What do you get when you combine massive video projectors and lots of time? A pinball machine you can play on the side of a building. Urban Screen, the German company that brought the ‘dreams’ of the Kunsthalle Museum to life have actually been responsible for a bunch of other really cool projects. For the Viertelfest Bremen (a sort of street festival), Urban Screen created Pinwall, the pinball game projected onto the face of a house. It’s augmented reality writ large, with the ball interacting with the countours of the building. Check out the video after the break.

Projectors + Digital Graphics = Augmented Reality Pinball on your house.

In a similar feat, Urban Screen also turned a building into an augmented reality playscape. In “Jump”, the team recorded a group of gymnasts moving through small windows on a blue screen. These images were then superimposed onto a building, giving the illusion that humans were climbing and maneuvering through it. Definitely very cool. A video of “Jump” is below.

Of course, both of these projects are a couple of years old (from 2007), so I’m anxious to see what Urban Screen will cook up next. Make sure to check out their channel on Vimeo and hopefully they’ll keep creating some great augmented reality environments to match our urban ones.

[screen capture and video credits: Urban Screen]

Why do robots need breasts? Why?!

Wow. Just wow. I’m not sure what it says about robotics, toys, or gender studies, but the new Femisapien from Wowwee is ready to blow your mind with its mechanical wiles. Building on the success of their earlier Robosapien robot, Wowwee’s newest creation includes all the innovations of its predecessors wrapped in a feminine shell. The toy bot stands just 15 inches high but its packed with programmed moves, learning capabilities, and the desire to sing. Some of this you’re just going to have to see for yourself, check out the videos after the break.

I don’t know if the Femisapien is the first step to kinky sex androids, but Wowwee definitely infused the bot with plenty of stereotypical feminine attributes. It can perform a hip swaying runway walk, blow kisses, and sing back up to any radio in range. I’m sure someone in academia is going to write a doctoral thesis on the social implications of a gendered robot, but my guess is that Wowwee intended for Femisapien demeanor to be tongue-in-cheek. Either way, at just $90, the womanly automaton could be the 21st century version of a talking doll.

Despite the female frame, Femisapien is all robot on the inside. It comes with three active modes which a user can access by tilting its head. The Responsive mode is the most general, allowing the bot to walk around, perform programmed routines, and avoid obstacles. In Attentive mode, Femisapien will pose for you, sing back up (called the ’shoop feature’), dance, talk, and blow kisses. The Learning mode lets you articulate the bot to record an impressive 80 steps of movement. What can you do with 80 steps? Get two robots to fence, apparently:

So when it comes to robots acting feminine I’m not sure what to think. Kitschy? Offensive? Hilarious? Enticing? However you feel about the Femisapien, there’s no doubt that it’s an impressive feat of robotic engineering. Enjoy the robot and its shapely figure if you like. Just don’t enjoy too much. Mmmkay?

*UPDATE: Robert Oschler has added a link to his indepth review of the Femisapien in the comments section. Robert can get the robot to perform some really really great moves. Check it out.

[photo and video credits: Wowwee]

University of California San Diego is organizing a collectively-created visual model of the mouse brain. Open up, Mickey, it's time to see what's inside.

It may sound like the premise for the next roller coaster ride at Disney Land, but UC San Diego is serious about letting you take a virtual voyage through the brain of a mouse. Their new open source resource, called the Whole Brain Catalog, allows scientists to navigate through a visual model of a mouse brain. Not only that, but each research team can also upload their latest results helping to improve the accuracy of the WBC overtime. UCSD hopes that their new creation will prove to be a valuable utility for scientists all over the world. Watch a brief demo of the catalog in the video after the break.

Much like MIT’s Registry for Standard Biological Parts, or even Google Earth, the Whole Brain Catalog hopes to build off of collective knowledge. Individual research groups contributing to a central repository of information is going to change the way the scientific community works. In the short term, teams around the world will have access to a visual model of the brain that is used most often in their labs. In the long term, the success of WBC could help usher in a new era of the rapid exchange of scientific information. The quicker that researchers can share their results, the faster other teams can benefit from them, and the sooner we will all enjoy the technological innovations they create.

