Thinks

The MorpHex by Zenta is a hexapod that can roll as well as walk...

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 09:49:48 +0100

The MorpHex by Zenta is a hexapod that can roll as well as walk and change shape.

Reminded me of the Golden Wheel spider that can curl up and roll out of danger…

More information on MorpHex on Hackaday. Zenta has a previous hexapod design currently for sale through lynxmotion. Mmm…

Electronic Hungry Hungry Hippos for iPad. An AppToy too far....

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 13:38:46 +0100

Electronic Hungry Hungry Hippos for iPad. An AppToy too far. From thinkgeek. Happy April’s Fools.

A wickerwork brain? 3D brain structure of intersecting planes of...

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 10:24:05 +0100

A wickerwork brain? 3D brain structure of intersecting planes of inter-woven nerve fibres.

Using diffusion spectrum MRI, which maps nerve fibres by tracking the movement of water molecules, suggests that the brain consists of a three-dimensional grid of fibres on two-dimensional planes. The orientations of the grid correspond to up-down, right-left and front-back body axes laid down in the earliest stages of embryonic development and grow in the right direction by following simple developmental rules controlled by biochemical signals.

If the brain were organized like a tangle of spaghetti, says Wedeen, it would be difficult to see how mutations could lead to incremental changes in connectivity on which natural selection could act.

However, note that diffusion MRI can’t detect nerve fibres directly, so changes in machine set-up or data analysis could alter what is seen. Diffusion MRI detects the junctions of fibres and it is being argued that is likely to miss fibres criss-crossing in other orientations at angles less than about 70 degrees.

More details in Human brain organised like a 3D ‘New York City’ grid - health - 29 March 2012 - New Scientist

iPhone accelerometer control over HTML5 browser game. Data is...

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 10:09:51 +0100

iPhone accelerometer control over HTML5 browser game. Data is pushed form iOS to a nodejs server which serves the game in your desktop browser.

Node.js is a server-side JavaScript environment based on Google’s V8 Javascript engine. Based on Socket.IO, Node.js makes it easy to deliver real-time data between almost every browser and the node server. More details and source code at http://www.webdigi.co.uk/blog/2012/using-an-ios-device-to-control-a-game-on-your-browser/

(via Accelerometer-based game control using an iOS device courtesy of HTML5 - Hack a Day)

ChronoZoom is ‘Google Earth’ for time. ChronoZoom is...

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 16:04:01 +0000

ChronoZoom is ‘Google Earth’ for time.

ChronoZoom is a zoomable timeline the universe’s existence, a joint project between Microsoft Research, the University of California, Berkeley, and Moscow State University in Russia.

The navigation needs a some smoothing out and I’m not quite sure how the information has been categorised. There is a shed load of information embedded in the ChronoZoom but a problem is that some things happen on such a tiny time-scale that there is a danger that you would never find them, unless they are labelled on the timeline.

Wait for the timeline labels to appear and click on “Threshold 8: Origins of Modern World” to see how brief humanity’s existence is. Creationists look away.

(via One Per Cent: Zoomable timeline of the cosmos puts us in our place)

Autonomous co-operating flying robots that swarm and co-operate...

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 13:47:14 +0000

Autonomous co-operating flying robots that swarm and co-operate using local and decentralised control. Presented at TED2012 by Vijay Kumar and his team at the University of Pennsylvania. One example uses Kinect camera and 3D scanner to build maps of newly explored locations.

(via TEDtalksDirector)

Pop-up ‘origami’ microrobotic ‘Monolithic...

Tue, 06 Mar 2012 09:55:44 +0000

Pop-up ‘origami’ microrobotic ‘Monolithic Bee’ is amazing. Uses laser-cut 18 layer laminate of varying materials to create the body, actuators and assembly scaffold that cunningly folds the dragonfly-like robot into shape with the use of tiny printed hinges.

(via Pop-up dragonfly robot could be the future of business cards - Hack a Day)

Two DIY Geiger counters using smartphone. Radiation-watch.org...

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 10:33:37 +0000

Two DIY Geiger counters using smartphone.

Radiation-watch.org produces a low cost ($46) sensor from photodiodes and foil that plugs into the headphone socket. pachube helps aggregrate citizens’ readings to crowdsource radiation maps such as Japan Geigermap. (via One Per Cent: DIY Geiger counter smartphone app to measure radiation)

RadioactivityCounter is another smartphone Geiger counter app for Android and iOS that uses the onboard CMOS sensor and not external sensor to register gamma rays (and a beta on some phones).

Google Street View goes sub-marine with panoramic mapping...

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 09:46:34 +0000

Google Street View goes sub-marine with panoramic mapping of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.

Google, the University of Queensland and sponsor Catlin Group aim to start mapping for real in September 2012 with specially designed mini submarines that contain 4 fish eye lens DSLR cameras (up, down, left, right). Demos and more information at seaview.org

(via Google ‘Seaview’ gives you underwater reef tour - environment - 23 February 2012 - New Scientist)

Fungi clock 180,000g - fastest airborne accelerators on...

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 16:29:53 +0000

Fungi clock 180,000g - fastest airborne accelerators on Earth! Anything to get away from cow poo it seems.

Simply osmotic pressure is used to provide these accelerations which, if provided to a human would send them travelling at “more than 5000 times the speed of sound.”, and pulverised I’d assume.

(via Fungi break acceleration record to escape dung - environment - 17 September 2008 - New Scientist)

Kinetica Art Fair London 2012 - video and stills (by dylski)

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 12:38:24 +0000

Kinetica Art Fair London 2012 - video and stills

(by dylski)

Photo app gets rid of bystanders in your holiday...

