Nexi robot

Nexi robot helps Northeastern University track effects of shifty body language (video)

MIT's Nexi robot has been teaching us about social interaction for years, and has even done a stint with the US Navy. Its latest role, however, involved

studying those moments when society falls apart. Northeastern University researchers made Nexi the key ingredient of an experiment where subjects were asked to play a Prisoner's Dilemma-style game immediately after a conversation, whether it was with a human or a machine. Nexi showed that humans are better judges of trustworthiness after they see the telltale body language of dishonesty -- crossed arms, leaning back and other cues -- even when those expressions come from a collection of metal and plastic. The study suggests not just that humans are tuned to watch for subtle hints of sketchy behavior, but that future humanoid robots could foster trust by using the right gestures. We'll look forward to the friendlier machine assistants that result... and keep in mind the room for deception when the robots invariably plot to take over the world.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQLo06V-q2M&feature=player_embedded

Robotic Cheetah

DARPA’s robotic cheetah has now surpassed the human land speed record, running as fast as 28.3 mph, faster than the fastest known human, Usain Bolt.

In a new video just released by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the robot designed around the anatomy of a cheetah, is seen “running as fast as 28.3 mph before it trips and falls on what would be its face, if it had one.”

Recharged in Midair By Flying Battery-Drones, Electric Aircraft May Never Have to Land

Flying Batteries Drones serving as flying batteries could dock with an electric plane in flight, enabling the first transcontinental electric airplane journey. Flight of the Century

Instead of taking off with thunderous jet engines, future airplanes may soar into the air on battery packs, and jettison them like so much ballast once the juice has been drained. Then these batteries could be replaced in flight. Instead of refueling with flying tankers, electric planes would rendezvous with autonomous flying battery-drones.
This plan could enable an all-electric trip across the Atlantic, retracing Charles Lindbergh’s flight path. Later this month, aviation enthusiast Chip Yates — inventor of the Swigz Pro electric superbike — plans to test an electric plane at Inyokern Airport in Southern California.

Yates is the founder of Flight of the Century, an ambitious project to fly an electric plane across the Atlantic Ocean by 2014. The team bought an airplane designed by aviation god Burt Rutan, a Long-EZ (call sign N158TG), and is in the process of converting it to an all-electric test vehicle. They’ve filed for a patent on their system, which is called Infinite Range Electric Flight (IREF).  Electric airplanes remain fairly impractical because of their weight and power limitations. To carry enough power to take off, an electric plane would need lots of batteries, which are prohibitively heavy. Solar-powered aircraft are more practical at this point, as evidenced by the series of flights this summer by the Solar Impulse aircraft. But dropping drained batteries would get rid of extra weight, according to Yates’ plan. And recharging in flight — as the military has done for decades — would enable the plane to fly unlimited distances.
It would work by deploying fleets of flying battery packs — basically drones full of batteries — to various ground or ocean stations. A human-piloted electric airplane would take off using these flyable battery packs, draining most of their energy just for takeoff. Then it would jettison them in flight, and the packs would autonomously fly (using a separate battery supply) down to the ground or ocean base. Or they could parachute down for recovery. There, they would recharge for future use. Meanwhile, a freshly charged battery pack would launch from the base station and tether to the human-piloted electric airplane. During this transition period, the electric airplane would use its own internal battery supply, according to the Flight of the Century project.
The team is already performing some runway tests, and plans to take off in the electric plane later this month.
[via LiveScience]

Electric Plane Prototype: This plane, designed by Burt Rutan, is being converted into an all-electric aircraft.  Flight of the Century

Courtesy:Popular Science

Giant 3-D Printer to Make An Entire House in 20 Hours

3-D Printing Concrete Houses Contour Crafting

3-D printers can make airplanes and their parts, food and more — why not entire buildings? A professor at the University of Southern California aims to print out whole houses, using layers of concrete and adding plumbing, electrical wiring and other guts as it moves upward.
Professor Behrokh Khoshnevis at USC created a layered fabrication method he calls Contour Crafting, which he says can be used to build a single house or “a colony of houses.” It could be used with concrete or adobe, he says. Khoshnevis has been developing the system for several years and hosted a presentation about it at a recent TEDx event.