The video tour you just watched is a cool visual trek, but it doesn’t really highlight all of the capabilities that the Whole Brain Catalog will contain. Yes, the resource will be multi-scale, letting you explore the brain as a whole, or in components right down to the subcellular level. Just as importantly though, it will be open source, and downloadable – giving researchers easy access and a chance to edit its contents. Those contents will be searchable, so that you can type in “hypothalamus” and jump straight to that portion of the mouse brain.

Rather amazingly, the WBC will be at such high resolution that it will be able to simulate neural connections. By building off the scientific results of various teams around the world, these simulations could help form a highly accurate model of a functioning mammalian brain. No small feat.

The WBC shares some ultimate goals of human brain simulators like the Blue Brain Project. Mouse brains, however, offer some unique advantages. They are simpler, more easily explored, and researchers in many countries have a shared standard by which they are examined and discussed. Eventually, the information included in the Whole Brain Catalog could make it a unique resource for neurological studies, made all the more special and powerful by its open source nature. It’s much too early to tell if UC San Diego’s attempt will ultimately be successful, but I wish it luck. And if Disney wants to start on making an associated ride, I have some ideas already: 3D Neuron Laser Tag. It’ll be amazing, trust me.

[screen capture and video credit: Whole Brain Catalog]

Complete Genomics is providing 100 whole genomes sequences to ISB. It's the largest genetic association study of its kind to date.

The era of genetic studies based on whole genome sequencing is definitely upon us. According to a recent press release, Complete Genomics will provide the Institute for Systems Biology with 100 (nearly) whole genome sequences to research Huntington’s disease – a degenerative brain condition which affects nearly 1 in 10,000 people in the US. This will be the largest genetic association study of its kind ever. While the genetic causes for Huntington’s are well understood, the study will focus on the unknown “disease modifiers” – genes that cause the variation in severity in patients. If successful, the ISB study will also boost Complete Genomics’ reputation for sequencing.

There are many ways to associate genes with diseases. Companies like 23andMe regularly use SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms) to identify individuals with high risks for certain conditions. The ISB study, however, will examine nearly all of the genome – looking at SNPs, and sequences of DNA that cannot be analyzed with today’s SNP technology. As whole genome sequencing becomes cheaper (CG is at $20k and dropping) more and more research institutes will be able to follow in ISB’s footsteps and find important discoveries in the less well known stretches of your DNA. That’s going to lead to a better understanding of the associations between illness and genetics and ultimately provide you with improved healthcare.

Of course, the study isn’t remarkable simply for using whole genome sequences, it’s the number of those genomes that’s impressive. 100 genomes (probably around $20k each) is a substantial research investment. ISB is taking advantage of the patient pool size by looking at volunteers with severe forms of Huntington’s, members that exhibit a family history of the disease, unaffected family members, and control groups. This comprehensive sampling will likely be necessary as the “disease modifiers” could consist of several unknown genes interacting together. The more data ISB collects from CG, the better the associations they can form.

The mountain of data could be a problem, however. Great advancements have been made in lowering the costs of whole genome sequencing, but now the cheaper tests are increasing the size of data sets that scientists have to pour through. Undoubtedly ISB will analyze the data as quickly and completely as they can, but 3 billion base pairs per genome…that’s going to take some major computing power and time.

While ISB’s research may be a boon to sufferers from Huntington’s, the guaranteed winner is Complete Genomics. This is the first large sequence study that CG will attempt with their newly expanded facilities. It also puts them squarely on the path to achieving their goal of sequencing 10,000 genomes by the end of 2010. By expanding the range of DNA analysis to outside the standard set of SNPs, CG and other whole genome sequence companies are allowing geneticists to really examine the exome (protein coding sections) and regulatory portions of DNA. As CG, Illumina, and others make whole genome sequencing more affordable, these associated scientific advantages will become even more desirable. That’s going to mean big business growth in the next few years. Hopefully it will also mean big successes in medicine as well.

[photo credit Nova, PBS]

Adept Quattro - world's fastest packaging robot.

Watch out Flexpicker, there’s a new quick draw robot in town. According to the latest press release from Adept Technology(NASDAQ: ADEP) their new Quattro s650 is the fastest packing robot ever built. Working at over 300 cycles per minute, this new bot sorts, stacks, and places product like a mad man. Check out the video from BotJunkie after the break.

