technology showtime

Limited Edition Xbox 360 Kinect Star Wars Features A White Kinetic Sensor, Custom-Designed Console and Controller

2011-07-28T10:59:00.000-07:00

This is the first time the Limited Edition Xbox 360 Kinect Star Wars comes with a white Kinect Sensor together with a custom-designed console plus controller. Involve yourself deep into the star wars characters like R2-D2 and C-3PO as you’ve always dreamed of. Some of the intriguing features of the limited edition star wars bundle include a 320 GB hard drive, which is the largest hard drive offered on Xbox 360, a wired headset plus Xbox LIVE token for downloadable content. The bundle includes an Xbox 360 wireless controller with which you can have a full-body game play. Use the force just like a Jedi and become a defender Pod Racer. The effect so awesome that you and your pals wont just sit in your couch and have fun but jump, dodge and jerk your way via 20 pulse-pounding escapades set in interesting locations. [Limited Edition Xbox 360 Kinect Star Wars Bundle]

Solar Arrays Do Double Duty

2010-12-21T02:43:00.000-08:00

A pilot plant at a winery not only generates electricity, it heats the water.

A startup called Cogenra Solar recently installed a bank of solar arrays with a difference at a Northern California winery. The arrays combine conventional photovoltaic solar cells with a system for collecting waste heat. This produces electricity for lighting and bottling equipment, and it heats water that can be used for washing tanks and barrels.

Cogenra plans to install these "hybrid" solar arrays at businesses that use large quantities of electricity and water, and then charge them for supplying both. The company has not released an estimate for the cost per watt of its electricity, but it says that the cost of heated water will be considerably less than the norm.

At the winery, owned by Sonoma Wine Company, several parabolic dishes, each 10 meters long and three meters wide and lined with mirrors, concentrate sunlight onto two strips of monocrystalline-silicon solar cells suspended above. The parabolic dishes sit on top of mechanical arms that move them to follow the sun. Heat is collected with a mixture of glycol and water that flows through an aluminum pipe behind the solar cells. The glycol solution is fed into a heat exchanger, where it heats up water. The water is then pumped to a storage tank, and the cooled glycol solution is fed back to the solar arrays.

Similar hybrid solar systems have failed in the past because the solar cells have overheated. Cogenra uses sensors to monitor the temperature of its solar cells and an automated control system to draw fluid away more quickly if they need cooling down.

Overheating impairs the performance of a solar cell and is a big problem for hybrid solar systems, says Tim Merrigan, a senior program manager at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado. Merrigan notes that more sophisticated equipment for monitoring the buildup of heat and adjusting the flow of liquid away from the cells can help prevent this, but "it is certainly not an easy thing to do correctly." With Cogenra's technology, there is also a trade-off between the amount of heat that can be produced and the efficiency of the solar cells.

The winery installation will serve as an important test bed for Cogenra's technology and for hybrid solar technology in general. The system will generate data showing how efficiently it can produce electricity and heated water under different weather conditions and how well it can meet the fluctuating needs of the winery's operation.

The solar arrays will be able to produce 50 kilowatts of electricity, and the equivalent of 222 kilowatts of thermal energy. Gilad Almogy, the CEO of Cogenra, says this will cut the winery's use of natural gas for water heating by 45 to 50 percent and meet about 10 percent of its electricity needs.

Making the technology cost effective will be another challenge for Cogenra. But a growing number of government programs that dole out rebates for installing solar water heaters could help. One such program was launched in California in October. Lasting through 2017, it will provide $350.8 million in rebates for installing solar water heaters. Most water heaters in the state currently run on natural gas.

Vinod Khosla, whose venture capital company Khosla Ventures has invested $10.5 million in the project, says the technology is remarkably cost-effective. "Other solar companies used hundreds of millions of dollars to go to market," he says.

Turbines Could Tap the Mississippi's Power

2010-12-21T02:36:00.000-08:00

Tens of thousands of turbines anchored to the bottom of the Mississippi River could someday provide more than a gigawatt of renewable energy, enough to power a quarter of a million homes. That's the vision of Free Flow Power, a startup based in Gloucester, Massachusetts, that recently received preliminary permits from the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) granting it the right to explore energy production at dozens of sites along the lower Mississippi over the next three years.

The proposed development is one of a number of "hydrokinetic" projects in the works. Such projects seek to generate electricity from wave movement, tidal flows, or river currents, without the use of dams.

The ambitious Mississippi project, however, relies on relatively unproven technology. The only commercial hydrokinetic river-power system operating in the U.S. is a single turbine deployed by Hydro Green Energy close to a conventional hydropower dam on the Mississippi River in Hastings, Minnesota.

Free Flow hopes to deploy hydrokinetic power on an unprecedented scale: hundreds of 40-kilowatt turbines, each the size and shape of a large jet engine and attached to pylons jutting out from the riverbed at 88 locations along the Mississippi.

Although most companies developing hydrokinetic technology have focused on tidal or wave energy, Free Flow's chief financial officer, Henry Dormitzer, argues that river power has distinct advantages. "The water flows in one direction, it doesn't have salt in it, and, in the case of the Mississippi, people have spent 100 years tracking water flows and velocities," he says.

But the Mississippi is also one of the world's busiest waterways, and the company will have to demonstrate that its turbines will not interfere with commercial shipping, and that it will have no negative impact on the river's wildlife.

