracking technology has a 150-degree field of view that tracks individual hands and all 10 fingers at 290 frames per second in order to provide ultra precise motion controls. It also offers 200x more accuracy than Microsoft’s Kinect, which already has its many drawbacks anyway.
Obviously, this new tech will encourage users to ditch the traditional keyboard and mouse interface in favor of a Minority Report-esque interface, but depending on how well ASUS implements the technology, we can’t imagine that it’d be hard to pry keyboards and mice out of diehard fans. Prices for the motion-control-equipped computers haven’t yet been discussed, but ASUS promises the new PC’s will be available around the world later this year.
One way that sensors can track your position without using an array of satellites is by measuring your acceleration as you move around — but unless you’re piloting a jumbo jet, current devices aren’t very accurate. Researchers at Caltech hope to change all that with a new, ultra-sensitive accelerometer they developed, which uses laser light to detect motion changes. The scientists managed to shrink a so-called large-scale interferometer down to micro-scale sizes, creating a device “thousands of times faster than the most sensitive sensors used today.” That could allow a smartphone with such a micro-sensor to detect your exact position even while inside a grocery store, and flash “ads and coupons for hot dog buns” while you’re in the bread aisle, according to Caltech. All that sounds good, but we can perhaps think of more inspiring uses for the new tech.
Leap Motion, the startup looking to bring motion-tracking 200x more accurate than Kinect to desktop and mobile, has revealed the gush of developer interest in the gadget, with early units expected to ship within months. Over 26,000 curious developers have applied for free Leap Motion units by last week, the company says, with prospective applications including gaming, robotics, and CAD software. “We’ve already seen developers propose exciting applications for the Leap that we hadn’t even imagined” CEO Michael Buckwald said of the process.
Developers from 143 countries have applied, with the bulk – 42-percent – coming from the US and almost a quarter from Canada. More than 1,5000 applications apparently come from researchers and students in colleges and universities, with Harvard, MIT and Stanford all getting name-checked.
Leap Motion 3D demo:
Leap hasn’t detailed any specific projects, presumably to allow the developers themselves to keep the element of surprise until launch, but does say that “use ideas from developers include translating sign language, driving a car or airplane, supporting physical rehabilitation and special needs, manipulating photos and videos, creating new art forms and thousands more.” The free developer units will begin shipping “in the next few months.”
Leap Motion 3D feature walkthrough:
Meanwhile, pre-orders for the consumer version continue to be accepted, with the original winter release window being narrowed down to February 2013 according to the order page. The Leap is priced at $69.99, though supplies are expected to be limited.
Leap’s system connects via USB, and musters a four cubic foot area above the desk where individual finger movements can be tracked to within 1/100th of a millimeter. Its magic, the company claims, is in how the algorithms track and process those movements, rather than the hardware itself which is relatively affordable compared to camera-based alternatives.
You remember Suidobashi Heavy Industries, don’t you? The company previously created a 12.5ft tall mech prototype, that was partially controlled using Microsoft’s Kinect sensor. It wasn’t quite ready back in April, but the company showed off a completed version of the Kuratas recently in Japan. On top of that, Suidobashi has created a video detailing how to use the Kuratas, which you’ll be able to purchase down the line for a cool $1.3 million.
Part informative and part tongue-in-cheek, the video takes you around the mech, detailing the various functions as well as how to operate it. The mech features a motor-controlled cockpit, opened from the outside and inside with small buttons. Once the pilot is safely inside, the robot is controlled using a combination of physical and motion controls, plus a touchscreen. It can also be operated remotely using a master slave device.
The Kuratas will have a top speed of around 6 mph when mobile movement is fully functional, and the pilot can adjust the height of the robot to achieve the best vantage point. It runs on a diesel engine too, so keeping it on the road shouldn’t be too much of a problem. Bear in mind though that the video does make liberal use of CGI as the Kuratas takes to the streets.
The Kuratas features several weapons as well. The first is the LOHAS launcher, which shoots water-filled bottles at enemies with high speed. Suidobashi notes that it’s designed to be an “eco-friendly” solution, to be used more for demonstration rather than actual combat. The twin gatling guns, meanwhile, can shoot out 6000 BBs per minute, activated when the pilot smiles, with facial tracking helping the Kuratas to stay locked on the target.
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