Aug 10

Sifteo Cubes up for pre-order tonight, gaming gets tangibly-cute this September

Posted in: education, Games, mit, Today's Chili, toy, Toys, video, Wireless
Want a game for the tabletop with on-screen pop, and a sprinkle of adorable? Sifteo is officially set to get your gears going when its interactive Cubes, up for pre-order by the end of today, ship out in September. If you’ll recall, the MIT-rooted project uses blocks equipped with 1.5-inch displays to create a variety of gaming environments mixing touch, motion and on-display content. Also announced is a bundled “Creativity Kit,” which enables you to make your own games on the fly. It was was briefly available to early adopters in January for $99.99, and now $149.99 gets everyone in on some good times. You’ll receive a triplet of the oh-so-cute Cubes, a charging hub and a 2.4 Ghz wireless USB adapter for connectivity, as well as transferring Sifteo store apps purchased on your computer. Interest piqued? You’ll find details in the PR just past the break — unless you’re a square, that is.

Continue reading Sifteo Cubes up for pre-order tonight, gaming gets tangibly-cute this September

Sifteo Cubes up for pre-order tonight, gaming gets tangibly-cute this September originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 10 Aug 2011 19:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Aug 10

Robot skin captures super detailed 3D surface images

Posted in: medical, mit, robot, Robots, Today's Chili

Remember those awesome pin art toys where you could press your hand (or face) into the pins to leaving a lasting impression? Researchers at MIT have taken the idea one (or two) steps further with “GelSight,” a hunk of synthetic rubber that creates a detailed computer visualized image of whatever surface you press it against. It works as such: push the reflective side of the gummy against an object (they chose a chicken feather and a $20 bill) and the camera on the other end will capture a 3-D image of the microscopic surface structure. Originally designed as robot “skin,” researchers realized the tool could be used in applications from criminal forensics (think bullets and fingerprints) to dermatology. The Coke can-sized machine is so sensitive, it can capture surface subtleties as small as one by two micrometer in surface — finally solving the mystery of who stole the cookies from the cookie jar. (Hint: we know it was you Velvet Sledgehammer).

Continue reading Robot skin captures super detailed 3D surface images

Robot skin captures super detailed 3D surface images originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 10 Aug 2011 08:10:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Aug 07

Caption Contest: Bakebot learns to actually bake things, feed the looming robot army

Posted in: mit, robot, RobotApocalypse, Today's Chili

Aww, look! Bakebot’s soooo cute! He’s actually cooking things these days, thanks to MIT grad student Mario Bollini, who recently upped the creature’s skill level in an effort to grab more calories with less effort. Little did he know, however, that teaching a self-contained machine how to feed the future uprising wasn’t exactly the best long-term move. No, that creeping feeling of fear isn’t unwarranted.

Darren: “01001111 01001101 01000111 00100000 01000011 01001111 01001111 01001011 01001001 01000101 01010011!”
Terrence: “Bakebot’s lessons with the master chef were going so well, until his Bork to binary translator failed”
Brian: “Bakebot love kitten. Bakebot eat kitten.”
Brad: “Stephanie! Johnny no add vanilla!”
Sean: “It’s so unfair! I have eight other senses, but I’d trade them all — even smision — to be able to taste.”
Christopher: “Rachel Ray hit a wall with 15 minute meals, so we found a faster, more charismatic replacement. Meet Rachel Number 5.”
Michael: “Here I thought the robot apocalypse would be powered by nuclear fusion and laser beams, turns out it’ll be running on profiteroles and delicious cakes.”
Jon: “I’m toasting bread in my head right now…seriously”
Zach: “You want me to wear a what? Why don’t you trying sticking a fan in your scalp. Then you can tell me to wear a hairnet.”
Joseph: “How do ya like my ganache now, Martha???”
Daniel: “A robot may not injure a cupcake or, through inaction, allow a cupcake to come to harm.”
Richard Lai: “How do you like them cookies, Firefox?”
Jose: “How am I supposed to add a teaspoon of sugar with this underperforming Kinect camera?”
Kevin: “Enough with the cakes, what was Leia saying about our only hope?”
Dana: “I. Love. A. Little. Bourbon. In. My. Cookies. Don’t. You.”
Richard Lawler: “Death to all humans. Sweet, delicious, chocolatey… death.”
Don: “Just don’t call him Iron Chef. He hates that.”
Billy: “Ace of Cakes was canceled because I annihilated the host.. now I must weaponize that Millennium Falcon cake.”
Zachary: “Jobless MIT grad narrowly avoids soup kitchen, emerges from basement with replacement mother.”