In July 2009, Free Flow began a six-month test of a pilot turbine (a third the size of the planned commercial ones) in the Mississippi, and the company is now testing a commercial-scale prototype in the lab. Free Flow has also received $7.4 million in funding from investors and from the U.S. Department of Energy that will allow it to test its most recent prototype in the Mississippi next year. Free Flow Power is seeking additional funding to test four turbines, each attached to a separate pylon, over a 12-month period, as required by FERC as part of the licensing process.

Free Flow uses a "shrouded turbine" design that channels water through the turbine's blades. Water passes through a rotor with seven blades that are designed for a slow spin rate to minimize fish strikes. The turbines will be sited 10 or more feet off the riverbed. At this depth, water moves, on average, at one to three meters per second.

A 2007 study by the Electric Power Research Institute in Palo Alto, California, predicted that the U.S. could develop three gigawatts of hydrokinetic power from rivers by 2025. That's the equivalent of roughly two new nuclear power plants. "There is no question the potential for hydrokinetic river power is huge, but this industry is so young, it's very hard to say how economically viable it will be," says Andrea Copping, a senior program manager at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Sequim, Washington.

Copping says hydrokinetic power needs a strong commitment from commercial and government interests if it's to take off. "Unless there are public funds to help get this industry off the ground, we are not going to have an industry," she says. "Right now the early developers are being hit with really expensive studies, because the FERC doesn't know what the problems are, so they want the individual companies to look at all potential problems."

Michael Bahleda, an energy consultant with U.K.-based Halcrow Group, says securing the funding needed to carry out the necessary studies may prove difficult. "Until you get through the licensing process, investors aren't going to commit a lot of money," he says. "As it stands now, the permitting and licensing is very time-consuming. It's hard to attract capital until you are further along in that process."

Bahleda also questions whether some of the chosen sites along the Mississippi will prove viable, either because of insufficient water-flow rates or because of regulatory issues related to shipping and the environment.

The biggest environmental challenge will be preventing direct strikes to fish and other organisms. Even if individual turbines cause only a small number of strikes, the sheer size of Free Flow's proposed project raises significant concerns, says U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Joyce Collins, who is working with Free Flow to study strike issues. Collins says the company will have to pay particular attention to an endangered species that lives in the Mississippi called the pallid sturgeon.

Free Flow Power will also have to convince barge operators that their turbines won't interfere with commercial traffic. "There are times where you can have a low-water period where there is only 10 to 20 feet from the bottom to the top of the water; if you have pylons installed in certain areas, a vessel could run into them," says Mark Wright, vice president ofthe American Waterways Operators, a trade group representing the tugboat, towboat, and barge industry.

Edward Lovelace, Free Flow Power's vice president of engineering, says all of the sites selected by Free Flow Power will have sufficient clearance above them even during periods of low water. Drawing on historical flow data from the Mississippi, the company selected sites that maintained a depth of at least 40 feet during approximately 100-year lows. Such sites would allow for a minimum of 20 feet of water above the tops of the turbines for barges that draw no more than 14 feet of water.

WIFIBOT

2010-07-09T02:10:00.000-07:00

French Manufacturer of wireless robotic platforms

2010-07-09T02:03:00.001-07:00

Nous sommes une entreprise française spécialisée depuis 2003 dans les robots mobiles WIFI pour l'éducation,
la recherche et la défense sous Linux et Windows Xpe SP3.

We are a french company working in mobile robotics and specialized since 2003 in low cost, wi-fi enabled,
multi-purpose platforms running Linux or Windows XPe.

WiFiBoT comes to fill the gap between the simple toys and the sophisticated but
expensive robots that can be found today in the market. In our platforms you will find
the right compromise between cost and sophistication so you don’t overshoot your
needs with any complicated gear.

Robonica Launches Roboni-i, Marking the Rise of Robotic Gaming

2010-03-28T02:46:00.000-07:00

Robonica (http://www.robonica.com), a South African/U.S. start-up focused on developing new forms of robotic entertainment, announced the launch of Roboni-i. Fusing elements of robotics, R/C vehicles and interactive gaming, this revolutionary product will create a brand new entertainment category dubbed “Robotic Gaming” by delivering meaningful and structured gameplay - whether alone, with friends or online. Roboni-i is now available online at Robonica.com, ToysRUs.com, Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com and also at retail in Hammacher Schlemmer, Edmund Scientific and other specialty shops for the suggested retail price of $249.99.

“Robotic gaming is the future of the home entertainment industry,” said Robonica Inc. President/Director Tom Dusenberry, the founder and former CEO of Hasbro Interactive, who is in charge of the strategic direction for Robonica as well as the company’s Global Marketing Operations. “Using state of the art technology, Roboni-i delivers instant mass appeal that will elevate robotic entertainment to a new dimension. This product is the evolutionary ‘next step’ for entertainment robotics.”

A smart, fully programmable and highly agile two-wheeled robot, Roboni-i is the first entertainment robot to offer unlimited play patterns. The state-of-the-art robot features 16 sensors and four processors, RF (ZigBee) remote control and peer-to-peer protocol allowing for competitive gameplay with real-world robots. It also comes packaged with game accessories and six action games enabling players to lay out a playing field and use the gaming controller to select a game as they enter a new dimension of interactive, real-world robotic gameplay. Whether alone or with friends, they will need to beat the odds, race against time, manage resources, neutralize threats, execute special effects and collect bonus points to improve score.

