#Fove eye-tracking headset aims to shake up VR, launches on Kickstarter Update: Fove has reached its Kickstarter goal as of 6: 47 pm JST on Friday, May 22, just three days into its 45-day campaign.
Oculus managed to raise US$400, 000 during its first 24 hours on Kickstarter, but it still exciting to see an Asian competitor hit its target so quickly.
Forget the cheesy 80s movies and failed attempts of the 90s virtual reality (VR) is back,
The resurgence of virtual reality gizmos aimed at gadget buyers like you and me, in the form of head-mounted displays (HMDS
when social media behemoth Facebook finalized its acquisition of the company for a staggering US$2 billion.
Even before Facebook surprise acquisition, Oculus had piqued (or, perhaps, re-piqued) consumer interest in virtual reality.
Sony entered the budding space with the announcement of its Project Morpheus headset in March last year.
Facebook chairman Mark Zuckerberg allegedly tested out Sony VR hardware, designed for its Playstation 4 console,
a week before announcing his company intent to buy Oculus. Just a month after Morpheusunveiling and Facebook shock announcement,
a silent competitor to both was setting up its office at Tokyo University Intellectual Backyard startup incubator.
Fove named after ovea, the part of the human eye that gives us the sharp central vision necessary for tasks like reading, driving,
and, of course, playing video games wants to revolutionize the resurgent VR platform by integrating advanced eye-tracking technology into its own headset.
So how does eye tracking work and how can it complement the virtual reality experience? ove uses infrared light to illuminate your eye, regardless of eye color, Lochlainn Wilson,
While headsets like Oculus and Morpheus display everything in the virtual environment in sharp focus imagine a wrap-around HDTV Fove eye-tracking technology recreates the depth of field that human eyes see naturally.
This effect is achieved on Fove 2560×1440 display thanks to a graphics engine that adjusts its focus based on where a user is gazing in real time.
The eye-tracking cameras are combined with an accelerometer for orientation sensing and head tracking, which allows a user to move their head to manipulate the 360-degree view while still controlling virtual interactions with their eyes.
For gaming, specifically, eye tracking has many benefits. here a lot of potential for using your eyes in driving games,
At last March Game Developer Conference in San francisco, Sony US-based Magic Lab research and development team showed off an external infrared camera that enables players to scan the environment using their eyes
The upgrade requires a client to send their headset to SMI for retrofitting and costs US$14
Razer, a high-end gaming hardware maker with a cult following of hardcore gamers, recently announced its own VR headset, OSVR (the name stands for pen-Source Virtual reality.
Razer CEO, speaking at the recent Consumer electronics Show (CES) in Las vegas, said that he hopes the headset will speed the development of the virtual reality platform by allowing developers to hack it as they please.
he says. o long as Oculus is not actually innovating its own hardware, the field is open.
at the price point we are aiming for. To be honest, without something like eye tracking,
At the time, he was doing university research related to psychology. One project dealt with autistic people
Fove could be used as a medical HMD where surgeons use it for detailed camera work
and can also interact with the system without requiring a nurse to do everything. There also interactive cinema, productivity for finance and security, virtual market research, dangerous situation simulation,
and design studies. Gaming is just a start. The startup is currently working to provide headsets to schools for disabled children.
In a heartwarming video the startup posted in December a disabled boy plays the piano at a Christmas concert using only his eyes.
She spent four years at Sony Computer Entertainment and then became a social gaming director at Japanese mobile gaming firm GREE,
working directly on the hit title Driland, a card battle game that was earning the company US$26 million a month in 2012. apan is the best place for a hardware startup,
Kojima tells Tech in Asia. here are huge companies making complicated electronics, and wee close to manufacturing centers in China,
Taiwan, and elsewhere in Asia. Japanese hardware startups are rare, because theye seen as risky.
I know how to monetize mobile games, so I want to do the same with a more complex, emotional experience. efore Sony,
I thought games were just for children, she adds. ut now I see gaming as an important part of modern culture.
Wilson says that hardware development will remain based in Japan but that business development will be moving to the United states. The focus for the next couple of months is Fove Kickstarter campaign.
Fove secured an undisclosed amount of seed funding from Japanese angel investors last year and one possible exit option has appeared already.
Fove became the first Japanese startup to be invited to Microsoft Ventureslondon accelerator, where Wilson and Kojima relocated from September until December last year.
