Paralyzed Rats Walk Again, Now Farther Than Ever Like a severed telephone line (from back in the days when phones had wires) a spinal cord injury can cut off communication between the brain
Creatively titled Mobile Protected Firepower (MPF) it s an armored vehicle that can be dropped from cargo planes.
Wi-fi as you probably know from using it in your house for phones laptops and gaming systems in different rooms can.
In disasters there are a lot of eyewitness accounts on social media. But the overflow of information can be as paralyzing to response teams as the absence of it.
#The Rise Of Open source Hardware So in the summer of 2012 Petrone (then an engineer at a Portland startup) launched a site where flexible matrix boards
but others are large entities like the Australian government Google and NASA. These days Petrone says NASA s purchasing department just calls my cell phone.#
#The site has gained also a strong following from hard-core DIY types. Just as Etsy became the go-to marketplace for craft creators Tindie has become the primary hub for hardware aficionados.
We are definitely part of and supportive of the maker movement Petrone says. We fill the hardware side.#
Nothing on the site is patented and the vast majority of sellers have their source code and documentation links available right there on the page Petrone says.
But a precipitous drop in prices#which some attribute to the rise of cell phones which made components cheap#is helping to lower the barrier to open source entry for hardware as are crowdsourcing platforms such as Kickstarter.#
There is so much demand for the open source products sold on the site that the waiting list alone contains nearly half a million dollars worth of orders.
It has been expanded in this web version.#
#Google vs The DMV: How To Test A Self-Driving Car In May 2012 Google's self-driving car underwent a classic American teenage ritual.
It took a driving test at a DMV. The car passed but apparently not without a little lobbying from its parent.
As state officials have monitored the robot car's mileage on public roads Google has lobbied for the car to get different tests
and to report different accident figures than the DMV wants a new series of reports finds.
Turning to the government let Harris sidestep Google's secretive PR machine as he told the Knight Science Journalism Tracker which recently collected his stories.
It's also a look at Google's lobbying the extent of which is maybe unsurprising for a private company but still interesting.
That's where you can see what situations the Google car is good at and in
For the Guardian Harris wrote about how Google has asked regulators to allow the results of computerized driving simulations#to stand in for tests on driving tracks
For Quartz Harris reported on Google's lobbying not to have to report#how often its cars turn over the controls to their human drivers
That's the kind of handover Google doesn't want to have to report. The company also doesn't want to report
Once assembled in the shop the walls are shipped flat by truck to the construction site.
#Not everything discovered at the site is millennia old. The surveyors were able to pinpoint practice trenches dug during the First world war to prepare troops for battle as well as traces of a military airbase--one of the U k.'s first--built at the site a few years later y
#Adaptive, Programmable Headlights Cut through Rain, Illuminate Without Blinding Other Drivers This is perhaps the only optical illusion you would want to see
#Scientists Send Messages Directly From One Brain To Another So a team of neuroscientists sent a message from the brain of one person in India to the brains of three people in France using brainwave-reading equipment and the Internet.
The emitter's binary message gets sent over the Internet yay. The receivers sit inside a transcranial magnetic stimulation machine that's able to send electromagnetic pulses through people's skulls.
As soon as the receivers'machine gets the emitter's binary message over the Internet the machine gets to work.
Dragline silk the stuff spiders use to make the spokes of their webs and to dangle creepily from ceilings is five times stronger than an equal-sized thread of steel would be.
#Google Already Testing Delivery Robots In Australia In rural Australia a drone delivers dog treats to a farmer.
The robot is a proof of concept part of#Project Wing by Google X. The program is designed to show that delivery drones are possible
#Next for Google: figuring out the path from proven#prototype to everyday utility. The drone is a tail-sitter taking off vertically with its body perpendicular to the ground.
Google s driverless car program is an obvious touchstone for this project but it s a limited one.
Still Google s development and prior experience with cars is a strong sign that this work will continue and ultimately yield fruit.
Michael Toscano CEO of#the Association for Unmanned Vehicle systems International said thatit s worth noting that Google tested this technology in Australia first.
#The Rise Of The Crypto Phone Between revelations of NSA spying and a sense that marketers and hackers are picking our digital pockets we re all getting a little edgy about cellular security.
#The $3500 GSMK Cryptophone s firewall even blocks snoops that can impersonate cell towers.####Free on any platformpros It allows you to query Google without accepting cookies
or giving your IP ADDRESS and to use Google as a proxy clicking through to third-party sites.