The Roboni-i’s online universe, slated to launch its beta version in November, will be out of this world. By plugging Roboni-i into the PC, players will enter a virtual world where they can earn a virtual currency, participate in virtual missions, play online games and interact with friends who are online at the same time. Its Advanced PC-based Command Center Software will allow users to program every facet of the robot’s behavior, download games and upload performance data.

FUJISOFT Releases Humanoid Robot “PALRO”

2010-03-28T02:38:00.000-07:00

FUJISOFT Incorporated has announced the successful development of a compact humanoid robot with integrated intellectual systems. Called “PALRO,” a model of the robot will be available for educational institutions from Monday, March 15, 2010.

FUJISOFT has been researching robot technology as part of its participation in the robot intelligence development project initiative of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. The Company blended technology that it had acquired through built-in software development over the years with intelligence technology to develop PALRO®.

PALRO® is a 39.8-centimeter-tall, 1.6-kilogram humanoid robot, which combines communication intelligence that enables a spontaneous conversation with humans and mobile intelligence for autonomous locomotion. The name PALRO® is derived from a combination of “pal,” meaning “friend,” and “ro,” the first two letters of “robot.”

PALRO is equipped with a software platform permitting extensive functional enhancements. For example, it can be developed as a personal home concierge who provides a user with information and services. The application was developed using open architecture, and a dedicated library is available to support functional enhancement.

Although FUJISOFT is ultimately targeting a broad range of customer segments, from robot lovers to students and seniors, FUJISOFT will first release a model for educational institutions, specifically facilities with advanced curricula needs. FUJISOFT seeks to contribute to the development of technologies in Japan by first providing young engineers at educational institutions with robot technology as a learning material.

A model for general consumers is scheduled to be released during FY2010.

FUJISOFT will continue to develop new solutions focused on intelligence technology.

Transformer Robot Cell Phone

2009-12-09T06:33:00.000-08:00

At Pakoz Hardware there’s a concept cell phone which design is come from the robot movie ‘Transformer’. The cell phone can be transform to complete mini robot with two minigun and a litle bi-pedal bot.

The cell phone Transformer concept really cool and make me not patient to have and get one of them. I like the Transformer movie since when I still 7 years old I watch the cartoon and really love it. Now in cinema I can see the movie with the spectacular effect. Hopefully the movie have the second series.

Pino Robot the best robot in the world :

2009-08-12T08:45:00.000-07:00

Pino the robot loves to play games and the more you interact with Pino, the more he learns.

Say hello to your smart robotic friend. He's so cool, you'll never want to put him down! The more you interact with Pino, the more he does.
Pino lost his memory after his space ship crashed to earth. Now he's alone and needs your care and attention. Look after Pino and be rewarded with fun and friendship as his personality grows.
Pino the robot loves to play games and the more you interact with Pino, the more he learns. Pino will learn to walk and sing and responds to sound and your voice. Pino has realistic emotions: he can be happy, sad, angry or sleepy.
Leave your bedroom and Pino will guard your room from any unwanted intruders! Put two Pinos together and watch them talk and interact with each other.
Our verdict: The best Toy robot in the world!

Voyage of the Bacteria Bot :

2009-08-12T08:36:00.000-07:00

Self-propelled microbots navigate through blood vessels.

The 1966 science-fiction movie Fantastic Voyage famously imagined using a tiny ship to combat disease inside the body. With the advent of nanotechnology, researchers are inching closer to creating something almost as fantastic. A microscopic device that could swim through the bloodstream and directly target the site of disease, such as a tumor, could offer radical new treatments. To get to a tumor, however, such a device would have to be small and agile enough to navigate through a labyrinth of tiny blood vessels, some far thinner than a human hair.

Researchers at the École Polytechnique de Montréal, in Canada, led by professor of computer engineeringSylvain Martel, have coupled live, swimming bacteria to microscopic beads to develop a self-propelling device, dubbed a nanobot. While other scientists have previously attached bacteria to microscopic particles to take advantage of their natural propelling motion, Martel's team is the first to show that such hybrids can be steered through the body using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

To do this, Martel used bacteria that naturally contain magnetic particles. In nature, these particles help the bacteria navigate toward deeper water, away from oxygen. "Those nanoparticles form a chain a bit like a magnetic compass needle," says Martel. But by changing the surrounding magnetic field using an extended set-up coupled to an MRI machine, Martel and his colleagues were able to make the bacteria propel themselves in any direction they wanted.

The bacteria swim using tiny corkscrewlike tails, or flagella, and these particular bacteria are faster and stronger than most, says Martel. What's more, they are just two microns in diameter--small enough to fit through the smallest blood vessels in the human body. The team treated the polymer beads roughly 150 nanometers in size with antibodies so that the bacteria would attach to them. Ultimately, the researchers plan to modify the beads so that they also carry cancer-killing drugs.

A Robot that Navigates Like a Person :

2009-08-12T08:33:00.000-07:00

A new robot navigates using humanlike visual processing and object detection.

European researchers have developed a robot capable of moving autonomously using humanlike visual processing. The robot is helping the researchers explore how the brain responds to its environment while the body is in motion. What they discover could lead to machines that are better able to navigate through cluttered environments.