The pair are based currently out of the DMM. make hardware accelerator in Tokyo geek graceland, Akihabara.
and thus, potential integration with the company Xbox One gaming console. Wilson left the possibility open, simply stating that he had o updates yet. e
#Breast cancer victims die due to lack of radiologists in India. This startup offers an answer In 2012,145,
is too inefficient to solve the problem because of the country lack of radiologists. To combat that, Mumbai-based UE Lifesciences has invented a low-cost and portable breast screening device for early-stage detection of breast cancer.
The fund will also bring in mentors from Manipal Hospitals, Narayana Health, and Pfizer. he devices could become the new standard of care for breast screening in India and other low-resource markets around the world.
and classify tumors. It pairs with a smartphone via bluetooth. The scanning results appear on the phone screen.
It alerts the user if any abnormalities are detected. Because women with dense breasts are at a higher risk of breast cancer,
the conventional tools and methods like mammograms and clinical breast exams are less effective. Our technology is more suitable,
says Mihir Shah, cofounder and CEO of UE Lifesciences. A screening is expected to be priced at INR 100 (US$1. 50.
With fresh funding, UE Lifesciences plans to expand its trials and market the devices. Shah previously developed
and commercialized innovative medical devices like Notouch Breastscan and Infrascan. He co-founded UE Lifesciences in 2009 to develop innovative yet cost
-and clinically-effective tools to battle breast cancer in geographies where incidents are on the rise
#Researchers Power Small Electronics Using Wi-fi: Clarkson Waves Your Wi-fi router already brings you Netflix and cat pictures,
but someday it might become even more important to your life. A group of researchers from the University of Washington were able to send energy from a Wi-fi router to low power electronics from up to 28 feet away,
without interfering with the router and neighboring routersability to transmit data. They call their technology Power over Wi-fi (Powifi.
Using Atheros chipsets, the researchers made several Powifi routers that worked as normal but also sent meaningless packets of data over multiple 2. 4ghz channels.
They programmed these routers to send these nintrusive power trafficonly when the router isn sending data to connected devices.
They then built four low power devices: a temperature sensor, a camera, a coin battery charger and the AA battery charger shown above.
Each of those devices was equipped with a harvester that converted the radio waves from the router
whether it contained actual data or the aforementioned power traffic into direct current voltage, which was boosted then to a usable voltage with a DC-DC converter.
In their tests, they were able to operate the camera up to 17 feet away, the temperature sensor up to 20ft away and the battery chargers up to 28 feet away from their router.
Using a 2. 4ghz antenna and their harvester the researchers also built a wireless USB charger (top image.
It was able to charge a Jawbone UP 24 from 0%to 41%in 2. 5 hours while placed a couple of inches away from their router.
Finally, the researchers tested how their routers fared in real world settings. They asked six different households to use a Powifi router for their usual Internet activities for a few days.
They also installed harvester-equipped temperature sensors 10 feet away from each router. Their results showed that the routers performed well,
adjusting for client traffic both within the households and from neighboring routers while still sending enough power to the temperature sensors.
The researchers hope that their technology will lead to battery-free sensors and mobile devices that are powered continuously by Wi-fi routers.
Check out the researcher full paper at Cornell University Library arxiv. via New Scientist via Digital Trends
#DM Blade Supercar has 3d printed Chassis: The Arduino of Cars Last year we saw Local Motorsstrati, a compact car with a 3d printed body, seats, windshield and support structures.
Divergent Microfactories (DM) Blade prototype supercar looks much better and is apparently much more powerful than the Strati,
but DM pride and joy is what inside the car. The DM Blade has a 700hp four-cylinder engine
and weighs just 1400lb.,supposedly allowing it to go from 0 to 60mph in just 2. 2s.
For comparison, the $2. 25m Bugatti Veyron completes the same acceleration test in 2. 46s.
If those numbers are true, then the Blade would be newsworthy by itself. But DM wants us to focus on another number. 3d Print says the Blade has/50 the factory capital costs of other manufactured cars.
That where 3d printing comes in. The Blade chassis is made of off-the-shelf carbon fiber tubes that are connected by 3d printed aluminum nodes.
These nodes are like pipe fittings allowing for chassis and other frames in a variety of shapes and sizes.
More importantly, they reduce the manufacturing costs, skill requirements and environmental impacts of car manufacturing. The idea,
as DM founder and CEO Kevin Czinger puts it, is to be the Arduino of cars n affordable
and customizable platform for car manufacturers to use as the basis for their vehicles. Czinger and other DM officials talk at length about their vision in this Oeilly interview.
Here a stylized assembly of the Blade chassis, which is made of 70 nodes and takes only 30 minutes to build by hand.