It would use a movable gantry taller than the house you want to build. Concrete pours out and is set down layer by layer, like a typical 3-D printer would sinter plastic together. It could be ideal for emergency housing, commercial or low-income structures, but it could also be used to print out customized luxury homes, according to Khoshnevis. Or, he adds, it might be ideal for the moon or Mars. “Contour Crafting technology has the potential to build safe, reliable, and affordable lunar and Martian structures, habitats, laboratories, and other facilities before the arrival of human beings,” his website reads. Khoshnevis is hardly the only 3-D printing expert advocating this — Enrico Dini, the Italian inventor of the D-Shape 3-D printer, wants to 3-D print moon buildings out of lunar regolith.
On Earth, the automated system could prevent delays, injuries and other labor issues related to human workers. With this system, maybe a 3-D printer could beat the Chinese attempt to construct the world’s tallest building in three months.
Courtesy:www.popsci.com

Lockheed Martin's 'Flying Humvee' Concept Gets a Lift from the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter

Lockheed's 'Flying Humvee' Design for DARPA's Transformer Program Clay Dillow

When DARPA launched its Transformer (TX) program back in early 2010, PopSci responded as most media did by applauding the ambition while simultaneously harboring serious skepticism. In essence the DoD was asking for a flying car, a “1- to 4-person transportation vehicle that can drive and fly,” capable of vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL), for troops looking to avoid rough terrain and IEDs. The very idea simply feels impossible--at least until you have a sober conversation with the guy building it.
“Weight is the number one challenge,” says Kevin Renshaw, program manager for Lockheed Martin’s Transformer development team. He says it like he’s designing a better golf club or a faster race car, simply tweaking something that’s otherwise a foregone conclusion. Actually, he says, weight is the number one problem after cost, which is difficult to contain when you’re trying to invent science fiction from scratch on a tight timetable. His team has designs to address the weight concerns, he says. Executing them within realistic budget constraints is another thing.
Lockheed’s design, like that of the other development team pursuing the Transformer contract at AAI Corp. (a unit of Textron Systems), is exactly that: a design. Neither team has actually begun building a prototype of its envisioned vehicle, though both have brought scale models here to AUVSI’s Unmanned Systems North America expo that are getting a fair amount of attention. This is the first time Lockheed personnel have talked openly about the status of their program (PopSci approached AAI about this at the unmanned systems show as well, but representatives there chose to remain silent on the issue beyond acknowledging that yes, the company is very much still in the competition, and yes, its design is viable).

AAI's Transformer Concept:  Clay Dillow

It’s a good time to conduct a little PR. Both Lockheed’s and AAI’s projects recently passed a preliminary design review by DARPA, one that included computer modeling of the designs. Both designs passed muster. From an engineering perspective (albeit a theoretical engineering perspective), the modeling didn’t reveal any show-stopping flaws in either concept. For Renshaw and Lockheed, that means that for now they are on the right track.
“The car portion is pretty straightforward,” Renshaw says of his team’s design, which relies on two huge turbo-shaft fans and folding wings fixed to a turret atop the cab to provide the lift and thrust for the vehicle in flight. “It’s the flight that will be challenging, but computerized flight--that’s what Lockheed Martin is best at.”
He’s specifically referring to the flight computer that is going to make the airborne portion of the vehicle’s operation almost completely automated. The vehicle is designed to carry Marine or Army infantry rather than trained pilots, Renshaw explains. He envisions something like an iPad mounted on the dash that allows Marines to simply plot their course on a GPS interface when they switch from surface to flight mode: “I’m here, and I want to go here.” With a flight plan entered, the fans then rotate 90-degrees on their turret from their stowed positions just in front of and behind the cab to their in-flight positions on either side of it. The wings extend, and the computer takes over. Marines onboard would be able to alter course mid-flight or order it to the ground in an emergency, but the actual control of takeoff, landing, and flight would be performed by the computer.
And where does this super-sophisticated flight computer for the world’s (potentially) first flying car come from? From none other than the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the world’s (potentially) most sophisticated fighter jet.
“We’re pulling the baseline logic from the STOVL F-35,” Renshaw says (referring to the jump-jet-like short takeoff/vertical landing variant of the fighter designed for the U.S. Marines). It’s by no means the exact F-35 software, he explains, but it’s the foundation of the Joint Strike Fighter’s flight computer reconfigured for the aerodynamic profile of a four-door car. Working off a principle known as dynamic inversion, it basically evaluates moment-by-moment where the aircraft wants to be next, and works backward to where it is right now to determine the proper way to transition between the two.