The robot consists of a wheeled platform with a robotic "head" that uses two cameras to capture stereoscopic vision. The robot can turn its head and shift its gaze up and down or sideways to gauge its surroundings, and can quickly measure its own speed relative to its environment.
The machine is controlled by algorithms designed to mimic different parts of the human visual system. Rather than capturing and mapping its surroundings over and over in order to plan its route--the way most robots do--the European machine uses a simulated neural network to update its position relative to the environment, continually adjusting to each new input. This mimics human visual processing and movement planning.
Mark Greenlee, the chair for experimental psychology at Germany's University of Regensburg and the coordinator of the project, says that computer models of the human brain need to be validated by experiment. The robot mimics several different functions of the human brain--object recognition, motion estimation, and decision making--to navigate around a room, heading for specific targets while avoiding obstacles and walls.
Ten different European research groups, each with expertise in fields including neuroscience, computer science, and robotics, designed and built the robot through a project calledDecisions in Motion. The group's challenge was to pull together traditionally disparate fields of neuroscience and integrate them into a "coherent model architecture," says Heiko Neumann, a professor at the Vision and Perception Lab at the University of Ulm, in Germany, who helped develop the algorithms that control the robot's motion.

Robo Crawler Monitors Underground Power Cables :

2009-08-12T08:29:00.000-07:00

Researchers have developed a robot that senses damage in cables before they fail.

Often before a power cable goes, it gives off a few subtle signs of distress. Unfortunately, many critical distribution cables are underground, which makes them difficult for people to access and monitor. But now a new cable-crawling robot, developed by researchers at the University of Washington (UW), Seattle, could provide much-needed insight into the health of subterranean power systems.

"Monitoring cable systems is one of the holy grails of the electricity industry," says Don Von Dollen, program manager for the IntelliGrid Program at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), in Palo Alto, CA. "When you get a cable failure, it's a real pain to find it, dig it up, and fix it. Coming up with good diagnostics has been a longtime challenge, and it's a tough nut to crack."

For decades, researchers and utilities have been working on various ways to monitor power grids. A traditional method, which has been used for 50 years, is called a high-potential test, says Von Dollen. "You basically disconnect the cable and send a big voltage spike across it," he says. "If there are any problems, this is going to cause the cable to fail." It's a brute-force method, he says, but if the cable fails, at least it's in a controlled setting. More recently, people have used radar to detect malfunctions.

But these methods require a fair amount of human interaction. The UW researchers approached the challenge by designing a robot that can autonomously traverse underground cables buried in pipes and tunnels. The robot, which rolls along on small neoprene wheels and is powered by a battery pack, hugs the cable tightly as its three onboard sensors scan for signs of wear and tear. Only about 10 percent of underground cables are found in pipes or tunnels (the rest are buried directly in the ground). But these cables are often the ones that "experience unexpected conditions" such as water drips, says Alexander Mamishev, professor of electrical engineering at UW and project leader, which makes them more susceptible to failure.

Monitoring these underground power systems is a two-part problem, Mamishev says. First, the terrain is difficult for a robot to navigate autonomously. Miles of cables consist of twists, turns, brackets, and overhangs that can impede progress. These considerations were integral to the design, he says. The robot has a gyroscope to help maintain its balance and stabilizing arms to help right it if it slides off track. The robot is built in segments, somewhat like a train with multiple cars, and it sits three inches above a cable. One segment is devoted to the robot control, and the other one houses the sensors and data-processing units.

A Tiny Robotic Hand :

2009-08-12T08:25:00.000-07:00

An ultrasmall grabbing gadget might someday become a new tool in microsurgery.

Early this winter in a University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), laboratory, a mechanical hand less than one millimeter wide deftly plucked a single fish egg from a gooey underwater clutch, demonstrating a new technology that could one day make it into surgeons' tool kits.

"It is the world's smallest robotic hand, and [it] could be used to perform microsurgery," says Chang-Jin Kim, the lead researcher at UCLA, who says the device is safe for biological applications. Since it runs on gas pressure instead of electricity, it can be used in both dry and wet environments.

The "microhand" measures one millimeter across when closed into a fist. It consists of four "fingers," each of which is made from six silicon wafers, with polymer balloons doing the work of "muscles" at the wafers' joints.

Each balloon is connected with narrow channels through which air is pumped in or out. When a balloon is inflated, the distance between two joints decreases, and the finger flexes inward. Upon deflation, the fingers relax. And with selective inflation and deflation, researchers are able to manipulate the fingers into clasping or releasing an object.

"I must say that the microhand is a wonderful [micro-mechanical] achievement," says Albert Pisano, a mechanical engineer at the University of California, Berkeley, and a leader in such research. "The field of microsurgery and minimally invasive surgery is currently dominated by grippers and tools that are mounted at the end of long, rigid aluminum rods. Certainly these are adequate for many purposes, but now that functional microhands have been developed, one can visualize a new set of minimally invasive surgical tools that allow the surgeon additional dexterity in complicated procedures."

Robo Bird-Watcher :

2009-08-12T08:23:00.001-07:00

An intelligent video system in an Arkansas bayou searches for an elusive bird.