Con Proxy surfing feature can be slow.#####Free Android; ios coming late summerpros Apps enable#end-to-end encrypted calling and messaging.#
or a DVD this Linux variant OS uses only anonymous Tor Internet connections and leaves no evidence of your session.#
and today both cars and smartphones rely on GPS satellites to know exactly where they are.
The project has gotten attention around the Internet this week thanks to a new press release announcing that the Harken system has tested een by users in closed track tests,
which prompted some to defiantly post photos of themselves kissing camels on various social media sites.
Urban mobile robot chassis The Ground Drone Project wants to make a low cost ground robot chassis for hobbyists
https://www. kickstarter. com/projects/1145776805/ground-drone-project-a-versatile-mobile-robotic-pl? ref=categoryyou can back the Kickstarter project here:
kickstarter. com/projects/1145776805/ground-drone-project-a-versatile-mobile-robotic-p o
#Google commits $1. 36 billion for NASA facility, to house their robotics, space and flight technologies Google subsidiary Planetary Ventures has committed to a 60-year $1. 16 billion lease of the 1000 acre Moffett Field Naval Air station.
The agreement includes an additional $200 million to refurbish the hangars and improve the site with a museum and educational facilities.
Hangar One the biggest and most colorful of the buildings on the site will be restored. Also Hangars Two and Three.
The facility is slated for research assembly and testing in the areas of robotics space exploration aviation and other technologies NASA said in a press release.
NASA also said: Once renovations are complete Hangar One will again be home to high-tech innovation as Planetary Ventures begins using the historic facility for research development assembly and testing in the areas of space exploration aviation rover
This news comes on the heals of Google investment in Magic Leap last month as well the announcement of Andy Rubin departure r
With the increasing volumes of digitized art databases on the Internet comes the daunting task of organizing
There are millions of paintings present on the Internet; to manage properly the databases of these paintings it becomes essential to classify paintings into different categories and sub-categories.
After browsing through many publications and websites we concluded to the best of our knowledge that this comparison has not been made previously by an art historian.
While most robotic toys on the market require a smartphone or a computer for remote control Wigl interacts directly with the child and their instruments.
and it will make the Pepper available in the U s. at retail stores of Sprint the telecom carrier acquired last year by Softbank in a $22 billion deal.
#Google news: Rubin leaves; Pichai promoted to#2; and Google invests in Magic Leap Andy Rubin leaves Google;
Sundar Pichai promoted to#2 man at Google; and Google invests in $542 million B funding for Magic Leap.
Andy Rubin the Google executive who was in charge of the company#s robotics group and spearheaded the Android operating system before that resigned fromâ Google
and will start a tech incubator focused on hardware. According to the NY Timesâ Mr. Rubin#s departure is part of a series of recent executive moves that seem to give Mr. Page more room to focus on the company#s longer-term bets#like robotics
#while handing almost allâ the responsibility for Google products to Sundar Pichai a rising star.
 The robotics group will now be led by James Kuffner who has been at the company since 2009 and has worked on self-driving cars a Google spokesman said.
Regarding James Kuffner who replaces Rubinâ The Wall street journal saidandy Rubin former leader of Google#s Android mobile businessâ oversaw a series of robotics acquisitions last year
so his departure comes at a poor time for the company. Â That puts pressure on Kuffner to bring together disparate Google properties like Boston Dynamics and Schaft.#
#Robotics is still a difficult technology to pull off well I think moreso than many or all tech fields#said Michael Wagner a senior commercialization specialist with the National Robotics Engineering Center at Carnegie mellon University.#
#James has the expertise to navigate traps others with less experience may not expect. So I don t think this is a setback at all.#
#Sundar Pichai becomes Google Product Chief. The NY Times said of the promotion: Sundar Pichai is to oversee every major Google product except Youtube.
The move arguably makes Mr. Pichai the second-most powerful person at the company and is intended to give Mr. Page more time to focus on more futuristic projects according to a person with knowledge of the situation.
and Chrome products along with Google Apps like Google docs and Gmail#will now include Research Search Maps the social media network Google Plus along with Commerce.
Much interest within the robotics community has been focused on Google acquisitions in the area of robotics
because Google hasn said anything about what they are doing. So many start-ups#Â So much talent#What their long-term goal?