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 09:02:14 +0000

Photo app gets rid of bystanders in your holiday snaps.

“Remove, developed by Swedish photography firm Scalada, takes a burst of shots of your scene. It then identifies the objects which are moving - based on their relative position in each frame. These objects are then highlighted and you can delete the ones you don’t want and keep the ones you do, leaving you with a nice, clean composite shot.”

Neat.

(via New Scientist One Per Cent)

Personal indoor AR ‘sat nav’ using phone projector....

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 08:46:00 +0000

Personal indoor AR ‘sat nav’ using phone projector. This prototype system guides the user with arrows and information projected onto surfaces in the environment with the additional help of 4 compass chips and a pre-computed map of the building’s internal magnetic signature.

(via New Scientist - Tech)

3D printer provides woman with a brand new jaw. In this...

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 00:07:43 +0000

3D printer provides woman with a brand new jaw.

In this operation, a 3D printed titanium scaffold was steeped in stem cells and allowed to grow biocompatible tissue inside the abdomen of the recipient. No detail was spared: it even had dimples and cavities that promoted muscle attachment, and sleeves that allowed mandibular nerves to pass through - plus support structures for dental implants the patient might need in future.

Impressive 3D printing!

Contact lenses let you see AR on lightweight glasses, in...

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 15:05:18 +0000

Contact lenses let you see AR on lightweight glasses, in development by Innovega. A ‘special filter’ in the lens enables the eye to focus on projected wide field of view megapixel images projected on the inside of the glass, whilst not impairing your ability to focus on the real world (I think).

(via Viodi)

Augmented reality manikin makes designing clothes easy. The 3D...

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 18:17:00 +0000

Augmented reality manikin makes designing clothes easy.

The 3D tracked manikin and controllers enable the user to cut and shape the design on the manikin whilst previewing it on a screen. I was going to suggest that projecting the result in real-time on the manikin would be good but realised that it would only be useful for fabric on the surface!

The work has been done byAmi Wibowo and three other designers at Igarashi Design Project where they appear to have loads of interesting projects, such as:

Walky - Operating Method for a Bipedal Walking Robot through Personalized Gestures Expression of Fingers
Push-pins - A Tangible Programming Interface Using Physical Tags for Home Automation
RoboJockey - real-time, simultaneous, and continuous creation of robot actions for everyone

(via One Per Cent)

Mass-produced 3D printers about to hit the home market at $1300!...

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 14:55:00 +0000

Mass-produced 3D printers about to hit the home market at $1300! Cubify appear to the the consumer arm of 3DSystems, who also have Botmill with kits and models for the homebrew/enthusiast market, printin3D selling models for the professional market, and Bits from Bytes geared towards the education market.

With Autodesk’s free 123D service that create 3D models from 40 still images the world is now officially printable.

It’s my birthday soon. Hint. Hint.

(via Cube™ - Cubify™)

Is the board and card game industry at a tipping point?

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 23:55:00 +0000

A very readable and most interesting 3-part blog series by Rob Bartel (designer and producer of video games with Electronic Arts’ BioWare) about how the history of board & card games is intertwined with that of video games and what that may mean for the future of the board game industry. He recently branched out into board game design with Two by Two and promotional card games for the sports marketing industry.

The first blog lays the groundwork with a broad history of the video game industry. It covers how video games shifted from being a novelty for adult tinkerers in 1972, to child’s play in 1985, to the genre-driven domain of teenagers in 1991, before finally reaching a tipping point in 2007 where it became a mainstream activity for people of all ages, genders, and backgrounds.
The second blog overlays that analysis with the earlier starting but slower moving history of the board and card game industry and how it has shifted from adult leisure in 1883, to child’s play in 1963, to the genre-driven domain of teenagers in 1974, to where it is today.
The final blog concludes with some bold predictions for where he thinks the board and card game industry is headed, in particular suggesting that the tipping point for board and card games has started in 2011.

Developing board games on the iPad
Some thoughts on the implications of AR for board game play

PS3 Move + camera rig + projection mapping = impressive...

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 14:47:00 +0000

PS3 Move + camera rig + projection mapping = impressive ‘immersive’ promotion for PS’s video store. The irony being that the actor would not feel immersed at all because all they see is a jumble of skewed projections. The three videos were produced by three different directors: (Memo Akten, Barney Steel and Robin McNicholas)

The PS3 Move controller tracks the camera’s position and orientation, which was fitted into an auto-levelling steadicam MK-V-AR rig (video example of use).

Based on my understanding from the explanation by Thomas English (the cameraman) and his scratch reel here’s what’s going on in a nutshell:

The real camera is tracked in studio space and a virtual camera follows it in a wacky virtual 3D space. The view that this virtual camera sees is projected onto a virtual 3D model of the room. Virtual cameras in this space capture what they see (highly perspective-skewed projections that only make sense from the observer’s point of view, just like these 3D illusion pavement drawings) and these are sent to the projectors in the real room. The real camera sees the projections from their intended point of view.

The Move’s 3D tracking is impressive and looks like it could provide a very cheap virtual studio technology.

As an aside, it’s great to see more stuff being projected everywhere, such as on water and on toys. As projectors get smaller and cheaper expect to see more of it embedded in the environment.

(via ElectricTV)

Fashion shop Net-a-Porter.com goes Tesco AR. Well, similar...

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 10:29:00 +0000

Fashion shop Net-a-Porter.com goes Tesco AR. Well, similar principle, enabling customers to interact with the products sold on an on-line store. Here we see an evolution of the Tesco implementation where, for both technical and product/audience reasons, Net-a-porter have used NFT AR where as Tesco used QR codes.

(via NET-A-PORTER: Augmented reality pop-up store fashion app promo | ElectricTV.com)