Researchers from the University of California, Berkeley and from Texas A&M University have developed a new kind of bird-watching system that automatically identifies birds in flight and records their movements in high-resolution video. Preliminary results and video clips from the ongoing project were presented on Saturday at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, in San Francisco.

Ultimately, the researchers hope the cameras catch a glimpse of the ivory-billed woodpecker. The search for the woodpecker, long thought to be extinct, was revitalized in 2004 when a bird resembling the species was caught on video in the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge of eastern Arkansas. The video was too blurry, however, to allow a definitive identification. Field biologists sat in canoes for hours, waiting for an ivory-billed woodpecker to fly by so they'd have more-conclusive evidence.
"It's incredibly difficult and tedious," says Ken Goldberg, one of the lead researchers on the project and a professor of engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. "Even if they see something, getting the camera focused [quickly] is very tricky." Some birders were using motion sensors to trigger video cameras, but Goldberg says the equipment wasn't sensitive enough to detect the relatively small creatures.
Intrigued by the problem, Goldberg and colleagueDezhen Song, an assistant professor of computer science at Texas A&M University, designed a special system to aid in the search. Known as the Automated Collaborative Observatory for Natural Environments(ACONE), the two-camera system scans a patch of sky (measuring roughly 300 feet by 900 feet) above the Cache River refuge. Goldberg says it's an ideal location because it's a high-traffic area for birds and clear of treetops, so the cameras get a relatively unobstructed view. The cameras are mounted on a power-line pole, along with a computer, in the middle of a bayou.
As the cameras scan the sky, each one captures images at 11 frames per second. Those frames are temporarily stored in a buffer. Software on the computer analyzes each frame immediately, looking for things that roughly match the speed and size of an ivory-billed woodpecker. When a bird is detected, Goldberg explains, the system permanently records and stores the previous seven frames and the next seven frames of video on the hard drive. Each frame has a resolution of 1,600 by 1,200 pixels. To save storage space, frames that the software deems irrelevant are automatically deleted.
The software also saves time. The fewer images collected, the fewer canoe trips are required to replace the hard drive in the middle of the bayou. More important, the automatic identification system means that human eyes are spared from watching endless hours of empty sky.

Amoebalike Robots for Search and Rescue :

2009-08-12T08:19:00.000-07:00

A novel form of locomotion inspired by the way amoebas move could help robots get in places other robots can't reach.

Roboticists at Virginia Tech, in Blacksburg, VA, have developed a novel form of locomotion for robotics based on the way the single-celled amoeba moves. Unlike any other robots, the Virginia Tech ones are designed to use their entire outer skin as a means of propulsion.

Toroidal in shape--a bit like an elongated cylindrical doughnut--robots of this new breed differ from wheeled, tracked, or legged bots in that they move by continuously turning themselves inside out, says Dennis Hong, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Virginia Tech. "The entire outer skin moves," he says.

This novel type of locomotion is particularly suited to search-and-rescue applications, says Hong: "They can squeeze under a collapsed ceiling or between obstacles very easily." Indeed, preliminary experiments show that the robots, with their soft, contracting bodies, are able to push themselves through holes with diameters much smaller than their normal width, Hong says. And because the robots are able to use their entire contact surfaces for traction, they can move over and through very uneven environments with ease.

The actual motion is generated by contracting and expanding actuator rings along the length of the robot's body. By contracting the rings at the rear of the robot and expanding them toward the front, they are able to generate movement.

This is very much akin to the principle of the pseudopod used by single-celled organisms such as amoebas, says Hong. This principle consists of a process of cytoplasmic streaming, in which the liquid endoplasm within the cell flows forward inside a semi-solid ectoplasmic tubular shell. As the liquid reaches the front, it turns into the gel-like ectoplasm, forming an extension to this tube and moving the organism forward. At the same time, the ectoplasm at the rear of the tube turns into the liquid endoplasm, taking up the rear.

To produce a similar sort of motion, Hong's initial experiments have used robots consisting of flexible toroidal membranes lined with propulsion rings of either electroactive polymer or pressurized hoses. But now, with funding from a new National Science Foundation grant, Hong has forsaken the use of elastic membranes in favor of more-rugged designs. He declines to discuss these designs in detail because of intellectual property issues. However, he says that this latest work involves rigid mechanical parts that are linked in such a way as to enable this sort of motion. "It's like a 3-D tank tread," he says.

"It's an interesting idea," says Henrik Christensen, professor of robotics and director of Robotics and Intelligent Machines at Georgia Institute of Technology, in Atlanta. "We really need better locomotion mechanisms for robots." Wheels and tracks work fine until the terrain becomes very uneven, while legs are slow and terribly inefficient, he says.

This is not the first time that toroids have been proposed as part of a propulsion system, says Andrew Adamatzky, a professor of unconventional computing at the University of the West of England, in Bristol, U.K. But using electroactive polymers to produce propagating waves of contractions makes this latest research very interesting, he says. "These experimental designs open new and exciting perspectives in soft-bodied robotics."

However, with soft bodies come new challenges. For example, it is not clear how one would integrate a power supply, computerised controllers, and sensors. "The principles here are good, but the engineering really needs to be worked out," says Christensen.

Respectful Cameras :

2009-08-12T08:16:00.001-07:00

A new type of video surveillance protects the privacy of individuals.