Hence the interest in whereâ Google is focusing. Some of that focus has been on acquiring learning system companies (and talent.
No Oculus Rift headset and goggles. Scrolling down a bit one sees a classroom scene with colorful sea horses floating inbetween the kids.
Thus it was no surprise that Google participated in the recent $542 million B funding round for the start-up Magic Leap a Florida start-up thatâ claims to merge the physical and digital worlds with hardware
#Google adds to Deepmind, acquiring 2 UK startups and partnering with Oxford U In January 2014 Google acquired London-based Deepmind Technologies for $643 million.
Now it is adding to that purchase with two more companies ten new hires and a substantial contribution to Oxford university.
Google Deepmind was a British AI start-up with some high-profile investors and a whiz kid founder (Demis Hassabis) and theirâ forte was smart recommendations for online commerce.
According to the Financial times the two acquisitions are estimated to have cost Google Deepmind $50 million. The Google-Oxford partnership will cost more.
A substantial contribution to Oxford university is forthcoming to expand Google AI and deep learning capabilities.#
#Google Deepmind has hired all seven founders of these startups with the three professors holding joint appointments at Oxford university where they will continue to spend part of their time#Hassabis notes in his blog post.#
#These exciting partnerships underline how committed Google Deepmind is to supporting the development of UK academia
and the growth of strong scientific research labs.#f you liked this article you may also be interested in:
because Hellospoon is a smartphone app: This relegates the processor speaker and microphone to the user smartphone drastically cutting the cost of production.
If a robot is intended to improve people lives it shouldn be expensive right? Also unlike other mealtime assistants Hellospoon is meant to be a companion and not just a feeding machine.
Hellospoon Youtube channelhellospoon bloghellospoon Twitterplease support the Hellospoon robot campaignâ-Â inviting other people to support this development will be amazing to t
 Dyson#s mysterious video posted on Youtube (below) heralds a 4 september release. The only piece of information to accompany it reads:#
#Dyson is also planning a £250m expansion of one of its UK sites at Malmesbury
Instead of requiring expensive custom onboard computing robots are now able to leverage hardware smartphones and cloud computing for processing and storage.
To increase the range of a small UAV one idea is to pair it with an unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) that can carry it to a site of operation and transport heavier cargo.
Aloft hotels are a boutique brand of Starwood hotels that focusâ on techie features such as Apple TV in-roomâ services and the needs of the#always on#generation of traveler.
by expanding cooperation with telecommunication. The 1st Vice-minister Kim Jae-hong Ministry of Trade Industry and Energy said
Sebastian Cagnon a French behavior architect at Aldebaran Robotics who blogs at About Robots recapped the following governmental programs.
The barcodes also allow Edison to learn commands from a standard TV and DVD remote control which can be used to drive the robot by remote control.
Google#s automotive patent portfolio is relatively small at 35 families. Most of Google#s patents were published very recently in 2013 with the earliest being only in 2010.
The rate of publishing for Google shows clear increase so further patents should be anticipated. Â The report also shows collaboration within industry groups.
For example Google and Honda are contained very self in contrast to other automotive companies. Most of the patents in the UK dataset are in the field of autonomous vehicles includingâ road vehicles unmanned aerial vehicles and unmanned underwater vehicles.
Roboticsâ companies in the UK dataset have very small portfolios with the largest being Notetry (5â families)
The second worry for the project was that electromagnetic fields from cell phones carried by people in the stadium would block electronic signals in the exoskeleton
one that has a built-in 38khz demodulation circuit (as used in TV remote controls) and another that provides us with the raw amplitude.
Google new purpose-built self driving car Google completed a major step in its long and extensive self-driving cars project by presenting its first purpose-built autonomous car
or brake pedals#and you can ride it strictly as a passenger which is probably a strange feeling but according to Google video not entirely unpleasant.
Google will make about a hundred prototypes and it looks like it a very serious effort. It is equipped with multiple sensors (a big LIDAR on its roof is probably doing most of the work)
Thanks to Google previous experience with self-driving cars one can expect very good performance in real environments;
other Google self-driving cars have completed hundreds of thousands miles with no major incidents. The car itself may look like a toy
This is a very clever move from Google that aspires to overcome the legal and ethical problems of who should be able to drive
Google will launch a small pilot program in California in the next couple of years. The prototypes released on public roads will have manual controls for obvious legal reasons
Read the full post in Google official blog here. It worth mentioning that similar concepts
but its main feature was the interior where similarly to Google car no manual controls were present
and often writes about r Robinon her blog (in Italian). In our ageing society many elderly people are in the same situation
or watching television and monitor health blood pressure or sugar levels for example. They also allow the persons caregivers to monitor their wellbeing remotely and to check for falls.