The secret to Quattro’s success is its four arms, one more than Flexpicker, which allow it to move precisely under higher accelerations. It also has a higher load capacity (>2kg) and slightly better range of motion in all three dimensions. Hopefully we won’t see a race to increase arms on industrial robots they way we’ve seen blades added to razors (though the use of “quattro” implies a “cinque”). Still, there’s no doubt that Adept’s pursuit of increasing speed and accuracy isn’t going to stop and is likely to push its competitors towards the same end. Quattro is the fastest, but for how long?

I don’t know if it’s as cost efficient as other industrial robots, but Quattro sure looks impressive. Watch the way it sorts irregular shaped chocolates into a box at 1:05, or the pure speed it displays at 1:32 – this isn’t sped up, it’s in real time! As a competitive nod to Flexpicker, Quattro even takes on pancakes at 1:28.

If moving food around on conveyor belts doesn’t do it for you, the following video shows off Quattro’s metallic balls. With customary agility, the robot precisely moves steel spheres on a tray as it moves. Not a useful skill perhaps, but it’s a great demonstration. Make sure you watch around 1:06 to hear Quattro’s whip-like speed. And is it just me, or does the segment around 3:00 remind you of a certain android’s knife trick?

The automated workforce is no longer a science fiction dream, it’s a manufacturing reality. While bots like Flexpicker and Quattro can vie for the “fastest packaging machine in the world” award, the important thing is that they’ve already surpassed human agility and precision. I’m sure there are many such jobs that these bots can’t perform yet (chick sexing, musical instrument construction, etc)but just give them time. In the meantime, hats off to Adept for upping the ante in industrial robots. Quattro has the title for now, I can’t wait to see what the next challenger can do.

[photo and video credit: Adept Technologies, BotJunkie]

Judging by ROPID's bravado, you'd never know it was 38cm tall.

Some robots get all the girls. Not only is ROPID one of the only toy-sized robots that can run and jump, it likes to walk around with a healthy dose of swagger. The latest creation of Japanese robotics guru Tomotaka Takahashi, ROPID has all the cuteness of an anime hero and some of the moves too. Using voice commands, you can get the robot to run, skip, jump in place, or strut while maintaining perfect balance. Not bad, little guy. Check out some of his moves in the videos after the break.

Humanoid robots are starting to divide into two categories: robots that will work, and robots that will endear themselves to humans. There’s no doubt that Motoman is one of the former while ROPID fits firmly in the latter. Much like Hanson Robotics’ Zeno, ROPID’s appeal is somewhat in its small size and cuteness. At only 38 cm (15 in) tall, the little bot makes the most of its big eyes and high pitched voice. Robotics engineers sometimes worry about how humans will accept mechanical workers in their presence, but I’ve got to say, just give them big eyes and I’m sure we won’t have a problem.

You can check out ROPID’s voice response moves in the press meeting video below from Robot Watch Impress. While I’m impressed that the little bot can do so much, it’s pretty clear that the voice recognition is still in beta. The operator has to repeat himself fairly often. Perhaps that’s due to ambient noise? Still, watching the bot jump in slow motion is pretty cool.

Those familiar with Takahashi or his Robo-Garage line of robotics will notice that many of ROPID’s moves, even his style and swagger, are copied from earlier models. As you can see in the video of Chroino (another Robo-Garage bot), ROPID owes a lot to its predecessors. I’m not going to include them all here, but if you look at other Chroino videos on YouTube, you can see that almost every movement ROPID makes, Chroino did first.

Which isn’t to say that ROPID isn’t new and innovative. We’re definitely looking at some great speed and dynamic balance that is unique, and the voice commands are a nice feature. I guess ROPID is really just another step towards…who knows…a robotic companion for your child? Or maybe a robotic child? I wouldn’t put it past Takahashi. The guys knows cute bots. Still, no matter what role humanoid toy robots will eventually fill in our lives, we’re likely to see many more of them in the future. Maybe they’ll teach me how to strut around and be cool.

Unlikely.

