Hasta La Gadget!

Computers and sensors are quickly decreasing in cost and size, making it easier than ever before to build smart gadgets or robots. From accelerometers to thermal sensors, electronics nowadays can detect and record a variety of events and objects in their surroundings. Here’s one more sensor to add to your robot overlord-in-training. It’s called Pixy, a camera that identifies objects through color.

Pixy was made by Charmed Labs and embedded systems experts from Carnegie Mellon University. It’s actually the team’s fifth version of a smart and low-cost vision sensor, which they previously called the CMUcam. What separates the Pixy from other image sensors is that it only sends a small amount of data and it has its own microprocessor. These traits make it possible to integrate the Pixy even to microcontrollers like the Arduino.

Pixy identifies objects using “a hue-based color filtering algorithm”, which supposedly makes it consistent under different lighting conditions. It can also identify hundreds of objects at once. The image below is a screenshot of PixyMon, an open source debugging program for Pixy.

As you’ll see in the video below, Pixy can also track moving objects. That’s because it updates once every 20ms, fast enough to keep up with an object moving at 30mph. You can then gather Pixy’s data through UART serial, SPI, I2C, digital out, or analog out.

Pixy can be taught to “remember” up to seven different objects, but you can expand its memory by using color codes. Color codes are simply stickers or strips of paper with two or more different colors. Color codes increase Pixy’s color-coded encyclopedia from seven to several thousands.

Pledge at least $59 (USD) on Kickstarter to get a Pixy and an Arduino cable as a reward.

What will you build with Pixy? A security camera that texts you when your cat goes out? A color-seeking water bomb? A clown-loving machine? A drone that follows you around? A box of crayons that can tell you what color you picked? A weapon that works only on people wearing red? A LEGO sorter that can tell you which pieces are missing from your collection? A camera that automatically takes pictures of the sunset? A wearable assistant for colorblind people? A ticker that counts which Premier League referee hands out the most yellow cards? A useless machine that won’t turn itself off if you’re wearing the right color? Are the things I’m saying even possible?

Today’s golf carts certainly serve a purpose, but despite opulent add-ons like plastic rain shields and windshield wipers, the electric buggies littering the world’s fairways and outdoor venues can hardly be considered luxurious. Now, with Mercedes-Benz considering a compact vehicle of its own, the cookie-cutter people mover could be a thing of the past. The German automaker recently debuted its Vision Golf Cart concept, a solar-powered two-seat carriage that includes such amenities as heated and cooled seats and cup holders, air vents, speakers, a joystick control, iPhone dock, heads-up display and LED headlights. Sounds pretty posh.

Filed under: Transportation

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Via: Inhabitat, CNET

Source: Daimler

Roboray is the latest humanoid robot created by Samsung’s Advanced Institute of Technology. Using visual recognition software developed by a team University of Bristol, the ‘bot can now build real-time, 3D visual maps of its environment. It basically looks at its surroundings and creates a map of them as it moves. This also allows it to remember where it has been before.

Roboray also walks like a real person. Where most humanoid robots walk by bending their knees to keep their center of mass constant, Roboray falls a little bit with each step, which is how we walk.

Between mapping it’s own environment and walking just like us, it won’t be long before robots are walking among us on the streets. After that they will easily disguise themselves as humans and really give us a reason to be scared.

[via Geekosystem]

Here’s a brilliant way to drum up new business if you’re an optometrist. Myung Dong, an eye doctor in Jeju, South Korea, found the perfect way to convince the local elderly population that they could benefit from glasses or other vision treatments: a business card featuring a self-administered eye test.

Read more…

This could be a life changing and historic moment for a number of blind patients in the world: the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) has approved the use of an Artificial Retina that could help a specific group of vision-impaired patients to recover a partial vision. The principle of the Artificial Retina works like this: the retina is basically the eye’s “light sensors”, and when it is damaged, the light information isn’t received, and therefore it cannot be transmitted to the brain. (more…)

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