Of course, the F-35 is over budget, behind schedule, and riddled with challenging design problems--and it’s an actual airplane, something Lockheed has designed and built countless times before (to be fair, it’s an extremely complicated aircraft to build). The Transformer program expires in 2015, and that’s when DARPA wants to have a working prototype of its flying humvee (the agency will choose which of the two designs will move forward into the prototyping phase at the end of this year after a further design review). And while both designs have their merits and demerits--Lockheed’s would maintain a controlled hover while AAI’s would not; AAI’s likely has more design leeway in terms of weight (and potential up-armoring) while Lockheed has a lot of weight sitting on top of the vehicle--neither is going to be easy, or cheap, to build. Renshaw describes the design process thus far as “a battle of details.” Each small problem requiring a small design tweak, and those often result in another small uptick in overall cost. When the program comes to fruition in 2015, the idea is that DARPA would hand it off to one of the military branches--presumably the Marines or the Army, or perhaps Joint Special Operations Command--but thus far no one has expressed overwhelming interest in shelling out for its further development.
The designs are marching forward and DARPA might just have its “flying car” in as few as three years. The question is: will anyone be able to afford it?

Electronic 'Smart Fingertips' Could Give Robots and Doctors Virtual Touch

Electronic Finger Electronic fingertips could give robots a sense of touch, or allow doctors to operate via virtual touch. John Rogers/University of Illinois

The same touchy engineers who gave us the first peelable epidermal electronics last year have a new virtual tactile system: Smart fingers, which could someday bring a real sense of touch to telepresence applications. Surgical robots or human doctors could virtually feel surfaces, temperatures and other characteristics, through special smart gloves designed to trick the brain into thinking it's feeling.
Materials scientist John Rogers and colleagues at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign designed flexible, skin-molded fingertip sensors made of super-thin silicon sheets. The gold conductive lines form a circuit, and the entire sensor is embedded in a flexible polymer material called polyimide. This is transferred to a thin silicone mould, which can be fitted to a fingertip shape. The sensor provides tactile feedback by forming electric currents when you press something. The currents are transmitted to your actual skin.

 

Technology, Rebecca Boyle, electronic skin, haptic, haptic feedback, skins, tactile feedback, virtual reality

In tests, Rogers and colleagues donned the electronic fingertips and started touching flat objects. The resulting currents translated to a slight tingling sensation in their flesh-based fingertips. This is a step toward creating electrical signals that could be interpreted by the nervous system, according to ScienceNOW -- eventually, electronic fingers could create patterns of signals that can recreate sensations, from heat to texture. The fingertips could also include separate sensors to detect things like motion or vibration. Rogers says in a news release that they could be used as medical devices -- perhaps for ultrasound imaging, or even as an ablation device, burning away problem tissue or creating sutures. "Imagine the ability to sense the electrical properties of tissue, and then locally remove that tissue, precisely by local ablation, all via the fingertips using smart surgical gloves," he said.
The main breakthrough here is the fingertips' stretchability and flexibility. Plenty of haptic feedback devices exist, but they're largely bulky, or flat, or otherwise unable to morph very well to the soft geometries of the body. This system is very similar to the first peelable, temporary tattoo-like skin electronics Rogers and colleagues developed last year. In that system, morphable electrodes are pasted onto the skin with water, hence the comparison to temporary tattoos. They could be used as health monitoring devices or machine-human interfaces, among other uses.
These fingertip sensors could conceivably be designed to fit any body part in need of some tactile feedback, Rogers and colleagues say -- like perhaps the heart, where it could sense muscle contraction or get things pumping properly. The research appears in the journal Nanotechnology.
Courtsey:www.popsci.com

New Japanese Button Battery Generates Power From Vibrations

Here at Inhabitat we’ve seen kinetic batteries before, but a Japanese researcher has developed a new type of kinetic button battery that is able to generate and store a remarkable amount of energy from vibrations. Developed by Toshiyuki Ueno at Japan’s Kanazawa University, the petite powerhouse could one day energize everything from watches to large appliances. The battery has an energy density of about 22 mW/cm3, which is currently 20 times higher than other vibration-driven generators that are made with piezoelectric materials.

In order to generate more power from the ‘button battery’, Ueno utilized ‘galfenol‘ in the construction of his generator. Galfenol is an alloy of iron and gallium with magnetostrictive properties which, just like piezoelectric materials, react when stretched mechanically. Magnetostrictive materials are used in kinetic devices because they react when a magnetic field is applied to them, changing their shape in response. They were first used in 1998 in the construction of a vibration-driven generator.
Using galfenol, Ueno was able to create a magnetostrictive structure that was small in size, but powerful enough to generate electricity. Ueno used Galfenol’s ductility by fixing together two long and thin magnetostrictive elements, while he added weights to their other ends. Electricity was then yielded by adding coils around the elements in order to create physical stress and magnetization in order to produce an electric current.
“Because Galfenol is a ductile material, even the thin rod-shaped structure does not easily break,” Ueno said. He also added that galfenol can be used in environments with unique conditions, as galfenol is able to withstand temperatures of 700 degrees Celsius. In addition to its obvious application in watches, Ueno’s generator could potentially be used in highways to generate electricity from passing cars to power lights and billboards.