A camera developed by computer scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, would obscure, with an oval, the faces of people who appear on surveillance videos. These so-called respectful cameras, which are still in the research phase, could be used for day-to-day surveillance applications and would allow for the privacy oval to be removed from a given set of footage in the event of an investigation.

"Cameras are here to stay, and there's no avoiding it," says UC Berkeley computer scientist Ken Goldberg. "Let's figure out new technology to make them less invasive." According to a 2006 report prepared by the New York Civil Liberties Union, the number of publicly and privately owned video cameras in Lower Manhattan increased by a factor of five between 1998 and 2005, and several thousand cameras are in place in Greenwich Village and Soho alone. The United Kingdom, however, holds the record for video surveillance. In a report filed on Tuesday, the information commissioner there estimates that there are four million video-surveillance cameras in the United Kingdom--that's one for every 14 people. Goldberg thinks of the respectful cameras as a compromise between advocates for privacy and those concerned about security.

Robotic Fleas Spring into Action :

2009-08-12T08:08:00.000-07:00

Tiny rubber bands can power microrobots that could serve as ultrasmall sensors.

An autonomous robotic flea has been developed that is capable of jumping nearly 30 times its height, thanks to what is arguably the world's smallest rubber band.
Swarms of such robots could eventually be used to create networks of distributed sensors for detecting chemicals or for military-surveillance purposes, saysSarah Bergbreiter, an electrical engineer at University of California, Berkeley, who developed the robots.
The idea is that stretching a silicone rubber band just nine microns thick can enable these microrobotic devices to move by catapulting themselves into the air. Early tests show that the solar-powered bots can store enough energy to make a 7-millimeter robot jump 200 millimeters high.
This flealike ballistic jumping would enable these sensors to be mobile, covering relatively large distances and overcoming obstacles that would normally be a major problem for micrometer-sized bots, says Bergbreiter.
Such sensors could be scattered from a plane but may not land in the most ideal positions, so making them mobile could allow them to be repositioned, if somewhat haphazardly. "Distributed sensors in general give you the large picture," Bergbreiter says. This is because they can provide a more detailed resolution over a larger area compared with more-traditional nondistributed approaches to sensing.
"With miniature robots, hopping is a good option if you're trying to move over uneven terrains," says Metin Sitti, an assistant professor at the nanorobotics lab at the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, in Pittsburgh. "At that size, the critical issue is power, so it is a good choice to store energy," he says.
The impressive jumping skills of insects such as fleas come from their ability to store energy in an elastomeric protein called resilin. This allows them to store a large amount of energy and then release it very suddenly as movement. But while insects store the energy through compressing an elastomer, Bergbreiter opted for a system that stretches one.

Molten Mirrors :

2009-08-12T07:54:00.000-07:00

Liquid mirrors could enable more-powerful space telescopes.

Canadian researchers have developed a liquid mirror that could operate in a future telescope located on the moon, allowing researchers to peer back into the origins of the universe with extraordinary clarity. Telescopes relying on liquid mirrors can be hundreds of times more powerful than those with glass mirrors--for the same cost--and they should be easier to assemble in space.

liquid-mirror telescope could reveal much fainter objects than the Hubble Telescope can, says Ermanno F. Borra, a physics professor at the Université Laval, in Quebec, who is leading the development of the new mirror. The power of a telescope is proportional to the surface area of its mirror. The James Webb telescope, which is scheduled to launch in 2013 and is far more powerful than the Hubble, has a diameter of about six meters. (See "Giant Mirror for a New Space Telescope.") A lunar liquid-mirror telescope could be as large as 20 to 100 meters, says Borra.

The liquid mirror, which was funded by NASA, consists of a pool of an ionic liquid coated with a film of silver. Such ionic liquids are carbon-containing salts that freeze only at very low temperatures and have very high viscosity. The salt used in the Laval mirror is liquid down to -150 ºC and does not evaporate below room temperature, even in a vacuum--suggesting that it could withstand the harsh environment of the moon.

There are two limitations on cosmologists' observations of the early universe: "The objects you want to observe are incredibly distant and incredibly faint," says Borra. Telescopes in orbit like the Hubble, whose views are unobstructed by Earth's atmosphere, are limited in size and power; telescopes on Earth can be larger and more powerful but produce fuzzier images because of the atmosphere. Liquid mirrors couldn't go into orbit, but they could operate on the moon, which has no atmosphere.

Upgrading the Prosthetic Hand :

2009-08-12T07:48:00.000-07:00

A lightweight prosthetic hand uses hydraulics to achieve more natural finger movement.

A lightweight hydraulic hand with individually powered fingers could change the lives of amputees, say researchers in Germany. The Fluidhand, according to its developers, is lighter, behaves more naturally, and has greater flexibility than artificial hands that use motorized fingers.