Caption Contest: Bakebot learns to actually bake things, feed the looming robot army originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 07 Aug 2011 11:15:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Design Taxi  |  sourceTasteologie  | Email this | Comments

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Jul 20

MIT’s Backtalk project / art exhibit traces the unseen life of discarded gadgets

Posted in: gps, mit, research, Today's Chili, video
Sooner or later, the device you’re reading this on will either be sold, donated, recycled or otherwise disposed of; and unless you’re particularly nostalgic about old gadgets like us, you likely won’t ever give it much more thought. But no matter how you get rid of it, that device doesn’t just vanish off the face the Earth. It’s that extra life that got the folks from MIT’s SENSEable City Lab thinking, and the Backtalk project is what they’ve come up with. Part research project and part art exhibition (now on display at the Museum of Modern Art in New York), the effort involved using GPS tracking devices to trace where things like cellphones, batteries and printer cartridges end up after being discarded — and, in the case of 40 netbook computers, some tracking software and their built-in webcams, which recorded data and images that were sent back to MIT at regular intervals (with the new owners’ consent, of course). Some of the results can be seen in the video after the break and the site linked below, but you’ll have to check out the exhibit first-hand to see the full scope of their findings.

Continue reading MIT’s Backtalk project / art exhibit traces the unseen life of discarded gadgets

MIT’s Backtalk project / art exhibit traces the unseen life of discarded gadgets originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 20 Jul 2011 20:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceBacktalk: SENSEable City Lab  | Email this | Comments

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Jul 12

MIT researchers revolutionize solar cell printing, fold the power of the sun into your everyday home (video)

Posted in: mit, solar power, SolarPower, Today's Chili, video

Wouldn’t it be neat if you could power a few gadgets around the house with some tastefully chosen, solar cell-embedded curtains? Alright, so this MIT-pioneered tech’s not quite that advanced yet, but it’s destined to have a Martha Stewart Living future. By eschewing liquids and high temperatures for gentler vapors kept below 120 degrees Celsius, researchers were able to cheaply print an array of photovoltaic cells on “ordinary untreated paper, cloth or plastic.” And here’s some additional food for thought — the vapor-deposition process used to create these cells is the same as the one that puts that “silvery lining in your bag of potato chips” — science, it’s everywhere. Despite the tech’s home furnishing friendly approach, this breakthrough printing technique can’t be done with your everyday inkjet, but it will make the cost of solar energy installations a bit cozier. Its flexible durability aside, the cells currently operate at only one percent efficiency — so you might want to buy those drapes in bulk to see a real bottom line kickback. Foldable paper video demonstration after the break.

Continue reading MIT researchers revolutionize solar cell printing, fold the power of the sun into your everyday home (video)

MIT researchers revolutionize solar cell printing, fold the power of the sun into your everyday home (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 12 Jul 2011 23:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jul 06

MIT Project Uses Smart Phones to Detect Cataracts

Posted in: Medicine, mit, Phones, R&D and Inventions, Today's Chili

A Brazilian man takes the CATRA test. Photo Erick Passos

CATRA is an invention of MIT’s Media Lab which uses a cellphone and a cheap plastic eyepiece to detect cataracts. Not only is it cheaper and easier to use than existing solutions, it actually provides much better results.

Cataracts cause blindness by fogging the lens of the eye, scattering light before it reaches the retina. Normally, they are diagnosed using a “backscatter” device which shines light into the eye and measures how much of it is reflected by the cataract. This requires a skilled user, a fancy machine and still doesn’t detect the problem early, nor tell the operator what the patient actually sees.

CATRA uses a smartphone with a custom app, and a cheap eyepiece. The patient holds it up to their eye and the app fires light successively at each part of the eye. The patient uses “the phone’s arrow keys” to adjust the brightness of these beams until they match. The app logs the differences in intensity required to reach the retina and creates a map of the eye. Thus is can detect the problem early, and also reflects the actual experience of the patient.

But most important, it requires no special hardware except for that simple eyepiece.

The product is about to undergo field testing for a future launch. The market for this is clearly the developing world, which is also the place where cellphone usage is taking off. It might be time to forget about programs like One Laptop Per Child and instead concentrate on the using smart-phones instead.

CATRA: Cataract Maps with Snap-on Eyepiece for Mobile Phones [MIT Media Lab via Cult of Mac]

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Jul 01

Scientists develop algorithm to solve Rubik’s cubes of any size

Posted in: game, Games, mit, research, Today's Chili
A computer solving a Rubik’s cube? P’shaw. Doing it in 10.69 seconds? Been there, record set. But to crack one of any size? Color us impressed. Erik Demaine of MIT claims to have done just that — he and his team developed an algorithm that applies to cubes no matter how ambitious their dimensions. Pretty early on, he realized he needed to take a different angle than he would with a standard 3 x 3 x 3 puzzle, which other scientists have tackled by borrowing computers from Google to consider all 43 quintillion possible moves — a strategy known simply as “brute force.” As you can imagine, that’s not exactly a viable solution when you’re wrestling with an 11 x 11 x 11 cube. So Demaine and his fellow researchers settled on an approach that’s actually a riff on one commonly used by Rubik’s enthusiasts, who might attempt to move a square into its desired position while leaving the rest of the cube as unchanged as possible. That’s a tedious way to go, of course, so instead the team grouped several cubies that all needed to go in the same direction, a tactic that reduced the number of moves by a factor of log n, with n representing the length of any of the cube’s sides. Since moving individual cubies into an ideal spot requires a number of moves equal to n², the final algorithm is n²/log n. If we just lost you non-math majors with that formula, rest assured that the scientists expect folks won’t be able to apply it directly, per se, though they do say it could help cube-solvers sharpen their strategy. Other that, all you overachievers out there, you’re still on your own with that 20 x 20 x 20.