How to turn a T-shirt into a battery

Cotton that holds a charge — could this be the next big development in flexible batteries?
Flexible devices are already in development, from e-reader screens to bendy laptops. In the world of smart textiles, flexible battery systems are also part of this change — but making the full leap from the solid to fluid has remained out of our scientists’ grasps.
Perhaps not for too much longer. The journal Advanced Materials has reported a new technique, led by the University of South Carolina’s Xiaodong Li, which allows cheap, flexible fabrics to store large amounts of energy.
In the published research report, the experimental subject is a plain, cotton T-shirt. Within the following university release, Li, a professor of mechanical engineering, said:

“We wear fabric every day. One day our cotton T-shirts could have more functions; for example, a flexible energy storage device that could charge your cell phone or your iPad.”

Li developed a process that converts basic, cotton material into “highly conductive and flexible activated carbon textiles.” The fibres in the cotton are altered and made into wires and capacitors capable of storing large amounts of energy — transformed through soaking the material in flouoride and then heated in an oxygen-free environment.
Once the T-shirt was treated, dried and baked, Li’s team found the fibers were converted from cellulose to activated carbon. The oxygen-free environment prevented the material from burning or combusting during the process.
Remaining as flexible as before, by using infrared spectroscopy, the researchers discovered the carbonized material now worked as a repository for electrical current. Testing the material, small swatches were used to function as an electrode, and as a result the fibre worked well as a capacitor.
Termed “activated carbon textile”, Li reports that the material went beyond original predictons; and acts more like double-layer capacitors — also known as supercapacitors — due to the particularly high levels of energy storage possible.
However, this wasn’t enough for the team. The individual fibres were then coated with “nanoflowers” of manganese oxide. Just over a nanometre thick, these thin layers of manganese oxide enhanced the energy-storage capacities of the material even further.
“This created a stable, high-performing supercapacitor,” said Li.
According to the team, even after thousands of test charge-discharge cycles, performance didn’t diminish more than 5 percent. The T-shirts function as a pliable battery, but no longer resemble a normal, white shirt after the process, turning black as one side effect.
However, if these supercapacitors can be stacked up, there may be a future in these kinds of smart textiles –- perhaps running out of battery for your smart phone while on the move may end up being a figment of the past.
Li is particularly enthusiastic about improving on the means that carbon fibres are usually created.
“Previous methods used oil or environmentally unfriendly chemicals as starting materials,” he said. ”Those processes are complicated and produce harmful side products. Our method is a very inexpensive, green process.”

Parrot AR.Drone 2.0 Review: Fly Higher, Farther, and More Intuitively

Parrot AR.Drone 2.0 Dan Bracaglia

After enthusiastically covering the debut of Parrot at the Consumer Electronics Show back in 2010, PopSci went on to honor the camera-equipped, remotely-piloted quadrotor with a Best of What’s New distinction. And so with that in mind I unboxed the newest iteration--properly named AR.Drone 2.0--prepared for some degree of disappointment. Second-generation products, as often as not, tend to correct flaws in the first generation and marginally refresh or update certain features (now with HD camera!) without drastically improving or reinventing the core product or experience. I approached Parrot’s newest drone accordingly.
This was a misjudgment. That’s not to say the AR.Drone 2.0 is a completely re-imagined concept--the aerial vehicle itself is essentially the same--but the latest version has taken several significant technological strides forward, packing a stronger suite of sensor technology and improved hardware that make piloting the quadcopter an order of magnitude more intuitive (and a whole lot of fun).
WHAT’S NEW
Outwardly the AR.Drone 2.0 is still the same quadcopter, bearing a few minor aesthetic changes. The significant upgrades are all interior. A new pressure sensor helps keep the AR.Drone 2.0 vertically stable at altitudes as high as 164 feet (the first-gen drone’s ultrasound sensors maintained stability only up to about 20 feet). A 3-axis magnetometer joins the 3-axis gyro and 3-axis accelerometer that were already there, making it significantly easier to pilot (more on that later). Version 2.0 also received its first built-in, automated maneuvering function--double-tap the screen of your control device (like its predecessor, the AR.Drone 2.0 is controlled via a smartphone or tablet app) and the aircraft executes a midair flip.
And, yes, the drone’s front camera can now shoot in 720p HD at 30 frames per second, which it beams right to the screen of whatever smartphone or tablet you are using to pilot, giving you a drone’s-eye view. But it now also records that footage, dumping video and still images to an on-board USB drive or to the pilot’s control device. Privacy advocates might have something to say about that, but as a feature it lends the Parrot AR.Drone 2.0 an added aspect of utility beyond simple recreation.