[photo credit: Robo-Garage]
[video credit: Robo-Garage, Robot Watch Impress]

GE's new ultrasound device fits in the palm of your hand.

The first time I saw this thing I thought, “Holy crap! An iPod mated with an X-ray machine.” General Electric (NYSE: GE) CEO and Chairman Jeff Immett debuted a pocket sized ultrasound scanner a few weeks ago at the Web2.0 conference in San Francisco. The Vscan is aimed at enhancing the level of diagnostic power of the average doctor, helping detect dangerous conditions before they get worse. Check out the introductory video from GE Reports after the break.

Ultrasound has a wide range of uses from examining fetuses to checking on the heart. It’s non-invasive, provides relatively quick results, and costs less than other examinations. The Vscan puts all of those advantages in the palm of your doctor’s hand. GE hopes that the device will become as common as the stethoscopes doctors rely upon today.

As Mike Barber (GE VP) mentions above, the Vscan fits in well with the larger launch of healthymagination. That project highlights GE’s commitment to capitalizing on trends towards personalized healthcare. What Barber fails to demonstrate though, is how the Vscan actually works. For that, we turn to MedGadget and the Vscan demonstration video below. How does someone get the job of an ultrasound test subject at a convention? And I thought promotional models were over-exposed, sheesh.

I agree with the stunned statements of the video narrators. The Vscan capabilities are amazing. Doppler scanning, information storage, voice recording notes, and cardiac scan settings – I’m sure medical professionals could find reasons to prefer the larger traditional ultrasound devices, but from a layman’s perspective this thing looks like it has it all. Mike Barber’s video left out that the Vscan, like all ultrasounds, requires a gel to make proper contact between wand and boy. Fortunately such gel is very cheap and shouldn’t impact the price of the system.

In fact, GE hopes to promote Vscan as a cost saving device. Allowing general practitioners to examine a patient with ultrasound could eliminate the need for some referrals to specialists. Additionally, the early detection of cardiac damage, or water around the heart could translate into money as well as lives saved. GE is working with a dozen key clinical sites around the world to determine the best manner in which to incorporate the Vscan into traditional patient flow. Increasing efficiency in the healthcare system could be the biggest money saver of them all.

Of course, all the promise in the world doesn’t mean anything until the Vscan is in the hands of doctors. I’m buying into GE’s hype, but I think it will take several years of clinical trials and testing in the field before there’s a chance the device could make it to your local doctor’s office. Yet the Vscan may be part of a larger trend. We’ve already seen handheld technology for genetics, general life signs monitoring, bacterial detection, and oncology. As other medical technology is miniaturized we may see similar products for many other applications. In the years ahead, your neighborhood doctor could use technology to transform herself into a temporary specialist in a variety of fields. Too cool.

[photo credits: GE Reports]
[video credits: GE Reports, MedGadget]

Tired of just hearing about exciting conferences about the future? Do you want to know what it’s like to see some of the smartest people on the planet talk about the Singularity? Well, now you can. The Singularity Summit is an annual gathering of leaders in research, industry, and philosophy that give presentations and lead discussion in how the future may unfold. Singularity Summit 09 was held the first week in October in New York and videos are now available online. Click on these words or the screen capture image below to go directly to Michael Anissimov’s* Vimeo channel and start watching the videos.

Click this screen capture to take you to the Singularity Summit videos.

While the set of videos is not yet complete (there are still a few waiting for permission from presenters), there are two dozen to keep you busy. That’s nearly six hours of the summit to get your neurons firing in consideration for the future. I can’t say that I have any favorites yet, but I would definitely watch the panel discussions. Where else can you see so many leaders in their field sit down and have a reasonable discussion about immortality or killer robots?

Wait a second…why are you still reading this? Go watch the videos already!

*Anissimov is the media director for Singularity Summit and the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence (which hosts the summit each year). Along with Ray Kurzweil and Michael Vassar, he heads the organization.

I just saw a story about the NSA gearing up a datacenter to potentially hold a yottabyte of surveillance data. The whole surveillance angle itself is pretty interesting, but what caught my attention was the concept of the yottabyte.   The yottabyte is 10²⁴ bytes. That is three levels above the petabyte, which itself is a million gigabytes. If that doesn’t make much sense to you, here is a chart from wikipedia that might help:

As little as 10 years ago the petabyte seemed just as large and amazing as the yottabyte sounds today. Now it is common for companies such as Google or Facebook to hold several petabytes of information in just one of their many datacenters across the world.

