Hasta La Gadget!

Watching a master at work is a great way to acquire motor skills. But it’s not that easy to keep an eye on someone else while looking at your own movements to see if you’re doing it right. A proof of concept system called Ghostman helps you do both simultaneously, thanks to augmented reality glasses.

Ghostman was designed by researchers from the University of Tasmania and the University of Washington, led by Dr. Winyu Chinthammit. Using two pairs of Vuzix Wrap 920AR glasses, Ghostman overlays a teacher’s hand over the student’s own vision. The student can then see the demonstration from his teacher’s point of view while his own hand is also in full view.

In their limited tests, Dr. Chinthammit and his colleagues found out that teaching a new motor skill through Ghostman is as effective as going about it with an instructor sitting by your side. This means it could one day be possible for instructors to effectively teach motor skills through a remote session. Although I think it would also be beneficial if the teacher could see from his student’s perspective as well to help him provide feedback.

Come on doc, we all know a pottery lesson would’ve been more appropriate. Head to Hindawi to read the researchers’ paper on Ghostman.

All images by Dr. Chinthammit et al.

[via New Scientist via PSFK]

There are already portable battery packs that have solar panels for recharging. The Trinity is a new kind of portable charger that uses a different renewable source of energy: the wind. It recharges its 15,000 mAh battery through its built-in wind turbine. Although it’s quite promising, I don’t think you should support it just yet.

Trinity weighs just 4lb. and when collapsed it’s just 12″ long, so it’s fairly portable. It has three aluminum legs that can either stay in a tripod arrangement or lie flat. Inside Trinity is a 15W generator and its battery. The current prototype has a 5V/1A USB charging port, although inventor Skajaquoda is considering adding an additional 5v/2A USB port for more power hungry devices like tablets. Here’s where it starts to get iffy. Skajaquoda also added a miniUSB port that’s meant to charge Trinity’s battery… via an outlet.

Why would they add a way to charge the battery that doesn’t use the built-in wind turbine? If you’re going to plug it in to charge it you might as well get a conventional battery pack that’s much smaller. The only reason I can think of for the addition of the mini-USB charging option is that Skajaquoda isn’t confident about Trinity’s charging speed through the wind turbine. Commenters on the fundraising site are asking the same question: How fast does it charge through wind power? Sadly, Skajaquoda didn’t include that vital data on their Kickstarter page and on their pitch video.

Breeze on over to Kickstarter to find out more about Trinity. The device can be yours for a pledge of at least $249 (USD), but again I don’t think you should back the project yet. I’m not saying this is vaporware or a scam. It’s an interesting and promising invention,  but at the same time there are important details about it that need to come to light before you plunk down your hard-earned cash.

[via GadgeTell]

Last year we saw a drone camera system that streamed live 3D video that can be viewed through the Oculus Rift headset. Diego Araos wrote a program that not only lets you use the Rift to view the feed from a Parrot AR.Drone 2′s camera, it also uses control the drone through the headset.

Diego’s program OculusDrone taps into the Rift’s head tracking feature to control the AR.Drone 2 remotely. However, you need to use a keyboard command to order the AR.Drone to takeoff  (Enter) and land (Escape).

Zip to GitHub to download OculusDrone.

[via BGR via Reddit]

As virtual reality continues to grow and interactive gaming in general becomes a bigger focus, some Stanford engineers have developed the next item of attention: an emotion-sensing game controller, which … Continue reading

After creating a robot bird and dragonfly, automation company Festo shows off with another impressive animal replica. Like real kangaroos, Festo’s BionicKangaroo is not only great at jumping and keeping its balance, it can also store the energy generated from landing and use it for the next jump.

BionicKangaroo uses a combination of pneumatic actuators and electric servos to move and keep its balance.

According to Festo, the robot has an rubber elastic spring element that acts like an Achilles tendon: “It is fastened at the back of the foot and parallel to the pneumatic cylinder on the knee joint. The artificial tendon cushions the jump, simultaneously absorbs the kinetic energy and releases it for the next jump.”

To make the robot even fancier, Festo also made it so it can be controlled with gestures. The company uses the Myo armband to make BionicKangaroo move, stay or rotate in place. Watch BionicKangaroo hip hip hop and not stop:

It would’ve been way cooler if they made a BionicTigger instead. Check out Festo’s report (pdf) if you want to learn more about BionicKangaroo.

[via Ubergizmo]