#Gzweb for mobile platforms Gzweb Mobile from OSRF on Vimeo. During her Gnome Outreach Program for Women internship with OSRF Louise Poubel made Gzweb work on mobile platforms by designing a mobile-friendly interface
and implementing lighter graphics. Until recently Gazebo was only accessible on the desktop. Gzweb Gazebo web client allows visualization of simulations in a web browser.
Louise implemented the graphics using Webgl. The interface includes menus suitable for mobile devices and multi-touch interactions to navigate the 3d scene.
With Gzweb Mobile users can visualize simulations on mobile phones and tablets and interact with the scene inserting shapes and moving models around.
but like many people can afford to attend it looks like you can still bid for a much cheaper telepresence opportunity on ebay.
Bid on Ebay to attend the History of Wearables & Google glass exhibit at CHI (proceeds go to the CHI student travel grants).
Rumor has it The People Bot is currently wandering around the Theorizing the Web conference in New york city.
Smart phones can provide the#brains#for assistive devices. Eye motion-capture technologies developed for paralyzed individuals open up new ways for the general public to interact with technology
This cutting age brain-computer interface system could lead the way for the development of similar user interfaces for tablets and smart phones.
#Google getting more roboticists with Nest acquisition Is Google getting a robot company? Or just another source of roboticists with the Nest acquisition that was announced today?
The small sampling of roboticists Iâ##ve spoken to who are employed at Google have shed little light on future plans
Perhaps Google is collecting libraries and IP instead in the same way that Wolfram is talking about owning the database of the internet of things.
Google is to buy Nest Labs Inc. for $3. 2 billion in cash. Nest launched in 2011 with a smart thermostat
and has launched recently a smoke alarm Both products are doing very well in sales. Nest will continue to operate under the leadership of Tony Fadell
and maintain a distinct brand identity but as a part of the Google stable. Forâ more information from Nestâ as to the transition.
Larry page CEO of Google said: â##Nestâ#founders Tony Fadell and Matt Rogers have built a tremendous team that we are excited to welcome into the Google family.
Theyâ##re already delivering amazing products you can buy right nowâ##thermostats that save energy
â##Weâ##re thrilled to join Google. With their support Nest will be placed even better to build simple thoughtful devices that make life easier at home
and that have a positive impact on the world. â#Colin Angle CEO of irobot described Google recent acquisitions as a logistics play around self driving vehicles
and that when Google solved the first mile/last mile problem irobot was planning on meeting them at the house door.
There are plenty more robotics companies left for Google to acquire but if I were looking it would be interesting to consider Unbounded and Otherlab.*
DHL and microdrones are testing drones that could be used to deliver urgently needed goods to hard-to-reach places eg medicines to remote sites.
 A set of predefined skills similar to Apps for smart phones would help speed the process.
#Google buys up robotics companies from DRC If youe recently wondered where all the roboticists were going the answer is to an unassuming complex in Palo alto. Google has backed Android developer Andy Rubin to acquire at least 7 major robotics
Weâ##re building systems so one team will be able to understand the whole stack. â#Google hasn announced yet
The vision is clearly to capitalize on the DARPA Grand Challenges as Google has done so thoroughly with the automobile/self driving challenge.
Google has purchased a number of teams and people involved in the upcoming DARPA Robotics Challenge
#Play-i want to bring a robot to every child After receiving a $1million seed fund round from investors like Google Ventures many of us have been waiting for Play
Play-i are based a Silicon valley startup with a founding team from Amazon Google frog design and Apple;
Bo is a mobile multi ball robot whereas Yana is designed to be a storyteller. Both robots come with different skins
Wee considering a system that enables people to videoconference with a physician if theye detected anything abnormal.
Nowadays theye used for applications that require extremely high precision such as mounting smartphone components and coating the glass panels in LCD TVS.?
and weighing only 3g/m 2 are 30 times lighter than office paper. They also feature a bend radius of 5 microns meaning they can be scrunched up into a ball without breaking.