Piloting the AR.Drone via iPad:  Dan Bracaglia

WHAT’S GOOD
Enhanced Control: As noted above, Parrot’s drones are controlled via a smartphone or tablet app (we used both an iPad and an iPhone for this review, with similar good results for each) through an interface that is in one sense remarkably intuitive and in another mildly frustrating. The drone mimics the tilt of your device, so to fly it forward you tilt your smartphone forward, and to fly right or left or backward or some combination of those, you tilt your smartphone accordingly. That’s the intuitive part. But when you rotate the drone (which is done via a touchscreen joypad within the app) to the point where you and the drone are no longer facing the same direction--let’s say the drone is facing 90 degrees to your right--all intuition dissolves immediately. Now, if you tilt your phone forward the drone travels to your right. If you tilt your phone to the right, the drone comes back toward you.
Parrot remedied the need for the pilot to be constantly compensating for the direction the drone is facing via a 3-axis magnetometer that tells the drone precisely how it is oriented respective to the control device. With the “Absolute Control” option switched on in the app’s settings, the drone flies with respect to the way the device is facing, regardless of which way the drone is facing (if you tilt your phone to the left, the drone always flies to your left regardless of whether that’s the drone’s left or not). This drastically simplifies piloting. Where version 1.0 took a period of getting used to, a user can get comfortable piloting version 2.0 virtually right out of the box.
Flight Stability: As you will see at the end of the accompanying video, there is a brief moment after takeoff during which the AR.Drone 2.0 appears a little unsteady as its sensors establish a stable hover. But the new pressure sensor really does seem to deliver--Parrot claims that the drone can steadily climb to 164 feet and remain stable in calm conditions, and while we never took it quite that high (we found that the Wi-Fi link that connects device to drone would sever before we could get up that high) we did take it up more than a few dozen feet. Wind gusts have a tendency to upend it a bit, in which case it can lose some altitude pretty precipitously, but in all cases the drone re-established a stable hover almost immediately. We only managed to crash our AR.Drone 2.0 a few times, almost exclusively indoors while negotiating obstacles and almost always due to pilot error/bravado.
Software Interface: The piloting software itself hasn’t undergone a radical transformation in the second iteration--in fact, the software used to pilot 1.0 doesn’t isn’t supported anymore, so if you own a AR.Drone version 1.0, you now use the new 2.0 software to pilot both versions. But there are some handy features embedded in the app that make it easy to share your videos straight to YouTube (you can actually log into Google/YouTube/Picasa through the app and dump your flight videos or pics right to your media channels) or to connect with other pilots through the AR.Drone Academy, Parrot's online community for AR.Drone pilots where they can easily swap photos and videos, share flight data to unlock achievements, and find other pilots flying nearby. The Academy aspect is also useful for those looking to explore the community for software hacks developed through AR.Drone's open API.


WHAT’S BAD
Battery Life: If there’s an aspect of the refreshed Parrot AR.Drone that we found unsatisfactory, it's the rechargeable lithium polymer battery. We can't dock too many points here. The AR.Drone 2.0 stays aloft as long as comparable RC aircraft, and we’re sensitive to battery cost and power density issues and the challenges inherent in balancing power and weight in any aircraft of any size. It's simply somewhat annoying that AR.Drone’s battery takes between an hour and an hour-and-a-half to fully charge, and from that we averaged 15-25 minutes of continuous flight. That’s not great, especially for a recreational machine best enjoyed outdoors away from the wall socket (though we did have a blast piloting ours through PopSci’s Manhattan cubicle farm). Parrot does offer extra batteries for $39.99 online. If you want to fly for any extended period of time, we recommend you suck it up and buy one. At least one.
No New AR Games (Yet): Part of the draw to the original AR.Drone was that it wasn’t just a remote control aircraft, but a new kind of hybrid physical/virtual gaming device. Several augmented reality games were designed, most of which were multiplayer/multi-air combat or racing games, in which AR overlays allowed users to shoot virtual missiles at each other or some such. AR.Drone 2.0 comes with no new games, the existing 1.0 games aren’t really optimized for the 2.0 (though they will be, we’re told), and there’s no word yet on whether or when Parrot will make additional games for version 2.0. But should you be so inclined, you can always design your own; as noted above, AR.Drone’s API is open and developers are encouraged to hack away.