As mentioned in the Oeilly interview DM plans to eventually make 10,000 Blades annually. But just like the Arduino, Raspberry Pi and other single-board computers, DM will measure its success by how many vehicles will be built
and how many small automakers will be born thanks to its technology. via 3d Print i
#Fove VR Headset Locks Onto Your Gaze Fove is the first virtual reality headset to feature eye-tracking--meaning, among other things,
that characters you view on screen can look right back at you. So far, close to 500 people have pledged nearly US$200,
000 to bring the Fove VR headset to fruition. Just a day into its 45-day Kickstarter campaign, the Fove appears certain to reach its $250, 000 goal.
Backers can secure a Fove and a developer's kit by pledging at least $375 to the campaign--the kits offered for $349 have sold out.
The Fove has a 100-degree FOV (field of view low-latency head tracking, and highly responsive eye tracking that is accurate within 1/20th of a degree.
It's the eye tracking and the ability to aim with the eyes that are separating the Fove from a growing pack of VR headsets preparing to come to market, according to Yuka Kojima, Fove cofounder and CEO."
"Fove enables users to truly immerse themselves into virtual reality worlds by allowing instant and precise user interface control using sight,
"she told Technewsworld.""What's more, Fove allows human connections with VR characters through genuine eye contact."
"Catching Your Eye Fove's eye-tracking technology employs infrared lasers that bounce light off the wearer's retinas to determine how the eyes are angled.
The company's proprietary algorithm, aka"Foveated Rendering,"measures depth of field focus by calculating the parallax between the wearer's eyes."
"Fove tracks a user's gaze and calculates where in 3d space a user is said looking,
"Kojima.""This enables the graphics engine to adjust focus and allocate rendering resources accordingly, giving the user the most natural VR experience."
"Along with giving wearers more control, the Fove's eye-tracking"drastically reduces"the motion sickness that has plagued many consumers who use headsets that rely only on head-tracking,
Kojima pointed out.""Fove also allows for greater emotional exchange with in-game characters, often leading consumers to perceive the characters as real,
"she said. Although consumers likely are interested as well, "the Kickstarter campaign is for the delivery of developer kits,
for developers to create fantastic VR content that consumers will love once we ship Fove for general release,"Kojima emphasized.
Beyond Gaming Kojima already has had storied a career heading up development of several Sony games--for the PSP, Playstation 3, Playstation Vita and Playstation Move.
"--foresees the eye-tracking VR headset powering new experiences in a variety of other sectors,
such as healthcare, social networking and education. Virtual reality is said the future Roger Entner, principal analyst at Recon Analytics.
"There's some early eyeball tracking in the Samsung galaxy 6--and that works, more or less. It's a bit more than less,
So it's very cool to have technology that works.""If Fove has unlocked the secret to highly accurate eye-tracking,
the VR headset could be poised for success, he suggested. Gaming is the sector with the lowest-hanging fruit, Entner observed,
and gamers who believe in a particular technological advance typically are willing to spend exorbitant amounts of money to support it t
#IBM-Led Team Pulls Off Major Chip Feat IBM Research on Thursday announced that an alliance it leads has produced the first 7nm node test chips with functioning transistors.
Big Blue's partners are Globalfoundries, Samsung and the State university of New york Polytechnic institute's Colleges of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (SUNY Poly CNSE.
The alliance sought to develop industry-first innovations, such as Silicon Germanium (Sige) channel transistors, and Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) lithography integration at multiple levels.
The 7nm chips are the result of the first program out of IBM's 2014 US$3 billion investment in research--a five-year investment that aims to push the limits of chip technology to meet the needs of cloud computing
Using 7nm chips will allow the placement of more than 20 billion Sige switches on fingernail-sized chips,
said Mukesh Khare, vice president of IBM Semiconductor Technology Research.""We intend to incorporate 7nm into the road maps for IBM systems in the future,
"he told Technewsworld.""This milestone is the first step towards a silicon-based proof point with all elements demonstrated in our 300nm research facility at Albany."
"The History of Sige Technology IBM introduced Sige technology into mainstream manufacturing in 1989. It currently is collaborating with AMD on program to develop Sige stressed-silicon 65nm technology.
the need for faster CPUS and more processing power grows. However, it's becoming increasingly difficult to attain higher clock speeds,
--and it's getting increasingly expensive to make faster chips. That has led semiconductor firms to look at packing more cores onto their processors.
The number of transistors in an integrated circuit doubles roughly every two years, according to Moore's Law,
but the semiconductor industry for some years has been concerned that it is fast reaching the upper limit of just how many transistors can be packed into an IC.
Size--or the lack of it--has become crucial. Intel apparently expects to be able to build 5nm transistors at some point."