In one sense the yottabyte is no big deal. I mean, its just another rung on the ladder of names we give to the ever increasing amounts of data around us, each rung growing by an order of 1,000 starting with the kilobyte. Ten years from now the yottabyte will go the way of the petabyte as the term that once represented enormous amounts of information but now is just another drop in the bucket.  It will be replaced by a new term that represents 1 million or even 1 billion yottabytes.  Nevertheless, it is fun and also illustrative to spend a moment to ponder the yottabyte, which is indeed an enormous number by today’s standards.  And let us not ignore the fact that yottabyte when pronounced with a long oh sounds like “yoda byte” – now that’s awesome!

Attack of the bits!

Lets first build up to the yottabyte in today’s standards. A one page Microsoft Word document is anywhere from 50 to 100 kilobytes (KB). A picture from your camera is typically anywhere from 0.5 to 3 megabytes (MB) and a song you might download from Itunes is usually about 3 or 4 megabytes (MB). Moving up the ladder, popular consumer devices such as iphones, ipods, and digital cameras hold anywhere from 1 to 100 gigabytes (GB) of storage capacity. The top of the line hard drives that you can buy at Best Buy are now 2 terabytes. Assuming Google has 1 million servers each with 1 terabyte of storage (a size Google has already reached or likely will reach in the next year) we can estimate that Google has leap frogged the petabyte and now boasts a total worldwide storage capacity of roughly 1 exabyte. The storage capacity of the approximately 1 billion personal computers worldwide in 2009 with an average storage capacity of perhaps 250 gigabytes (GB) of storage each is not even half a zettabyte!

A yottabyte would equal about 1 million times the current storage capacity of Google, or about 2000 times the storage capacity of every personal computer in the world in 2009.  Here are some other fun stats I have gathered from across the web, with sources:

• In 2006, the amount of digital information created, captured, and replicated [in the world] was 1,288 x 1018 bits. In computer parlance, that’s 161 exabytes or 161 billion gigabytes. This is about 3 million times the information in all the books ever written. (source)
• Between 2006 and 2010, the information added annually to the digital universe will increase more than six fold from 161 exabytes to 988 exabytes. (source)
• All hard disk capacity developed in 1995 – 20 Petabytes (source)
• All printed material in the world – 200 Petabytes (source)
• All words ever spoken by human beings – 500 Petabytes (source)

We must keep in mind of course that total storage capacity does not equal the total amount of information.  Google might have an exabyte of storage capacity, but perhaps only 70% or less of this capacity is even being used.  Of the capacity that is used, a majority of it is simply used to replicate data perhaps 3 or even 6 times over as backup in case of data loss.  This implies that as little as 10%, or 100 petabytes worth of Google’s exabyte capacity, is being used for real, unique information.  All of these numbers are rough estimates, but you get the idea.

The exponentially increasing amount of information being created and stored around the world is one of the central phenomenon upon which our technological progress and future is based. And no matter how you look at it, the total amount of information being stored and processed across the world is fascinating. Yet in spite of the impressive amount of information being digitally created and stored each day by the human race, this is still nothing compared to the total information content of the world and the universe at large that could be recorded.  Today a large portion of the digital information that is being created comes from individuals, corporations, and governments that are taking photos and videos.  As lifelogging and 24/7 surveillance become ever present in our lives the amount of photos and videos being recorded and archived is set to absolutely explode.  Imagine the amount of data that will be collected over the next decade or two when every single individual on the planet is equipped with a device that will record every minute of their lives 24/7.  Indeed, when that day arrives the yottabyte will be just a small drop in an enormous sea of life streams, experiences, and knowledge of mankind encoded into bits.

A simple robot for a simple concept: take computer art and turn it into a mural.

