Hasta La Gadget!

Researchers at DARPA are working on robots with hugely increased power efficiency, chasing human-style actuation that would prolong battery life and significantly extend robotic runtime. The M3 Actuation program has set an ambitious 2,000-percent increase in power-transmission and application in robots, improving performance not only in areas like search & rescue and drones, but advanced prosthetic limbs and other fields.

It’s not just making more efficient motors. According to DARPA, successful teams might look at a combination of “low-loss power modulation, variable recruitment of parallel transducer elements, high-bandwidth variable impedance matching, adaptive inertial and gravitational load cancellation, and high-efficiency power transmission between joints.”

There will be two different tracks of work ongoing simultaneously, one with a more practical focus and another that will look more at the science and engineering behind actuation. The eye-candy is likely to show up in Track 1, where teams will be required to actually outfit physical robotics systems with their creations:

“Track 1 asks performer teams to develop and demonstrate high-efficiency actuation technology that will allow robots similar to the DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC) Government Furnished Equipment (GFE) platform to have twenty times longer endurance than the DRC GFE when running on untethered battery power (currently only 10-20 minutes). Using Government Furnished Information about the GFE, M3 Actuation performers will have to build a robot that incorporates the new actuation technology” DARPA

DARPA is now inviting proposals from teams that believe they can put together something along those lines. The Maximum Mobility and Manipulation robotics program will culminate in a live competition in December 2013, followed by a second live final in December 2014.

DARPA kickstarts research into robot Viagra is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Tablets, and specifically the iPad from Apple, have been one of the big drivers for growth in mobile in the last couple of years, but figures out today from NPD indicate that their popularity is going to get even bigger: the market for tablets, its researchers predict, is set to boom from 121 million shipped tablets today to 416 million devices by 2017, when they will overtake notebooks to become the most popular mobile PC device, driven by a drop in costs and a rise in features. Overall mobile PC shipments will reach 809 million units by 2017, from 347 million today.

But over that time, the rise of tablets will remain largely a story about developed/mature markets. Regions like North America and Western Europe, along with single countries like Japan, currently account for 66 percent of all tablet shipments (and most likely sales), and that proportion, NPD predicts, will remain in the 60 percent range for the next five years. That works out to 254 million units by 2017, versus 80 million today.

NPD seems to say that this is partly due to a lack of infrastructure and available services in developing markets, but also that it is something of a self-fulfilling prophecy: vendors continue to focus on the mature markets with their new products, so that’s where they get bought: ”New entrants are tending to launch their initial products in mature markets,” Richard Shim, senior analyst at NPD DisplaySearch, notes in a statement.

The rise of tablets is also a story about the decline of notebooks. The market for these will continue to expand, but at a rate lower than the 28 percent that tablets will see: NPD says that by 2017 there will be 393 million notebooks shipped compared to 208 million today.

One takeaway from this: although Apple with its iPad line of tablets has dominated the tablet world in market and mindshare up to now, the space is far from penetrated, and that means that companies like Microsoft, Google and others still have a lot to play for.

Another is that we may continue to see a pressure on price, but that won’t necessarily mean a shortcut on features. Amazon has, by some estimates, ushered in the “death of the spec” with its Kindle Fire tablet, which pares down expensive features like cameras in favor of delivering a sub-$200 device, but NPD notes that it will be the features on those tablets — instant-on capability, battery life, portability, as well as multi-core processors, hi-res displays — that will make them a “compelling alternative” to notebooks for the mobile consumer.

Part of the reason we will see a lot of features continue to be incorporated into tablets is because of the emphasis of content on the devices. App stores are increasingly catering to tablet users. And figures from NPD itself indicate how they are becoming a major platform for traditional TV consumption. This kind of usage screams for better screens, faster processors and just generally awesome hardware.

But by the way, this is not to say notebooks are dying. Far from it — they will still account for 49 percent of the mobile PC market, NPD says, shipping 393 million units in 2017 compared to 208 million in 2012. It adds that notebook makers are also taking heed and looking to put more tablet-like features into their products — for example, becoming thinner and incorporating touch functionality.