The Fluidhand prototype, developed by a team led byStefan Schulz at the Research Center in Karlsrühe, in partnership with the Orthopedic University Hospital, in Heidelberg, Germany, has flexible drives located in each of its finger joints, enabling the wearer to move each finger independently. Lightweight miniature hydraulics are connected to elastic chambers that can flex the joints of the fingers. As sensors on the fingers and palm close around objects, nerves in the amputation stump pick up muscular sensations so that the amputee can use a weaker or stronger grip. The prosthetic provides five different strengths of grip.
"It is so intuitive that learning to use the device only takes about 15 minutes," says Schulz.
Last September, 18-year-old Sören Wolf, who was born with only one hand, became the first person to use the Fluidhand. According to German press reports, Wolf was able to type on a keyboard with both of his hands for the first time in his life, and he told reporters that, when he's wearing the Fluidhand, he doesn't feel handicapped anymore.
International interest in the Fluidhand peaked late last month, when it was announced that the Orthopedic University Hospital is testing the device in comparison with the i-LIMB Hand. Wolf is the first amputee to use both prosthetics.
Produced by the Scottish company Touch Bionics, i-LIMB was the first prosthetic hand that enabled the movement of individual fingers. The prosthetic, released last summer, uses a different technical principle than the Fluidhand. With i-LIMB, movement is enabled by five small, battery-powered motors that are embedded in each finger. Schulz believes that the hydraulic system has some advantages over the motorized fingers. "In contrast to the movement with electric motors and transmissions, the Fluidhand remains soft and flexible," he says. "Articles can therefore be seized more reliably, and the hand feels more natural."

Building a Better Wall Climber :

2009-08-12T07:01:00.000-07:00

A new kind of robot can cling to walls and relax its grip.

Researchers have designed a robot that uses a novel form of electrically activated adhesion to enable it to scale any kind of vertical surface. The robot can even climb surfaces that are dusty or wet, be they concrete, glass, or drywall.

"What's really unique about this is the technology, not the robot," says Harsha Prahlad, senior mechanical engineer at SRI International, a nonprofit research organization based in Menlo Park, CA. There are other robots that can climb walls. But these have usually involved using microscopic fibers designed to mimic the function of the hairlike setae that give geckos their remarkable sticking power, Prahlad says.
In contrast, SRI's robot works by inducing electrostatic charges in the surface of a wall. The advantage here is that the adhesive climbing surfaces of the robot can be turned off, making movement much simpler, says Prahlad. It also makes the robot's adhesive surfaces self-cleaning, he says, thereby avoiding any gradual buildup of dust and dirt that would ultimately reduce the adhesion.
Tests have shown that the robot is capable of generating 1.5 newtons of sticking force per centimeter square of contact with a wall. Presenting his results at this year's International Conference on Robotics and Automation, in Pasadena, CA, Prahlad showed that the robot was able to scale walls while carrying weights of up to 75 pounds.
"It's an interesting and robust approach," says Metin Sitti, a mechanical engineer at Carnegie Mellon University, in Pittsburgh, who has been working on wall-climbing robots for some time. However, he says, the forces generated are just one-tenth as strong as is currently being seen when the gecko-inspired approach is used.
On the plus side, however, the simplicity of Prahlad's approach should make it easier to apply to human wall-climbing applications, says Nicola Pugno, a professor of structural mechanics at Turin Polytechnique, in Italy, who has been working on a sort of Spiderman suit using nanotube-covered adhesive surfaces.

MAC 301 WASH LED MOVING HEAD

2009-08-12T06:54:00.000-07:00

The MAC 301 Wash™ is an LED moving head washlight with a powerfully fast zoom and impressive zoom range.

It is capable of producing a wide range of exceptional colors from rich saturated shades to uniform pastels through the entire zoom range. LED-based MAC with zoom The MAC 301 Wash’s efficient and fast zoom provides beam angle control from 13 - 36° for more accurate and flexible design possibilities. The fixture’s outstanding RGB color mixing is maintained through the entire zoom range.

Optics

The MAC 301 Wash’s 108 high-power LEDs produce a bright and well-defined beam – the brightest LED moving head in its class. The LEDs are arrayed in a high density design to enable a more even blending of colors. The innovative and highly efficient lens system makes for a punchy beam with great beam definition.

Outstanding colour

A principal feature of the MAC 301 Wash is its excellent RGB colour mixing system. The full spectrum system combines with the unique optical system to produce a wide range of vibrant saturated colours and subtle pastels. A range of mixed shades from cool to warm is also possible. For increased colour possibilities, the MAC 301 includes an electronic 7 colour + white colour wheel rotation effect with snap, blackout or dimmer fade at each colour change.

Dynamic effects

The MAC 301 Wash is capable of smooth dimming from 0-100% with excellent color stability throughout the dimming range. Strobe effects such as pulse and random effects are also possible.

Movement

High-speed 450° pan and 332° tilt movement with fast acceleration and smooth movement is provided by powerful three-phase stepper motors, all while staying surprisingly quiet which makes the MAC 301 Wash suitable for noise-sensitive applications. An automatic positioning correction system returns the fixture to its original position should it be accidentally knocked out of position.

Control

The MAC 301 Wash is industry standard DMX-512 controllable with stand-alone and synchronized master/slave options. It is equipped with both 3-pin and 5-pin XLR connections. An illuminated graphics display provides for easy programming and easy-to-read fixture menus and messages. An auto-sensing power supply covers worldwide voltages and frequencies allowing the fixture to operate anywhere in the world.

Design

Made of durable discast aluminum, the MAC 301 Wash’s compact, lightweight design makes it ideal for rental applications, television use, night-time venues and more. The fixture’s head and yolk are easy to access for easy cleaning and maintenance.

All the benefits of LED

The MAC 301 Wash offers all the benefits of LED technology like greater reliability, less maintenance and increased energy efficiency for a lower cost of ownership.