THE PRICE
The AR.Drone 2.0 is available now and retails for $299.99. You can order online from Parrot directly, but they also can be found at Brookstone and at Barnes and Noble. Extra batteries retail from Parrot for $39.99. THE VERDICT
Like its predecessor, the AR.Drone 2.0 is a really fun machine. Unlike its predecessor, version 2.0 requires almost no getting used to--it’s intuitively simple to fly right out of the box. The enhanced controllability enabled by the magnetometer and the “Absolute Control” feature make piloting this drone easy and extremely enjoyable. Children can fly it (with adult supervision, of course). Adults can fly it, and will enjoy it as much as children. The price, while perhaps not exactly right for every budget, is competitive in the context of higher-end model helicopters or airplanes, and where quadrotors are concerned it really doesn’t have any competition in its weight class. You can cobble together your own quadcopter from various DIY kits and the like, but you’re still going to end up paying dearly for the privilege. For a quality out-of-the-box technology at an accessible price point, Parrot is really carving out a nice little niche in the recreational drone space.
That being said, with battery life being so underwhelming it’s difficult to promise hours of free-flying fun--perhaps it’s more accurate to promise many 20-minute chunks of piloting glee. But Parrot got so many things right with this aircraft. It really is a significant improvement over the first-generation AR.Drone--which wasn’t a bad drone by any stretch. Batteries get better, and sensors and electronics get cheaper, smaller, and more efficient. I personally wouldn’t let the short battery life discourage me from taking the current AR.Drone 2.0 home from the store, but the trajectory of the product line thus far suggests to me that we’re only starting to scratch the surface of what these drones can do. I’m really more excited to see what improvements Parrot is able to pack into version 3.0.

Face-reading software to judge the mood of the masses

Systems that can identify emotions in images of faces might soon collate millions of peoples' reactions to events and could even replace opinion polls

IF THE computers we stare at all day could read our faces, they would probably know us better than anyone.

That vision may not be so far off. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab are developing software that can read the feelings behind facial expressions. In some cases, the computers outperform people. The software could lead to empathetic devices and is being used to evaluate and develop better adverts.

But the commercial uses are just "the low-hanging fruit", says Rana el Kaliouby, a member of the Media Lab's Affective Computing group. The software is getting so good and so easy to use that it could collate millions of peoples' reactions to an event as they sit watching it at home, potentially replacing opinion polls, influencing elections and perhaps fuelling revolutions.

"I feel like this technology can enable us to give everybody a non-verbal voice, leverage the power of the crowd," el Kaliouby says. She and her colleagues have developed a program called MindReader that can interpret expressions on the basis of a few seconds of video. The software tracks 22 points around the mouth, eyes and nose, and notes the texture, colour, shape and movement of facial features. The researchers used machine-learning techniques to train the software to tell the difference between happiness and sadness, boredom and interest, disgust and contempt. In tests to appear in the IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing, the software proved to be better than humans at telling joyful smiles from frustrated smiles. A commercial version of the system, called Affdex, is now being used to test adverts (see "Like what you see?").

Collecting emotional reactions in real time from millions of people could profoundly affect public polling. El Kaliouby, who is originally from Egypt, was in Cairo during the uprising against then-president Hosni Mubarak in 2011. She was startled that Mubarak seemed to think people liked his presidency, despite clear evidence to the contrary.

"She thought maybe Mubarak didn't think a million people was a big enough response to believe that people are upset," lab director Rosalind Picard said at the lab's spring meeting on 25 April. "There are 80 million people in Egypt, and most of them were not there. If we could allow them the opportunity to safely and anonymously opt in and give their non-verbal feedback and join that conversation, that would be very powerful."

Pollsters could even collect facial reactions on the streets, or analyse the reaction of an audience listening to a politician's speech. Picard's group recently ran an MIT-wide experiment called Mood Meter, placing cameras all over campus to gauge the general mood. To preserve privacy, the cameras didn't store any video or record faces - they just counted the number of people in the frame, and how many were smiling.

