Hasta La Gadget!

What’s a good way to impress your friends? With a robot boom box that responds to your every hand movement, that’s how. Meet Qbo, TheCorpora’s open-source Linux robot who we’ve gotten to know over the years, even through his awkward phase. Nowadays, this full grown cutie has stereoscopic “eyes” and a face-identifying system that’s capable of learning, recognizing faces, and responding. With his new hand gesture recognition skills, Qbo will start playing music the moment you hold up a fist. Putting your hand out in a “halt” position stops the song and pointing left or right jumps to different tracks in your playlist. Giving Qbo the peace sign increases the volume (yeah, seriously!), while pointing the peace sign down tells him to take it down a few notches. The ultimate party mate and wing man is even so kind as to announce the name and title of the track. The video after the break best explains what hanging with this fellow is like, but if you’re keen on textual explanations, just imagine yourself awkwardly doing the robot to control your stereo. Go on, we won’t look.

Continue reading Qbo music player robot responds to hand gestures, challenges DJ Roomba to a dance-off (video)

Qbo music player robot responds to hand gestures, challenges DJ Roomba to a dance-off (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 04 Aug 2011 06:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Ever heard of estoppel? The term, sadly, does not denote a new German electronic bus service, but is rather a court-ordered way of telling companies “no backsies” on previously made public statements. It could also prove to be another nail in Oracle’s patent dispute coffin, should Google’s latest Wayback Machine defense hold up. Thanks to the internet’s never say die policy, a 2007 post, recently deleted by Oracle, from Sun Microsystem’s then CEO Jonathan Schwartz has surfaced, in which he enthusiastically endorsed Android’s Java base. The public statement falls in line with the aforementioned legal doctrine, potentially contradicting new owner Oracle’s patent infringement claims. Unfortunately for both parties, Judge William Alsup doesn’t seem to be too cool under the collar as he’s reportedly blasted each for “asking for the moon” and chiding them to “be more reasonable.” A final ruling in this case is still a ways off, but in the meantime you can head to the source to read Schwartz’s damning praise for yourself.

Sun CEO’s deleted blog post to help end Oracle vs Google patent dispute? originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 26 Jul 2011 23:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The war between Google and Oracle is far from over, but the big G keeps racking up tiny victories in what are admittedly modest battles. Now the Redwood Shores-based company has been told to go back to the drawing board with its damages report. Originally Oracle sought $2.6 billion, but its theories were largely dismissed and Judge William Alsup suggested an alternative starting point of roughly $100 million. The company still has an opportunity to present a new report, one that will likely seek much more than the proposed $100 million, but things are looking increasingly tough for the claimant. It wasn’t all good news for Goog, though. While the judge told Oracle to narrow its focus from Android as a whole to just specific infringing features, he did agree that related advertising revenue should be included in the theoretical royalty base. He also offered harsh criticism for what he viewed as its “brazen” disregard for intellectual property rights. The trial is still scheduled for October, so we should have a better idea of how this whole thing will play out by Halloween.

Judge tells Oracle to rethink $2.6 billion claim against Google originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 25 Jul 2011 03:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This article was written on January 04, 2011 by CyberNet.

Remember a few weeks ago when we told you about the six independent iPhone game developers that were teaming up to raise money for charity ? They each put their games on sale, dropped the price down to the sweet $0.99 price tag, and pledged to give 1/3rd of their of their sales (after Apple’s cut) to Child’s Play Charity. The sale was only supposed to go until December 31st, but they decided to extend it to January 2nd because it was so successful.

The deadline has come, and they managed to scoop up some publicity along the way. Sites like Boing Boing, Kotaku, Joystiq, TUAW, and CNET all helped spread the word about the game sale. Engadget even included the Solipskier game in their list of just 6 games that new iPad owners should buy. Oh, and I’m sure it didn’t hurt that actress Felicia Day tweeted out to her 1.7 million Twitter followers that she “CAN’T STOP PLAYING THIS: Solipskier.“

The six games, Canabalt, Solipskier, Spider, Osmos, Eliss, and Drop7 raised $35,134 for Child’s Play Charity, and here’s a snippet about what the charity looks to accomplish with the donations they receive:

Since 2003, over 100,000 gamers worldwide have banded together through Child’s Play, a community based charity grown and nurtured from the game culture and industry. Over 7 million dollars in donations of toys, games, books and cash for sick kids in children’s hospitals across North America and the world have been collected since our inception.

Amazing, huh? In some related news, Canabalt also released the source code of their game and made it all available for download. That’s kind of like the cherry on top of all this.

Congrats to all the developers involved… you’ll be making a lot of kids happy with your donation!

IndieSale Homepage

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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A while back we got a detailed look at the innards of Qbo, TheCorpora’s open-source robot. But we haven’t gotten to see the little guy in action — until now. His handlers recently let him loose to run autonomously, guided by a pair of webcam eyes and voice recognition courtesy of Willow Garage’s ROS software. The team soon noticed some unexpected behavior, though. Despite being programmed to follow humans at a specific distance, Qbo trailed uncomfortably near with taller people — probably the first example of a robotic “close walker.” Poring over the log files revealed why: proximity was calculated based on faces. The faces of taller people were farther away from the ground-hugging robot, which adjusted accordingly. Roll your way down the page to see more of our cute mechanized friend, and over to the source link for more musings on programming him.

Continue reading Qbo, the open-source robot, interacts with people, makes adorable mistakes (video)

Qbo, the open-source robot, interacts with people, makes adorable mistakes (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 05 Jul 2011 16:25:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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