Right now, there’s no wallet-friendly, backpack-sized consumer robot on the market that does these things:
- Remote 2-way telepresence
- Computer vision
- Autonomous navigation
- Facial recognition
We want to change that, and we need your support.
via Romo – The Smartphone Robot for Everyone by Romotive — Kickstarter.
I’ve been looking for a good answer for lifelogging for awhile, and have been anticipating the point at which the technology drops in price enough to make this possible for the average consumer. Google Glasses is the high-end answer, and this may just be the sort of thing that emerges at the low end.
The Memoto camera is a tiny camera and GPS that you clip on and wear. It’s an entirely new kind of digital camera with no controls. Instead, it automatically takes photos as you go. The Memoto app then seamlessly and effortlessly organizes them for you.
The WikiWeapons/Printable Gun project seems to be drawing the ire of not only one of the largest 3D printer manufacturers in the US:
Stratasys’s legal counsel wrote back: “It is the policy of Stratasys not to knowingly allow its printers to be used for illegal purposes. Therefore, please be advised that your lease of the Stratasys uPrint SE is cancelled at this time and Stratasys is making arrangements to pick up the printer,” stated the letter, which Wilson posted to Defense Distributed’s website. The next day, contractors hired by the company arrived at Wilson’s apartment in an Enterprise rental van and took the printer.
…but also the ATF:
Wilson visited the ATF field office in Austin on Monday to ask about the legal and regulatory issues surrounding the Wiki Weapons project, he tells Danger Room. Instead, he was brought into a room, questioned and was told the agency was preparing to visit his apartment this afternoon for an “investigation,” he says. He added that the ATF believes he’s not broken any laws, and that the agency believes 3-D printed guns fall into a regulatory gray area, but that he still needs to get licensed if he’s to manufacture a weapon.
This is going to be really, really interesting. Is it illegal to post instructions for a printable weapon? Where do those lines fall? The next 5 years is going to make these sorts of questions very troublesome…and just wait another 10 years until molecular-level printing is happening and see what that does for drug laws.
via 3-D Printer Company Seizes Machine From Desktop Gunsmith | Danger Room | Wired.com.
Incredible augmented reality technology that has real-world, everyday use: use cameras and computers to make seen what can’t been seen by the normal eye. In this case, it’s welding that benefits, but there is an obvious extension into many other fields.
As computers become even more powerful, it will be possible to do similar real-time HDR image processing with little more than a smartphone. There will be a point down the road where humans will be able to manufacture cheap and lightweight glasses that are capable of providing better imaging than our own eyes can manage. This will be one of several points where true augmentation of human capabilities begins — the very definition of cyborg. It’s not science-fiction, it’s the future.
via Augmented Reality Welding Mask With 100 Million to 1 Contrast RatioRoad to Virtual Reality.
Here’s one take on what omnipresent visual overlay with network connectivity might enable, although with a slight dystopian bent.
“Morphologically, we’ve built a jellyfish. Functionally, we’ve built a jellyfish. Genetically, this thing is a rat,” says Kit Parker, a biophysicist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who led the work.
Artificial jellyfish built from rat cells : Nature News & Comment.
I’ve said it before, but the rise of the cheap sensor, combined with ubiquitous connectivity, is going to do more to change the way we interact with our world than you can imagine.
The coolest thing at Google I/O this year isn’t a cheap tablet or a pair of overpriced glasses or even a killer keyboard. It is, believe it or not, an alarm clock. But not just any alarm clock — this is an alarm clock with potential. What you see above, and demonstrated in the video after the break, is the gadget that was handed out to attendees who went to learn about the Android Accessory Development Kit.
Inside Google’s amazing Accessory Development Kit demo hardware (video) — Engadget.
Google’s Project Glass product lead Steve Lee walks us through his experience with the development of the company’s sci-fi-inspired eyewear–from his team’s “hundreds of variations and dozens of early prototypes” to his vision of the future.
I was totally into this stuff in the 90’s, reading Wired and Mondo2000 whenever I could find them, and devouring Gibson and Sterling like candy. I’m a product of the cyberpunk age.