Mar 26, 2008
I recently came across news of a device that geeked me out. Its a neckband that can detect and analyze neural firings when we think about saying something, and translate them into audible words via speech synthesizer. Beyond the obvious use of bettering the lives of people who’ve lost their ability to speak, it could enable us to make phonecalls without having to actually talk (as is demonstrated in a video in this article). The creators of the device mention that they’ll have a product by the end of the year for people with ALS (a.k.a. Lou Gehrig’s Disease).
Mar 20, 2008
Sir Arthur Charles Clarke was born on the 16th of December 1917 in Minehead, England. Perhaps best known for his contributions to science fiction, and his inventions, his achievements will certainly not be forgotten anytime soon.
Clarke served in the Royal Air Force as a radar instructor from 1941-1946. It was there where he invented & proposed the idea of communications satellites in 1945 — an idea that materialized quickly and we now know, use and depend on to sustain our societies. His proposal won him the Franklin Institute Gold Medal and in 1994 he was nominated for a Nobel Prize. Consequently he became the chairman of the British Interplanetary Society.
He collaborated with Stanley Kubrick to create, in my and many others’ opinion, one of the greatest films of all time — and concurrently developed what later became a novel of the same name: 2001: A Space Odyssey shook the world and continues to inspire and provoke thought.
Moved to Sri Lanka in 1956. Knighted in 1998.
A Hero Passed Away on March 19th, 2008.
Arthur Charles Clarke will be missed.
Mar 19, 2008
Boston Dynamics released a new video of BigDog the other day. The improvements since last year’s demo are absolutely incredible. BigDog can now maneuver up and down rugged hills, balance on ice and jump. I’m not an avid fan of exclamation marks, but wow! In my honest opinion this quadruped is the most life-like robot made to date. Must-see video after the jump.
Mar 18, 2008
By all likelihood you’ve heard of the vodka company’s Absolut campaigns. Recently they launched Absolut Machines, a new campaign that’ll be running for a year and centers around two artificial creativity projects; AI systems that compose music on accompanying mechanical instruments and can be watched & interacted with via live video feeds.
Mar 7, 2008
Snake robots are always incredible to watch, and CMUs modular snake robots are no exception. They are incredibly versatile - being able to crawl, climb, swim and scale flights of stars. The video shows all — and I was really impressed when it crawled up and down the leg of one of its creator … fast!
Feb 26, 2008
When I imagine a harp I’m inclined see men wearing white periwigs and court-dressed baronesses listening to the royal harpist through clinging of crystal glasses. But not after this. Click through to see an interactive, musical laser array and have cyberpunked visions of the future augment your seventeenth century harp idiosyncrasies.
Feb 24, 2008
Sleep Waking is an art project that uses EEG and EKG to record brainwaves and heart activity of a sleeping person and feeds them into a humanoid robot (a Kondo KHR-2HV). The robot turns the data into an interpretive dance. In short, the robot dances your dreams. In addition, rapid eye movement is used to control the head of the robot, so if the sleeper’s eye looks left - the robots head looks left.
Feb 17, 2008
New survey results show that only 29.5 percent in a sample of 1,015 adult Americans consider nanotech morally acceptable. Europe ranked significantly higher. The hypothesized reason? Religious beliefs.
Feb 15, 2008
Brilliant. Unfortunately I have no idea who made this poster or took the pic.
And...