Despite Singularity Hub’s blogginess (yes it’s a word) most of my posts aren’t inspired by personal  real life events. Well today is different. After being chased by hundreds of costumed competitors through the streets of San Francisco on Halloween night (true story), I ended up at Noisebridge, a Bay Area hackspace. They have dozens of really cool projects, including Muralizer, a prototype system that draws murals on walls. Using vector graphics files on a computer, the very simple device traces the picture across a vertical flat surface. Like so many other hackjobs, it still needs a lot of work, but it’s a great example of how the digital world can be projected into our own. Check out the video after the break.

Like a virus, art tends to infect whatever new technology we create. From cave drawings to augmented reality, humans don’t seem capable of inventing a tool without thinking about how they can entertain each other with it. While we often focus on the utility of developing technology, the creative/expressive portion of that technology is just as inevitable and perhaps as important. One of the biggest trading goods of industrialized countries is entertainment, fashion, and art. Devices that allow us to customize our clothes and living spaces will become sought after means in expressing ourselves. Such technology is important even from an economic standpoint – as more and more jobs become automated, people may turn to art to fulfill their need to work.

So when I said Muralizer was simple, I meant simple. Just a couple of motors, wheels and pulleys, really. Josh Myer, the creator, thinks that a build-your-own kit for the device could be fairly cheap (~$200) and would only require light soldering. After that, all you would need is a computer, some SVG (vector graphics) files and a marker. Easy and cool. If you’re interested in helping Josh fund the project, make sure to visit the Muralizer website.

We’ve certainly seen mural-like projects that are more high tech. Remember the building-sized video projection performances? And we’ve seen hacking-style creations that are more likely to shape the world – I’m thinking here of Makerbot’s 3D printer. Still there’s something about Muralizer’s simplicity that makes it cool. Maybe it’s just the idea that customizing your living space can be cheap and easy if you have the will to do so. Like computerized clothing, automated murals are a form of technology that is self-expressive – an important trend for our times. It’s too early to stamp the current generation with a label, but “do-it-yourself” may come close.

So part of the great promise of science is that it helps us understand ourselves. Artistic expression is an important part of humanity, and one of the few aspects of our minds that computers have a tough time mimicking. It’s cool to see devices that can help the community expand that expression. Technology, whether it’s cyborg exoskeletons or genetic engineering, is set to make us run faster, jump higher, and think clearer. Why not add “live more creatively” to the list?

[screen capture and video credit: Josh Myer, Muralizer.com]

By color-coding stem cells, reserachers isolated those that would form different parts of the heart.

It’s Alive! Researchers at Harvard University and Massachusetts General Hospital have succeeded in taking embryonic stem cells from mice and growing cardiovascular tissue. The research team, led by Dr. Kenneth Chien, believes that a similar process may one day serve to repair cardiac damage in humans. The work was recently published in the journal Science. You can see the mouse heart cells beating at different speeds in the video from Boston.com after the break.

Cardiac injury is some of the most difficult damage to heal in the body. When the heart undergoes massive damage from a coronary, you have few options – replace broken parts, add a pacemaker, or get a whole new heart. The work done by Chien and his team focuses on creating a new way to repair tissue damage. Instead of adding in mechanical parts, or finding a donor organ, stem cells may be used to replace and heal the damaged cardiac tissue. Eventually, those patients that develop a myocardial injury could have pluripotent stem cells harvested from their skin, marrow, or fat which would then be introduced into the heart via injection. No open heart surgery, no pacemakers, just stem cells and a needle.

While the pulsing tissue in the video is cool looking, readers may recall that we’ve seen far more advanced stem cell creations on Singularity Hub. Researchers at the University of Minnesota have created entire mouse and pig hearts that beat. Those videos are much more impressive. What then, makes the Harvard/MGH research so noteworthy?

Unlike the Minnesota work, the Harvard project isn’t aimed at creating entirely new organs. Instead, Chien and his colleagues have developed a manner to differentiate between different pluripotent stem cells. They introduced a color coding system via genetic engineering so that the stem cells could be selected based on which part of the heart they will become. Using this technique, the appropriate mouse stem cells could be cultivated to replace/heal just one portion of the damaged organ. It’s that identification and isolation of stem cell types that is so unique for this work.