Frank Newport, editor in chief of political polling firm Gallup, headquartered in Washington DC, says such software could be useful. "There's no question that emotions and instincts have an impact in politics," he says. "We're certainly open to looking at anything along those lines." But he'd want to know how well facial responses predict actual votes.

Picard worries that the technology might have a dark side. "My fear is that some of these dictators would want to blow away the village that doesn't like them," she says. It would be important to protect the identities and IP addresses of viewers, she says.

World's Smallest Hard Drive Built of Atoms

THE GIST

• Scientists have built a magnetic storage device made of 96 atoms.
• The advance could lead to tiny hard drives able to store 200 to 300 times more information than they can today.

enlarge

The tip of a scanning tunneling microscope precisely assembles atoms onto a surface to make the world's smallest hard drive.
Sebastian Loth/CFEL

Hard drives could one day be the size of rice grains, powering music players so small they would fit inside your ear.
Scientists at IBM and the German Center for Free-Electron Laser Science have built the world's smallest unit of magnetic storage, using just 96 atoms to create one byte of data. Conventional drives require a half a billion atoms for each byte.
The advance could lead to tiny hard drives able to store 200 to 300 times more information than they can today. Just imagine an iPod Touch that held 12.8 terabytes of music.
 5 Computer Techs to Replace Silicon Chips
"An effect that is common in nature can produce this information storage idea," said Sebastian Loth of CFEL, lead author of the research, which is being published today in the journal Science.
The natural phenomenon Loth is referring to has to do with the way electrons spin inside an atom. Modern hard drives rely on magnetic materials such as iron, where electrons all spin in the same direction perfectly aligned with each other. The drives work by reading the magnetic states of small regions on a disk and using an external field to write to them.
But these so-called ferromagnetic materials can only be shrunk down so far. If the magnetic regions get too close to each other, their magnetic fields interfere with each other and make it difficult to accurately store data.

NANOTECH REWARD

"This is a big problem if you want to pack in the magnetic density," said Loth.
But with materials that are not magnetic, known as antiferromagnetic materials, the electrons spin in opposite directions from one another and are magnetically neutral.
"Antiferromagnetic regions don't have a magnetic field so you can pack them closer," Loth said.
In fact, the scientists were able to squeeze bits into a space just one nanometer apart.
The team assembled the tiny hard drive from the atom up, using a special tool known as scanning tunneling microscope, or STM. They carefully placed atoms into rows of six atoms each. Two rows were enough to store one bit of information. Eight pairs of rows amounted to one byte of data.
Scientists Build Self-Replicating Molecule
Each pair of rows has two possible magnetic states, representing the classical 0 and 1 of binary computer data. An electric pulse from the STM tip flips the magnetic configuration from one to the other. A weaker pulse was used to read it.
"What this shows is you have all the ingredients for storing information on an antiferromagnetic grain," said Matthias Bode, an experimental physics professor at the University of Würzburg, who was not involved in the research.
It will be some time before this technology is used in a hard drive for a computer, as there are a few problems that still have to be overcome. First, this hard drive was built atom-by-atom, using an STM -- an impractical and slow method for manufacturing.
Secondly, the storage of the information -- the magnetic state -- is only stable at very cold temperatures, about 5 degrees above absolute zero. Warmer than that and the spins of the atoms get jostled.
Bode said that finding a material that works at room temperature isn't impossible. What material will work, however, remains to be seen.
Salty Hard Drives Have More Bytes
Loth noted there are lots of other materials to experiment with that are known to hold antiferromagnetic states at room temperature. "This isn’t like superconductors, where we are looking for ways to boost the critical temperature," Loth said. "We know that antiferromagnetic materials are stable."
This work is also important because it demonstrated for the scientists how few atoms they could use before the effects of quantum mechanics took over. It turns out that twelve atoms are the minimum number required. Fewer than that and quantum effects begin the mess around with the stored information.

Music Phone "Ondo"

Conceptual mobile phone for the music enthusiast who seeks to interactively capture, edit and share sounds. The Ondo concept enables OEMs to visualize a new form of user interaction for mobile phones. Going beyond software-based solutions of other products, it is specifically designed to effectively collect pure sounds and is specially constructed to create a tactile sound editing experience. Like a portable recording studio, “Ondo” makes mixing tracks easy, because each “stick” picks up isolated sounds from each individual instrument. Made from form-sensitive flexible materials, the “Ondo” allows the user to modify recorded sounds by physically twisting and bending the device.

Wireless Home Phone.

