This impressive piece of machinery is called–get this–“Automated Manipulation of Spherical Objects in Three Dimensions Using a Gimbaled Air Jet.” Yeah, I’m going to call it Air Jet for short. Hope it doesn’t mind.
Anyway, isn’t it insanely cool? It was developed at the University of Illinois by Aaron Becker, Robert Sandheinrich, and professor Timothy Bretl. Gizmodo points out that “the air-stream can lift any spherical and non-spherical object up to 188 grams and 97mm in radius.” As you can see in the video, this means it can lift anything from a lightweight ping pong ball to a apple. It even peels onions! According to the students’ research report, this machine does have practical use; it can be used to sort small objects or handle delicate ones.
I think I just found my lifetime beer pong partner.
Researchers at MIT have designed a tower structure to be built in London in time for the 2012 Olympics. It’s called “The Cloud” and its two towers will stand 400 feet tall and be connected by a series of plastic bubbles. LCD screens will display scores and highlights from the Games and also act as a “barometer of the city’s interests and moods.” “The Cloud” will run on ‘zero power;’ this means it will be powered by solar energy and will utilize regenerative breaking (like hybrid cars). Besides displaying information, the structure will also house an observation deck. The cost of the construction will be funded by citizens by way of micro-donations. The research team is still deciding on a final location. For more information visit raisethecloud.org.
A recent study has gathered interesting findings of people’s blinking habits and when they blink during a movie. Researchers at the University of Tokyo have found that “the flow of visual information to the brain is halted by up to 450 milliseconds with every blink, and we lose up to 6 seconds of information every minute.” New Scientist relays this information in layman’s terms: “This means moviegoers who sit through a 150-minute film have their eyes shut for up to 15 minutes.” It was also found that people tend to blink in unison during the same parts of a movie. A researcher noted that “”This is the first study to demonstrate that blinks are excellently coordinated during video playback.” After several tests, the researchers went on to conclude that these synchronized blinks occur during “non-critical” moments, so at the end of an action scene or as Gizmodo humorously noted, “whenever Megan Fox is off screen.”
CRISTAL, or “Control of Remotely Interfaced Systems using Touch-based Actions in Living spaces,” is very reminiscent of the Microsoft Surface in that it is controlled by touch-based gestures on a coffee table surface. It is one of the coolest concept devices I have seen put to use. CRISTAL allows you to control and manipulate various things in your living room space including TV, speakers, lights, a vacuum cleaner, and a digital picture frame. The interface displayed on the table is a digital projection of your living room; it couldn’t be made any simpler. To interact with your lights, for example, you can turn them on and off or even dim them with a sliding gesture on the table over the projected image of your actual lamp. You can access your movie collection from a media server on the table. You simply drag and drop a movie from the collection list to the table’s main interface; from there you can view the movie on the table itself, or–get this–you can drag the movie from the center of the table to the projected image of your TV and it will immediately play on your actual TV in your living room! With photos, you can view and resize them directly on the table, and you can drag them to your TV or digital picture frame to view them on those devices. And here’s my favorite feature: you can tell your miniature vacuum exactly where to go to clean up a mess by drawing a line from the vacuum to the messy destination. Neat, huh?
Stacey Scott, assistant professor at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, member of the project: “We wanted a social aspect to activities such as choosing what to watch on TV and we wanted to make the process easy and intuitive. “Every time you get a new device into the living room, you get a new remote with it. And instead of difficult programmable universal remotes, this offers intuitive mapping of the different devices and home.” Christian Müller-Tomfelde, an Australian table-top display researcher: “It is a clever use of the tabletop as a ‘world-in-miniature’ interface to control room elements.”
Müller-Tomfelde commented that it could take five to ten years before we see something like this be manufactured and made available for the general public. As we have witnessed with Microsoft Surface, it can be very difficult to create and promote a table-top device with a steep price tag. Scott approximated that if CRISTOL was put on the market today it would cost somewhere between $10,000-$15,000. Today’s digital living room is packed with multiple devices that all perform different tasks. A device like CRISTOL that can put the control of all those devices onto one central table-top with a user-friendly interface would be a very helpful and exciting addition to homes all around the world.
Researchers from the Shinoda Lab at The University of Tokyo have transformed the way holograms will be defined for years to come. Gizmodo explains what’s going on here best in layman’s terms: researchers have essentially combined motion tracking, like you see in the Wii, with holograms, like you see on CNN, with ultrasonic waves.” Just watch the video above as it explains it all visually with the truly amazing technology itself. People, the holodeck concept is moving from fiction to reality, slowly but surely.