Using their technique, the team is ready to start the next step: developing a 3D collection of mouse cardiac tissue. After that, the team could start performing heart repair on living mice. If successful, it will likely take many years of research and clinical trials before such a stem cell therapy would become a publicly available treatment in humans. Still, these current results show that Chien and his team are able to find the right stem cells for the job.

Though watching a newly formed heart beat is more impressive than watching the same motion in a tiny strip of tissue, we should remember that we really need both. Some damage from heart attacks will be able to be repaired. Other damage or chronic forms of heart disease will require a full organ transplant. By pursuing both options, researchers in Massachusetts and Minnesota will eventually provide the best possible health care. And it’s needed. According to the CDC, heart disease is the leading cause of death in the US, about 27% of total lives lost. Similar rates are seen throughout the developed world, primarily because of poor lifestyle choices. C’mon little mouse heart tissue, keep beating! We’re all going to want your help real soon.

[Video Credit: Boston.com and Kenneth Chien et al]

The Robot Pet Sitter could be remotely accessed via the internet so that you can play with your pets while away from home.

Okay, I rarely spend time looking at “concept machines” but this one just made me chuckle enough that I had to share it. In our hectic lives there is one group that constantly suffers from lack of attention: our pets. So what’s the solution – spending more time at home, or giving your pet a backyard, maybe even finding someone to help care for your pet? No, of course, not. That’s not technologically advanced enough. What your pet needs is a robotic sitter, one that you can control from anywhere in the world via WiFi. MintSelect, a technology concept community, has dreamed up their Robot Pet Sitter, a device that will let you speak to, watch, and even play fetch with your animal. Teach your pet to obey its robotic overlord just as it would obey you.

As far as I can tell, the Robot Pet Sitter would function almost exactly as a Rovio. Like that robot, the Pet Sitter would connect to your home WiFi network and allow you to access the device through a web browser. While I can’t speak to whether or not animals will enjoy interacting with robots, I do know that telepresence is a developing trend in technology. Remotely accessing your home, for security or pet soothing, is just the beginning. Once we are able to transmit sensation from a machine to a human (a capability known as haptics) people will feel what is happening to the robot they are operating. In essence, you will be able to interact with distant objects just as if you were there with them. That level of connectivity may make travel obsolete.

Unlike Rovio, the Robot Pet Sitter concept includes two eyestalks with cameras and microphones to provide stereo vision and hearing. While that functionality would be wasted if you were accessing the robot via a traditional desktop computer, a head mounted display could give you a 3D view of the robot’s surroundings, immersing you further into playtime with Rover. A speaker in the center of the bot lets you talk to your lonely pet while recessed wheels let you chase it as it runs away from the scary looking machine. Have a more aggressive housemate? The eyestalks automatically cover the cameras with plastic lids in the case of chewing or collisions.

Robot and ball are controlled via MintPad

Of course, the really innovative addition to the robot is a remote controlled ball. Launched from the bot, it contains a center of gravity style movement system that would allow you to give your pet something to chase or fetch. The robot, or the ball, can be accessed via point and click commands from a hand held writing device, the MintPad (see below).

You’ll notice the gratuitous use of ‘would’ and ‘could’. This robot, despite it’s very pretty graphics, is simply a concept. It’s never been built and may never be built. MintPass is a company that produces streamline, perhaps even gorgeous, communication devices – think Apple but Korean. Their MintPad is a hand held note taking web browsing video and audio player, and their Sapphire software allows you to seamlessly transfer media files from internet to storage. As part of their dreamy tech savvy, MintPass has created MintSelect, a webpage where they can post concepts of possible products and see how they work. The Robot Pet Sitter is just one of more than a hundred “what ifs” that litter MintSelect.

Maybe I find the concept of the Robot Pet Sitter so charming because of those MintSelect neighbors. Alongside a USB powered UV toothbrush sanitizer, or a life-like grenade with a speaker that plays funny sounds, the Pet Sitter seems pretty realistic.

If I’m being a little harsh on MintSelect it’s because I know that the technology they are referencing in the Pet Sitter is no laughing matter. Telepresence is already having a profound effect on business travel, as it becomes cheaper and better it is likely to affect how individuals stay in touch with loved ones or even take vacation. Who knows, maybe a telepresence robot really could comfort a pet while you were at work or traveling. No matter which applications become popular, the ability to remotely access a location via the internet is already here, and will improve in the years ahead. That’s one concept that MintSelect has definitely gotten right.

