You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours — all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
During the course of a long weekend, a handful of the world’s greatest thinkers assembled in California with the single goal of creating the next XPRIZE winner. In a brand new issue of our weekly, Tim Stevens takes a look inside the making of the next visionary challenge and offers a glimpse at how the the outfit decides which revolutionary ideas have earned its support. Weekly Stat tallies up the numbers on the Xbox One, Rec Reading peeks inside Google’s secret lab and TechShop’s Mark Hatch stops by for the Q&A. Some relaxing end-of-the-week gadget reading is here, thanks to a speedy download via the links that follow.
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Filed under: Announcements, HD, Mobile
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We first saw a prototype of Scout, the tricorder and companion app built by Scanadu for the Tricorder X-prize competition late last year. Today, the company is unveiling Scout’s final version and launching an Indiegogo campaign to let folks order Scout and sign up to participate in a usability study — which will provide Scanadu the user feedback needed to help its tricorder get certified by the FDA. In the six months since Scout was first revealed, the design has changed somewhat, and we checked in with company CEO Walter De Brouwer to get the lowdown on the new version.
Like the prototype, the new model tracks your temperature, respiratory rate, systolic blood pressure and stress level. Scout now pulls your vitals in ten seconds using just optical sensors, which enables it to read the vital signs of others — as opposed to the prototype which utilized an EEG sensor and could only record the info of the person holding it. Plus, thanks to some newly developed algorithms, it can now take both systolic and diastolic blood pressure readings with 95 percent accuracy. Running the algorithms to translate the optical sensor info takes a good bit of computing power, however. So, Scout got upgraded from an 8-bit processor to a 32-bit unit based on Micrium, the operation system being used by NASA’s Curiosity Rover for sample analysis on Mars. If you’re into supporting real world space technology being used to make science fiction a reality, the crowdfunding project of your dreams has arrived.
Filed under: Misc
Source: Indiegogo
You might say the week is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workweek, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Weekly Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past seven days — all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
There have been many critical moments in the history of space exploration — Sputnik in 1957, Yuri Gagarin in 1961, Neil Armstrong in 1969 — but if you look back over the history of manned happenings outside of the atmosphere, almost all of these moments were driven by government funds. You have to fast-forward all the way to October 4th, 2004, the moment that pilot Brian Binnie crested at an altitude of 112km in SpaceShipOne, to find a similarly important moment in the history of private space flight.
That moment wouldn’t have come when it did, and may never have come at all, if there hadn’t been some incentive. In 2004, XPRIZE (formerly the X Prize Foundation) paid $10 million to the Scaled Composites team headed up by Burt Rutan and Paul Allen for being first to make two trips to the edge of space in the span of two weeks. That single prize (which didn’t come close to covering the team’s expenses) ushered in a new era of private space travel and, for XPRIZE founder Peter Diamandis, demonstrated the power of competition.
XPRIZE didn’t stop there, and each year it asks for help from some of the world’s greatest thinkers, tasking them to decide which of the world’s many and myriad problems are ready for solutions. Join us as we take you on the inside.
Who hasn’t dreamed of having a Tricorder from the show Star Trek? Qualcomm announced the Tricorder X Prize last year, who’s aim is to create a Star Trek-like device. Those who are interested in fame and fortune, as well as the $10 million prize, can finally register starting tomorrow and then they have to actually make it happen. There have already been over 250 teams pre-registered for the competition, and those interested can head to the official site for the full guidelines and actually register for the site.
Source: Qualcomm Tricorder X Prize
The quest to create a tricorder began many years ago, when such a device was but a figment of Gene Roddenberry’s vivid imagination. However, his vision has crept ever closer to reality in recent years, with many researchers crafting devices capable of gathering human health data and the creation of an X Prize competition to spur further tricorder development.
Scanadu is a company that’s answered the X Prize bell and is aiming to bring just such a device to market by late next year for a mere $150. Called Scout, the tricorder is roughly two inches square and a half an inch thick and packs a rechargeable battery, IR , EEG and EKG scanners, plus an accelerometer, Bluetooth radio and a micro-USB port. That hardware, when combined with Scout’s companion smartphone app can track a person’s heart rate, breathing rate, body temperature, pulse transit (essentially systolic blood pressure) and blood oxygenation.
To gather that data, users first must download the free Scout app and pair the tricorder hardware with their Android, iOS or BB7 handset via Bluetooth. Then it’s simply a matter of pinching the device between their thumb and finger and holding it against their temple for ten seconds while the app takes the necessary readings. From there, the app can track your data over the long haul and provide an accurate picture of your health. We had a chance to see functional and production Scout prototypes and to speak with Scanadu CEO Walter De Brouwer and Chief Medical Officer Dr. Alan Greene about Scout’s development, so join us after the break for more.
Filed under: Misc
Things are buzzing late Monday afternoon at Carnegie Mellon’s Planetary Robotics Lab Highbay. Outside, in front of the garage door-like entrance, a trio of men fills up a kiddie pool with a garden hose. Just to their left, an Enterprise rent-a-truck backs up and a handful of students raise two metal ramps up to its rear in order to drive a flashy rover up inside. I ask our guide, Jason Calaiaro, what the vehicle’s final destination is. “NASA,” he answers, simply. “We have a great relationship with NASA, and they help us test things.”
Calaiaro is the CIO of Astrobotic Technology, an offshoot of the school that was founded a few years back, thanks to Google’s Lunar X Prize announcement. And while none of the handful of vehicles the former student showcases were made specifically with the government space agency in mind, given the company’s history of contractual work, we could well see them receive the NASA stamp of approval in the future. Asked to take us through the project, Calaiaro tells us, quite confidently, that the trio of vehicles behind us are set to “land on the moon in 2015,” an ambitious goal set to occur exactly three weeks from last Friday.
Continue reading A Tour of Astrobotic Technology’s lunar rover lab at Carnegie Mellon (video)
Filed under: Robots, Science, Alt
A Tour of Astrobotic Technology’s lunar rover lab at Carnegie Mellon (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 22 Oct 2012 20:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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