Hasta La Gadget!

While there have already been a lot of great proof-of-concepts for the Kinect, what we’re really excited for are the actual applications that will come from it. On the top of our list? Robots. The Personal Robots Group at MIT has put a battery-powered Kinect sensor on top of the iRobot Create platform, and is beaming the camera and depth sensor data to a remote computer for processing into a 3D map — which in turn can be used for navigation by the bot. They’re also using the data for human recognition, which allows for controlling the bot using natural gestures. Looking to do something similar with your own robot? Well, the ROS folks have a Kinect driver in the works that will presumably allow you to feed all that great Kinect data into ROS’s already impressive libraries for machine vision. Tie in the Kinect’s multi-array microphones, accelerometer, and tilt motor and you’ve got a highly aware, semi-anthropomorphic “three-eyed” robot just waiting to happen. We hope it will be friends with us. Video of the ROS experimentation is after the break.

Continue reading Kinect sensor bolted to an iRobot Create, starts looking for trouble

Kinect sensor bolted to an iRobot Create, starts looking for trouble originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 17 Nov 2010 21:38:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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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.

Green power lit up the world this week as ZenithSolar smashed the record for solar efficiency with its massive parabolic mirrors and Denmark unveiled plans to construct a towering “cathedral” that will transform waste into energy. We were also all abuzz about these batteries made from used coffee capsules and MIT rolled out a new type of foldable paper-thin solar cells.

Speaking of super-thin foldable tech, this week we showcased the world’s first biodegradable paper watch and we spotted an ingenious folding beer box that can transform a six-pack into a pitch-perfect xylophone. And while you’re working on that one, you can keep your rowdy kids busy with our Top 5 smart smartphone apps for kids that educate and entertain.

High-tech lighting was another hot topic this week as GE launched a new super-bright LED bulb that harnesses jet engine cooling techniques to cut its energy use. GE also flipped the switch on its funky new hybrid halogen-CFL light bulbs, and we saw San Diego blaze a trail for energy-efficient lighting as they unveiled plans to construct the nation’s largest interactive LED light show – on a bridge! Finally, we wrapped up this week’s Apple news with a look at a chic new laptop bag courtesy of vegan handbag company Matt & Nat.

Inhabitat’s Week in Green: solar paper planes, Denmark’s flaming tower, and used coffee power originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 24 Oct 2010 20:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Have you ever wondered if the naked stranger on Chatroulette had too much cholesterol in their diet? Well, soon that worry will be a thing of the past thanks to one MIT Grad student. Ming-Zher Poh has devised a way to automatically (and accurately) read basic vital signs using technology as simple as a built-in laptop webcam.

The tech works by measuring and analyzing slight variations in brightness produced by the flow of blood through blood vessels in the face. When compared to a commercially-available, FDA-approved blood-volume pulse sensor, the system produced pulse rates that agreed  within three beats-per-minute.

Which is not bad for a dinky webcam. Conceivably, this technology could be developed into an app utilized by any smart phone with a camera.

In other real-world applications, Doctors could help diagnose patients around the globe via the internet.Vitals could be remotely detected in patients where the very process of taking readings might
be uncomfortable such as with burn victims or newborn babies. Poh has even put forward that this tech might one day be used in a bathroom mirror that could tell the mirror-gazer various vital signs including heart rate, blood pressure, and blood-oxygen levels. 

When we talk about “the internet of things,” we usually begin with commercial and household applications — tracking inventory, or a lost remote. But one future of networked objects might be in public information and infrastructure: the internet of cars.

For four years, MIT’s CarTel project has been tracking the driving patterns of GPS-equipped taxis in metro Boston. The research team, led by computer scientists Hari Balakrishnan and Sam Madden, thinks we can stop spotting traffic jams after the fact with news helicopters or roadside sensors by equipping cars themselves with position sensors and wireless connections. They’ve developed a new software algorithm that optimizes information-sharing between multiple nodes on a network, when those nodes are on the move, drifting in and out of close contact with one another.

Equipping cars with position and network technology has several advantages over traditional traffic-tracking methods. It’s already here, in the form of on-board GPS systems and the RFID fobs city car-sharing programs use to track cars and give multiple drivers access to vehicles. It’s less expensive than helicopters, and less static than fixed roadside sensors. Finally, news organizations and planners can see traffic tie ups as or even before they happen, rather than after the fact.

There are potential privacy concerns. Why should I allow the Department of Transportation, my local news team, or any entity to track my movements? Collection of this information would have to be closely regulated, highly encrypted, and strictly anonymized — perhaps even initially restricted to public and publically licensed vehicles likes public transit, cabs, police/fire/rescue vehicles, or cars and trucks owned by local government. The whole point is that when it comes to plotting traffic patterns, tracking unique users simply doesn’t matter.

But the potential upsides are tremendous. Having better knowledge of actual traffic patterns could help urban planners improve their transportation infrastructure, from retiming traffic lights to restructuring bus routes. It could help first responders and ordinary drivers avoid potential tie-ups.

Researchers at Ford and Microsoft are sufficiently intrigued. They plan to test the MIT researchers’ algorithm and network design in future versions of Sync, the Redmond-designed, Detroit-implemented automotive communication and entertainment system.

Image and video from Ford Motor Company

See Also:

• Your Lost Gadgets Will Find Each Other
• Car Thieves Use GPS Jammers to Make Clean Getaway
• Network Location Turns Your Mac into a GPS Box
• Will the Internet of Things Be Open or Closed?
• Spime Watch: Shipping Containers and the Future Internet of Things …
• First International Workshop in the Urban Internet of Things: Call …

MIT’s Media Lab creates all sorts of neat stuff. Futuristic robot sort of stuff. Jetsons stuff. And now the program is combining the technology of the future with a cue from the past when they premiere their first opera, Death and the Powers.

The one-act opera, which was 10 years in the making, will make its premiere September 24-26 in Monte Carlo, Monaco. Composer and Media Lab professor Tod Machover, who has created technology-infused instruments for Yo-Yo Ma and Prince, conceptualized Death and the Powers as a way for technology and music to compliment each other. The production features a human cast alongside an animated multi-media set design which includes nine life-sized singing “OperaBots.”

The story is straight Singularity mythology. (If you didn’t know, The Singularity is the hip new geek religion, if you’re reading GearLog, you’d probably be interested in joining our cult. It’s run by Google. Really.) Death is the tale of a plucky mad scientist who uploads his memories and personality into “The System.” The actor portraying the scientist disappears after the first scene and is thereafter represented by various robots, lights, and assorted fixtures that make-up the on-stage “System.” Off-stage, the singer’s performance is captured by software that monitor’s his volume and pitch, as well muscle tension and breathing patterns and reflect those attributes into on-stage mechanisms of The System. Machover doves this use of technology as “disembodied performance.” It’s like if T-Pain had an unlimited budget and a dedicated staff of research grads.

It sounds amazing. I can’t wait to check it out. It’s going to be the Avatar of the opera world. In the meantime, I hope Professor Machover will next use technology to improve upon ballet, which is awful. Just awful.

Some video of the production after the jump.