Almost exactly a month ago I mentioned that researchers had concluded with a high likelihood of accuracy that famed pilot Amelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan had crash landed on a reef and lived for a short time on a nearby island. It is believed that the duo lived for a short time on a Pacific island called Gardner Island before succumbing to dehydration and starvation. Artifacts found on the small island led the researchers to the conclusion, but the team wants to find the wreckage of Earhart’s plane.

The researchers have set off on a $2.2 million expedition to use a torpedo-like submersible to search the depths below the reef where Earhart is believed to have crashed. The investigators believe that the wreckage of the Earhart’s Lockheed Electra aircraft lays the bottom of one of the reef walls. A second submersible equipped with cameras will be used to take photos of anything discovered in the ocean depths.

A photograph taken in October of 1937 showed what could be a strut and wheel from a Lockheed Electra sticking out of the water above the reef. We should know in short order when the team arrives and sends the remote-controlled submersible under the ocean to search for the aircraft wreckage. If the wreckage of Earhart’s plane is discovered one of the oldest and most famous mysteries in aviation history will be solved after decades.

[via Washington Post]

Expedition to discover Amelia Earhart’s plane wreckage begins is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Virtually anyone who’s been a frequent smartphone user for the past few years has already suspected it, but O2 UK has provided some possible evidence in a study: calling is one of the last things we do these days. Although the number hasn’t gone down, the 12.1 minutes of time study subjects spend talking every day is just fifth-highest on the list of what they do with their smartphones. Web browsing (24.8 minutes) and social networking (17.5 minutes) dictate the largest slices of time, but the combined effect of all those apps, media playback and messaging leave voice as just 9.5 percent of the 128 minutes of daily use. The British carrier suggests the shift is more a virtue of smartphones becoming all-singing, all-dancing companions in our lives than from some disdain for human contact: about half of those asked have replaced alarm clocks and watches with their phones, while 39 percent depend on their smartphone as their main camera. There’s even 28 percent that no longer feel the need for a laptop. O2’s insights aren’t all-encompassing and don’t necessarily reflect how everyone uses their devices — they do, however, explain why we’re turning to phones that aren’t all that comfortable as phones.

O2 says calling just fifth most-used task on smartphones, suggests we call them ‘best buds’ instead originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 03 Jul 2012 02:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Windows that make you feel happier and healthier? Working in an office might just become a more pleasurable experience if the research geeks at the German Fraunhofer institute have their way, cooking up panes with a special coating that specifically allows through wavelengths known to have a positive impact on the body’s hormonal balance. The end result, it’s claimed, is a sheet that “makes you feel as if the window is permanently open” researcher Walther Glaubitt says.

Traditional treated glass uses anti-reflective coatings for aesthetic purposes, the researchers point out, preventing reflections and allowing through the maximum amount of light to avoid needing so much artificial illumination. However, the human eye is particularly sensitive to blue light, and so the Fraunhofer tech focuses on allowing that through.

“Our biorhythms are not affected by the wavelengths that brighten a room the most, but rather by blue light,” engineer Glaubitt says. The coating they’ve given is an inorganic later, 0.1 micrometers thick, that exhibits maximum transmission at wavelengths between 450 and 500 nanometers, where the effects of blue light are at their strongest.

Shortages in blue light can lead to SAD (seasonal effectiveness disorder), issues with sleeping due to excess melatonin production, depression and other problems. Traditional methods to combat this include blue-LED “energy lights” such as the Philips model we reviewed last year.

UNIGLASS and Centrosolar Glas are planning to bring the specially-treated glass to market as “VITAL feel-good glass” in triple-glazed units, which would usually make the room feel no darker but which would prevent more blue light from making it through. In fact, while regular triple-glazing allows through 66-percent of light at the 460 nanometer wavelength – the blue area – the VITAL glazing will allow through 79-percent.

Future versions, however, will extend the coating to the outer-sides of the glass sheets, further improving transmission. In fact, it’s expected that UNIGLASS can achieve 95-percent transmission eventually.

VITAL feel-good glass replaces pain with happy pane is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.