LED OUTDOOR MULTIPAR BLACK LEDPAR550 :

2009-08-12T06:49:00.000-07:00

Suited for both permanent and temporary outdoor installations, the Pro Shop LED Outdoor MultiPAR provides a vibrant and saturated output for a variety of applications such as architectural and natural features.

The high intensity LED’s provide deep saturation and colour vibrancy to any subject. Ideal for temporary installations in and around garden beds, pathways, marquees and fountains the Outdoor LED MultiPAR will liven up any space whilst still ensuring the security of the fitting should that unexpected rain shower blow over. An LED Menu system on the back of the unit allows simple setup of the address and stand alone functions so that setups are quick and easy. Those simple corporate colour looks are easily achievable by a static colour selection on the back that allows you to set a colour which will remain even if the unit is powered off and back on again. All in all the Outdoor LED MultiPAR is compact and bright, while still providing the weather resistance required for permanent installations on architectural facades and garden features.

Robot Mimics a Canine Helper :

2009-08-12T06:07:00.000-07:00

A robot inspired by helper dogs could assist the disabled and the elderly.

Service dogs that open doors, switch on lights, and perform other useful tasks offer a much needed lifeline to people with disabilities. Now researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology are developing robots that mimic the relationship between humans and their canine helpers.

Robotics researchers have long sought to create robots that can help out around the home. But while robots are good at carrying out preprogrammed tasks and following a clear trajectory, navigating a complex home environment and interacting with real people remains a formidable challenge.
Charles Kemp, a professor at Georgia Tech, believes that animal helpers may offer the ideal model for robotic assistants. He began by studying the way that helper monkeys--capuchins trained to perform useful tasks for disabled people--fetch an object or operate a device when it is highlighted with a laser pointer. "That got us excited about what we can learn from state-of-the-art biological systems," says Kemp. It also inspired him and his colleagues to develop El-E, a robot that they trained to respond to commands given via a laser pen earlier this year.

Teaching Robots New Tricks :

2009-08-12T06:00:00.000-07:00

Robotic helicopters learn complex tricks by analyzing demos.

Programming instructions for robots can be a time-consuming, labor-intensive task. Many roboticists believe that training robots by demonstrating new skills could speed up the process and enable the machines to perform more difficult tasks. Now researchers have created such a system for robotic helicopters. With their approach, the team can train a robotic helicopter to perform a complicated aerial maneuver in less than 30 minutes simply by analyzing video footage of the trick. The work could one day be applied to a wide variety of robots on land and sea, as well as in the air.

For very basic aerial maneuvers, researchers can program specific commands based on the way a human operator would use the controls. But aerial acrobatics, such as flying upside down, require a more robust and adaptive approach. A gust of wind or a small variation in the helicopter's starting position can send the vehicle completely off course if adjustments aren't made immediately to the flight plan. "It's not sufficient to just replay the same sequence of controls as a human pilot," says Pieter Abbeel, who worked as a researcher on the project while completing his PhD at Stanford University. With the apprenticeship approach, the robot can make changes mid-flight because it's not tied to a specific series of commands. This could help autonomous helicopters deal with real-world challenges, such as landing on slanted terrain or coping with sudden changes in weather conditions, ultimately resulting in more stable flight.

Training begins with a human expert demonstrating a new trick on a remote-controlled helicopter. As the expert repeats the maneuver, one of the researchers presses a button to indicate the start and end time of each attempt. The expert needs to perform each trick approximately 10 times, so that subtle deviations can be eliminated and the software can calculate the ideal path. The software carefully warps the timing of each video clip so that it can compare the attempts. Small blips in the data, known as noise, are also eliminated. Ultimately, the software creates a highly accurate aerodynamic model of the trick that the autonomous helicopter uses as a flight guide.

Robotic Weather Planes :

2009-08-12T05:44:00.000-07:00

Fleets of robotic aircraft could improve weather forecasts.

Weather forecasters may not have the best reputation for accuracy, but with today's computational modeling, it's possible to make pretty reliable weather predictions up to 48 hours in advance. Researchers at MIT, however, believe that autonomous aircraft running smart storm-chasing algorithms could get that figure up to four days. Better weather forecasting could help farmers and transportation authorities with planning and even save lives by providing earlier warnings about storms and severe weather, says Jonathan How, principal investigator at MIT's Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Long-term predictions don't necessarily go wrong because of forecasting models, but rather because initial conditions were inaccurately measured, saysMartin Ralph, a research meteorologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's earth systems laboratory, in Boulder, CO. Such inaccuracies come from gaps in the data, he says.
Ground-based sensors are already used to record temperature, wind speed, humidity, air density, and rainfall, but they gauge conditions only at ground level, says How. At sea, where many severe weather fronts originate, the coverage is much sparser. Satellite observations help build up a picture, but satellites are blind to a number of useful types of data, such as low-altitude wind speed and atmospheric boundary conditions, says Ralph.
To get the most accurate readings, you really want to get your sensors into the weather itself, says How. In theory, weather balloons can do this, but only if they happen to be in the right place at the right time. So weather services currently attempt to track down weather systems using piloted planes that fly prescribed routes, taking measurements along the way. The logistics of deploying such planes is so complicated, however, that it's difficult to change their routes in response to changing weather conditions.