TED just posted an update on their blog about the demo here and we will link to the video of the talk as soon as it goes online.
and at Google annual flagship conference Google IO in San francisco. Still it takes a lot of time
and careful planning to recreate the set up at a new site and on this occasion they were planning a video shoot as well as a live audience.
It can be controlled by smart devices such as the iphone or Android devices, which can be used send data over the internet.
The code for communicating with Parrot is open source. Methodology The question we faced experimentally was how to couple the real-world object to the virtual space in which the drone would be flying.
Because of the iphone computational constraints, we decided to save 5 subsequent images while the player is trying to dock
Finally, since some players may use 3g for sending their data we considered that the data should be as compact as possible.
Therefore, the data is compressed on board the iphone before being sent. The data from 5 textured images on average takes around 77 kb.
Parrot also promoted our app on their site. The news was picked soon up by BBC Technology
There was no message that showed the absence of an internet connection (solved in version 1. 2). At the same time
electroencephalogram (EEG) headset hooked up to a PC running custom software. By thinking left strongly the mind-pilot can make the drone take off;
which were limited to two sites and were difficult to place accurately on the spinal cord. Drug delivery was via an intraperitoneal injection i e. an injection into the body cavity.
E-dura is implanted over the lumbosacral segments below the site of injury and engages with the#dormant#lumbar locomotor circuits.
and recovers easily thanks to new algorithm In August 2014 Google x announced that they had been secretly developing a drone delivery program to rival Amazon Prime Air.
however, Google scrapped the design, saying that it was difficult to control and didn perform well in high winds.
perhaps Google should not dismiss the tailsitter design too quickly for its next design iteration.
In his blog 99 Mind-blowing Ways the Digital economy Is Changing the Future of Business, Vivek Bapat revealed that 68%of consumers are interested in companies that bring social and environmental change.
such as a single TV cable carrying multiple channels.""Any terahertz communications application is going to need some form of multiplexing
and Syria has stopped temporarily receiving new recruits at its training sites. e continue to recruit
The Rubik's Cube. iphones. Snuggies. Then there are the things the world needs. The wheel.
"entomologist and science reporter Aaron Pomerantz wrote on his site last month after taking one to the Peruvian Amazon rainforest."
Users are submitting their findings at the Foldscope site, with investigations ranging from first-graders looking at banana seeds to detection of parasitic worms in fecal samples.
"he said in a Stanford blog post last year. Unfortunately, Foldscope isn't currently available,
and bionic hands that can be controlled through an iphone. The big benefit of Sanchez's approach is being able to use prostheses for people with spinal cord injuries,
#Compulsively checking Facebook will now include impulse shopping Facebook will soon start looking more and more like an online shopping mall.
The social network said Monday that it is adding a new mobile"shopping"tab where you can buy clothes, electronics and other items without ever leaving Facebook's confines.
For example, click on a shirt featured in a Target ad and the site will immediately direct to Target's shopping page where you can select the color
Like many of Facebook's most recent efforts, the goal is to cut down on slow loading speeds
and corral more user activity into the social network's streamlined walled garden rather than directing users off into the messy outside web.
Facebook is hoping that the smoother experience will make mobile shopping more attractive to web surfers,
who still do most of their shopping on desktop despite spending an increasing portion of their Internet time on smartphones.
"Facebook wrote in Monday's announcement.""Customers can experience slow load times and too many steps on the way to checkout.
"Facebook first began testing the new shopping features with a limited number of retailers back in July.
According to a company survey, nearly half of its 1. 5 billion users come to the site actively looking for products,
Mobile advertising is Facebook's fastest growing revenue area by far; last quarter it accounted for 76%of the social network's $3. 8 billion total ads revenue.
But because of the screen constraints and the way people typically use their smartphones, it's traditionally been hard to push mobile ads for anything other than branding purposes that is,
to impress upon you a positive association with a particular company. Facebook has been fervently trying to change that with ads that place more emphasis on prodding users into taking action
whether it be buying a product, signing up for a company newsletter or downloading an app.
it's doing this by absorbing features that would've previously required loading a separate page for an advertiser website.
It's not the only social network trying to break into the shopping game. Rivals Twitter and Pinterest have launched also e-commerce platforms of their own
and Facebook-owned Instagram is also pushing its own version of"buy"buttons t
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