"The higher the density of transistors, the more cores you can put in a given space,"noted Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group."
"A very high-density part would be ideal for the cloud, which is why ARM
and Intel are also chasing it, "he told Technewsworld. Challenges IBM Will Face The IBM alliance has to ensure that it develops technology that will let it manufacture Sige transistor channels in high volumes,
Enderle cautioned.""This is where most of the really promising technology fails, "he pointed out.""They can get it to work in the lab,
"The economics of the new nodes"may become as great of a challenge as the technology,
and so cheap that the marginal cost to use something else is higher than its marginal value,
EUV lithography"will require a top-to-bottom change in the fab--basically a brand new factory with machines that don't exist even in prototypes yet,
the traditional parts may be good enough to make the whole exercise a waste
#Chemists find a way to unboil eggs UC Irvine and Australian chemists have figured out how to unboil egg whites an innovation that could dramatically reduce costs for cancer treatments, food production and other segments of the $160 billion global biotechnology industry,
according to findings published today in the journal Chembiochem. es, we have invented a way to unboil a hen egg,
said Gregory Weiss, UCI professor of chemistry and molecular biology & biochemistry. n our paper, we describe a device for pulling apart tangled proteins
a high-powered machine designed by Professor Colin Raston laboratory at South australia Flinders University. Shear stress within thin,
microfluidic films is applied to those tiny pieces, forcing them back into untangled, proper form. his method could transform industrial
For example, pharmaceutical companies currently create cancer antibodies in expensive hamster ovary cells that do not often misfold proteins.
and make cancer treatments more affordable. Industrial cheese makers farmers and others who use recombinant proteins could also achieve more bang for their buck.
UCI has filed for a patent on the work, and its Office of Technology Alliances is working with interested commercial partners i
#Canadian Space Robotics Technology to Help Sick Children Not much rivals the dexterity of a good surgeon hands.
But humans being humans, fatigue or even tremors after a long day at the hospital can make things challenging,
especially when operating on small children. That is why Toronto Sickkids Centre for Image-Guided Innovation & Therapeutic Intervention (CIGITI) turned to the Canadian space technology behind Canadarm,
Canadarm2 and Dextre and partnered with Macdonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd. MDA) to develop Kidsarm.
The third prototype of Kidsarm, the first image-guided robotic surgical arm in the world specifically designed for pediatric surgery,
is currently being tested at Sickkids Hospital, and researchers are hoping that the technology might soon lend a helping hand to surgeons around the country.
While more testing is needed, the robot is also promising for fetal, cardiac, neurological and urological surgeries.
Using a pair of hand controllers in conjunction with high-precision, real-time imaging technology, surgeons can pinpoint the area of concern to make it easier to reconnect delicate vessels,
for example. Kidsarm is equipped also with miniaturized dexterous tools that can cut, coagulate, apply suction, or use a laser.
It is capable of working 10 times faster and with more accuracy than a surgeon hands when performing intricate procedures.
so that surgeons can compensate for the tissue motion that sometimes makes these surgeries difficult. A stereo camera generates a 3d point cloud,
This allows the surgeon to automate the suturing of small vessels and other microsurgical tasks.
Thanks to this technology, Kidsarm is capable of performing intricate procedures such as the suturing of blood vessels and tissues 10 times faster and with more accuracy than a surgeon hands.
control electronics, cameras and haptics (force-feedback controllers. The control software evolved directly from the Dextre
and Canadarm programs at MDA, and the vision was adapted from their satellite navigation work for the CSA.
One day, this technology may help by making medical procedures on children less invasive and less painful, allowing them to return home fasterso that kids can be kids i
#Weighing Gas with Sound and Microwaves NIST scientists have developed a novel method to rapidly and accurately calibrate gas flow meters,
such as those used to measure natural gas flowing in pipelines, by applying a fundamental physical principle:
its frequency is determined mostly by the length of the tank. Wavelengths are not to scale.
its frequency is determined mostly by the length of the tank. Wavelengths are not to scale.
The quantity of gas that passes through the meter is determined by collecting the gas in a large tank and measuring its average temperature and pressure,
However, the process of collecting the gas in large tanks generates temperature gradients (different temperatures in different parts of the tank
NIST researchers deduced the internal shape, thermal expansion, and volume of a 300 liter collection tank by measuring which microwave frequencies resonated (formed standing waves) within the evacuated tank.
In a second set of experiments, described in a forthcoming paper, they filled the tank with argon gas
and measured the frequencies of the acoustic resonances. From the frequencies and the pressure, they deduced the mass of the argon in the tank.