Very nice and unexpected for the type and shape of your home phone! He called The Eclipse DECT. Phone consists of a base unit and handset embedded together in a single and continuous ellipsoidal form factor. It features a crystal clear display and High Quality Duplex speakerphone, amongst other standard stuff. It looks very modern and attractive!   

Сoncept of gadget-Hi-Tech Computer!

How we love to dream, to invent the concept of the new devices. We would like to see the new computers were very small and were fully function. This is a concept of gadget, which make connecting with isq server and projecting the image on some plane surface. This concept is a clever one, which incorporates a transformative element and a remarkably innovative interface. When the cylindrical device is not in use it can be slid shut into a more compact position, freeing up space on your tabletop. The Communicate Gadget will make sure you maintain a tidy office because it requires a clear flat surface to function. A full simulated keyboard and display screen, all the while receiving feedback on the commands the user inputs.

 

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Concept camera Stella!

Astronomy – this is a very interesting science! But when this science should be studied in school, no desire and interest in it. But children need to look with admiration at the sky and see the wonders there. One way to do this is with the Stella, a concept camera plus projector combo. On a starry night you simply capture the mesmerizing skies and the project it to your bedroom ceiling. Awesome way to learn about the starts!

 

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Camera of the Future

The camera enables user to participate in the process which becomes much more interactive. A customer can shoot the picture step by step usingthe lens as the brush. First of all you make a so called preshot and then you fix different areas withthe help of lens. Partly the control is managed by squeezed aluminium plates and partly – by thetouchpad on the plate upward. There are no buttons with constant functions on the corpus excluding the power button. All the rest functions are available on the outer device – communicator.

Designer: Denis Kalinin

 

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Concept Electronic Ticket.

Traveling in a mega yacht is certainly a delightful experience. However, the real complexity lies in identifying the ship's layout. To help passengers stay devoid of the confusion, the Electronic Ticket concept has been introduced. It employs interactive technology that helps explain the yacht's layout as well as distribution of functional zones. The Electronic Ticket is set with the necessary information when sold and checked while the passenger boards the yacht. The information is then cleared off after recovering the ticket and is recycled. This facility helps the ship's management to have an eye on all passengers and make certain the secure disembarkation of all.

Its advanced light sensor module helps alter the screen's brightness according to the environment, enabling the commuter to read the ticket, even in the dark. The Electronic Ticket features a read urgent key, which finds its purpose especially when danger threatens, helping the passenger find an escape route.

Designers : Bao Haimo, Piao Hailong, Liu Yuancheng, Hu Xiameng, and Qiao Song 

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Portable document scanner scansnap

Fujitsu certainly wants to grab headlines by the scruff of its neck with the Scan Snap S1100 document scanner, where it is touted to be one of the smallest in the world without compromising on performance and functionality.

The new ultra-portable scanner will tip the scales at slightly more than 12 ounces, cramming inside enough technology to pay homage to its larger brethren in the series despite sporting a new sleek style that allows you to easily fit it into a briefcase or purse and digitizes your documents anywhere, and at any time. Live product demonstrations of the new ScanSnap S1100 can be seen when CES 2011 opens to the public, so we're stoked to have a look.

The ScanSnap S1100 was specially designed to see action with a PC or Mac, where it will rely on its innovative paper path system and fast front-side color scanning functionality to quickly scan anything ranging from contracts and long receipts to business cards and plastic IDs. A single USB cable is all it takes to power the ScanSnap S1100, where it will convert all scanned data into searchable PDF files while enabling you to quickly transform your paperwork into editable Word and Excel files. Apart form that, ScanSnap S1100 lets you to scan documents directly to Evernote and Google Docs cloud services, making it a snap to store your paperwork and photos from just about anywhere as long as you're hooked to a decent Internet connection.

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Green Doctor Saving Energy "Eco-pulse"

It works by visualizing the electromagnetic fields as pulses on its display and thus allows the discovery of power usage that would otherwise remain hidden to consumers. Eco-pulse is a concept that aims to cultivate the habits of green consumers in their daily lives. When appliances are in standby mode, Eco-pulse also enables the detection of vampire power that is being wasted.

It is intuitive as it amplifies the electronic pulse of appliances like a stethoscope. Eco-pulse is educative to both adults and children and helps to cultivate the habits of saving energy and to understand the power consumptions of home appliances. The Eco-pulse system helps the user to pinpoint the main sources of power usage and wastage and thus allows him to take remedial action easily. Upon capturing all the necessary power consumption data, the user can detach the strap and plug Eco-pulse into a computer to transfer the data into the Eco-pulse software.

 

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