Scientists develop algorithm to solve Rubik’s cubes of any size originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 01 Jul 2011 12:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceNew Scientist  | Email this | Comments

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Jun 13

Researchers shield implants from hackers with wireless charm of protection

Posted in: hack, hacking, medical, Medicine, mit, Today's Chili, Wireless

Pacemaker shieldEverything can be hacked — that’s an important detail to keep in mind as we start cramming wireless radios into our bodies attached to medical implants. Researchers have been working on ways to protect devices like pacemakers from ne’er-do-wells looking to cause, not just e-harm, but physical injury or even death. A new system developed jointly by MIT and UMass is much more sophisticated that earlier solutions, can be used with existing implants, and is worn outside the body allowing it to be removed in the event of an emergency. The shield, as it’s called, acts as a sort of medical firewall, protecting implants from unauthorized access — doctors send encrypted instructions to it which are decoded and relayed to device, while it blocks any signals not using the secret key. All that’s left to do is figure out what sort of person would mess with someone’s defibrillator.

Researchers shield implants from hackers with wireless charm of protection originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 13 Jun 2011 16:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jun 12

Inhabitat’s Week in Green: solar train tunnels, refillable battery goop, and the world’s first 3D-printed bikini

Posted in: mit, solar, solar power, SolarPower, Today's Chili

Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week’s most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us — it’s the Week in Green.

This week green transportation left fossil fuels in the dust as Inhabitat reported that a record-breaking electric VW Bug rocketed from 0-60 in 1.6 seconds and Team Steam unveiled a space age vehicle that is vying for the title of “fastest steam car on earth.” We also spotted the world’s first natural gas-powered supercar, while a team of Cambridge students unveiled a sleek solar racer that will attempt to travel 1,800 miles in the World Solar Challenge. Oil fuels also lost more luster as GM’s CEO called for a $1 gas tax increase in the US, while MIT unveiled a new type of liquid flow battery that could refuel electric vehicles in a snap.

As the summer sun hits its stride groundbreaking solar power projects are lighting up left and right – this week Google unveiled a new solar patent that could make solar energy cheaper than coal, while QSolar rolled out an array of rainbow-hued Kristal panels that can replace windows and walls. Photovoltaic gadgets also had their moment in the sun as Pixel Qi pulled back the curtain on a cheap, efficient solar-powered tablet and a wave and sun-powered seafaring robot received $22 million in funding.

Speaking of solar power, this week we applauded the opening of a two-mile-long photovoltaic train tunnel that will provide power to the Paris-Amsterdam high-speed rail line. We were also wowed by Steve Jobs’ vision for Apple’s new spaceship-shaped clean energy campus, and our Bright Ideas Lighting Design Competition is really heating up, so be sure to vote for your favorite green lamp before the contest ends next week. Finally, we shared 6 great green Father’s Day gifts for tech-savvy dads, and as summer gets set to begin we brought you exclusive photos of the recently opened section 2 of New York’s High Line park, a beautiful suspended swimmer’s oasis in Denmark, and the world’s first 3D-printed bikini.

Inhabitat’s Week in Green: solar train tunnels, refillable battery goop, and the world’s first 3D-printed bikini originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 12 Jun 2011 21:15:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jun 08

New ‘semi-solid’ battery could recharge EVs as fast as pumping gas

Posted in: electric car, electric vehicle, ElectricCar, ElectricVehicle, ev, mit, power, Today's Chili

Researchers at MIT reckon they’ve struck oil. In fact, you’re looking at what they call “Cambridge crude” — a substance that could halve the weight and cost of EV batteries and make them quicker to charge too. The black goo is packed with a high concentration of energy in the form of particles suspended in a liquid electrolyte. When separated by a filter, these particles function as mobile electrodes that can be pumped into and around a system before the energy is released. So instead of waiting up to 20 hours to juice your Nissan Leaf, you could potentially just pump this pre-charged substance into it — rather like dirty old gas. Until now, no such “semi-solid flow cell” has been able to hold useful quantities of energy, but this stuff literally oozes with it. Not only could it power EVs, it could even be used for large-scale electricity storage for utilities. The researchers insist this energy revolution is years off — but when it comes, there will be blood.

New ‘semi-solid’ battery could recharge EVs as fast as pumping gas originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 08 Jun 2011 12:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink MIT News  |  sourceAdvanced Energy Materials  | Email this | Comments

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