Finally, they heated the top of the tank to establish a temperature difference across the gas of 4%of the average gas temperature.
The temperature difference changed the acoustic resonance frequencies and the pressure; however, the mass of the argon,
such as those that occur in a much larger tanks located outside the well-controlled environment of a laboratory.
#Biometric information sensor that directly adheres to the body like a plaster Professor Takao Someya postdoctoral researcher Sung Won Lee
and their research group at the Graduate school of Engineering the University of Tokyo have developed an adhesive gel
and succeeded in manufacturing a sheet sensor that can measure biometric information just by application to the body like a sticking plaster.
The technological importance of measuring biometric information is increasing in line with remarkable developments in information technology such as big data.
To improve the accuracy of measurements it is ideal to put the sensor in direct contact with
when sensors are applied directly to the body researchers are seeking to fabricate electronic components on flexible substances such as polymeric film.
Using limited materials with superior biocompatibility the research group succeeded in making adhesive gel capable of being formed into various patterns with light.
Furthermore they used the gel to realize sheet sensors that can perform biometric measurement just by application to the body like a sticking plaster.
These sheet sensors can detect bioelectric signals such as physical movement or electrical activity of the heart by directly applying to human skin or the surface of the heart of a rat.
The adhesive gel prevents the sheet sensor from slipping or falling off the surface during dynamic movement and allows stable and long-term measurement t
#Smart keyboard cleans and powers itself and can tell who you are In a novel twist in cybersecurity,
self-powered smart keyboard that can identify computer users by the way they type. The device, reported in the journal ACS Nano, could help prevent unauthorized users from gaining direct access to computers.
Zhong Lin Wang and colleagues note that password protection is one of the most common ways we control who can log onto our computers
and see the private information we entrust to them. But as many recent high-profile stories about hacking
but still cost-effective and user friendly approach to safeguarding what on our computers. The researchers developed a smart keyboard that can sense typing patterns including the pressure applied to keys
and speed that can accurately distinguish one individual user from another. So even if someone knows your password,
he or she cannot access your computer because that person types in a different way than you would.
It also can harness the energy generated from typing to either power itself or another small device.
And the special surface coating repels dirt and grime. The scientists conclude that the keyboard could provide an additional layer of protection to boost the security of our computer systems r
#Laser-generated surface structures create extremely water-repellent metals Super-hydrophobic properties could lead to applications in solar panels,
sanitation and as rust-free metals Scientists at the University of Rochester have used lasers to transform metals into extremely water repellent,
or super-hydrophobic, materials without the need for temporary coatings. Super-hydrophobic materials are desirable for a number of applications such as rust prevention, anti-icing,
Guo and his colleague at the University Institute of Optics, Anatoliy Vorobyev, describe a powerful and precise laser-patterning technique that creates an intricate pattern of micro
-and nanoscale structures to give the metals their new properties. This work builds on earlier research by the team in which they used a similar laser-patterning technique that turned metals black.
Guo states that using this technique they can create multifunctional surfaces that are not only super-hydrophobic but also highly-absorbent optically.
Guo adds that one of the big advantages of his team process is that he structures created by our laser on the metals are intrinsically part of the material surface.
And it is these patterns that make the metals repel water. he material is so strongly water-repellent,
said Guo, professor of optics at the University of Rochester. That whole process takes less than a second.
Unlike Guo laser-treated metals, the Teflon kitchen tools are not super-hydrophobic. The difference is that to make water to roll off a Teflon coated material
You can make water roll off Guo metals by tilting them less than five degrees. As the water bounces off the super-hydrophobic surfaces,
Guo and his team took ordinary dust from a vacuum cleaner and dumped it onto the treated surface.
It is this potential that has piqued the interest of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation,
which has supported the work. n these regions, collecting rain water is vital and using super-hydrophobic materials could increase the efficiency without the need to use large funnels with high-pitched angles to prevent water from sticking to the surface,
but ultra-short laser pulses to change the surface of the metals. A femtosecond laser pulse lasts on the order of a quadrillionth of a second
Guo is keen to stress that this same technique can give rise to multifunctional metals. Metals are naturally excellent reflectors of light.
That why they appear to have a shiny luster. Turning them black can therefore make them very efficient at absorbing light.
The combination of light-absorbing properties with making metals water repellent could lead to more efficient solar absorbers solar absorbers that don rust
as well as studying how to expand this technique to other materials such as semiconductors or dielectrics, opening up the possibility of water repellent electronics.
Funding was provided by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the United states Air force Office of Scientific research O
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