[photo credits: MintPass]

How Love is Like A Computer #234: Reading someone’s mind often means paying closer attention to their body.

Forearm sensors translate muscle movements into control commands for Microsoft Surface.

Researchers at the University of Washington, University of Toronto, and Microsoft Research have developed a system to control a computer through a device that reads muscle movement. Using eight sensors attached to the surface of the forearm you can now communicate basic commands by moving your fingers and hand in stylized gestures. The team of developers has adapted the new system to work with Microsoft Surface, the advanced table sized touchscreen. We’ve got a great demonstration video of the muscle control hardware interacting with MS Surface after the break.

It seems like every few days, a tech company finds a new way for us to control computers. These next generation human-computer interfaces all seem to have one goal in common: increasing the physical intuitiveness of computer control. In some cases, the physicality is expressly required by the device. The HAL cyborg from Cyberdyne relies on electromyography (EMG), just like the new muscle sensing control technology. However, tactile interfaces are becoming more popular purely as replacements for keyboards and mice, especially in casual environments like the Hard Rock Cafe in Las Vegas. For those of us who have adapted well to typing and point and click commands, the new physical interfaces may seem imprecise. To some extent they still are. Yet when paired with improved algorithms for speech, gesture, and facial recognition the new line of human-computer interfaces is getting ready to connect us directly to our digital world. Keyboards and mice, like so many middle men in our evolving economy, are being cut for efficiency.

Watching the demonstration video for the Microsoft Surface muscle-enhanced controls, I am struck both by the ease of use, and the lack of necessity. Do we really need a way to let each finger represent a different color? Is it that important to have pressure sensitive finger painting? Of course not, but clearly these are just first steps. On a standard computer, you have two areas: a control space and a display space. In touchscreen and other new mediums, the two areas have merged. Muscle controls are just one way in which we may be able to take advantage of that new overlap. Building on intuition, the simple pinches to pick up and flicks to undo could evolve into a gesture system which maximizes control of the device while being easy to use. It will be interesting to see how these gestures differ across the globe. Will everyone find flicking a common sense way to erase their actions?

Clearly the EMG controls have applications far outside of the Microsoft Surface platform. The research team presented some of those applications at the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (ACMUIST). Their presentation claims that the technology’s recognition of gestures is fairly accurate in all sorts of conditions: 79% while making pinching motions, 85% while holding a mug, and 88% while carrying a weighted bag. Right now, the system requires eight sensors to be attached to skin of the forearm and hardwired to the computer. Future designs may require fewer sensors and take advantage of wireless signaling. We’ve got the ACMUIST presentation below.

I consider the EMG sensors, Microsoft Surface, and many other “next-generation” input devices to still be in their infancy. They’re expensive, not widely available, and in need of many iterations of refinement before they’d be competitive with current technology. Of course, they are also amazingly cool. Which is probably why some, maybe even most, of them will continue to be adapted and evolved in the upcoming years. I can’t wait to see what they grow into.

[screen capture and video credits: Microsoft, University of Washington, University of Toronto, ACMUIST]

Well, I'm just going to play a video game here on my nintendo-- AHHH! Ghosts!

There is a powerful presence that surrounds us but often goes unseen. A realm filled with our loved ones who no longer function in this world. Here the occult and the bizarre are common occurrences. I’m speaking, of course, about video games. The Nintendo DSi is one of the most popular handheld gaming devices on the market and in late 2010, it will be filled with augmented reality ghosts. Swedish game designers ADifferentGame have created Ghost Wire, an AR game that will use the camera built into the DSi to let the user hunt for ghosts in their surroundings. With major distributor Majesco (NASDAQ: COOL) recently announcing its involvement in the project, Ghost Wire may be the title that transitions AR video games from novelty to industry standard. Check out the really cool teaser trailer for Ghost Wire after the break.

Augmented Reality uses a camera and computer to integrate live and recorded images in real time, producing the illusion that digital graphics are part of the world around you. We’ve seen AR video games before and the technique is gaining ground in marketing, and mobile phone applications. Unlike virtual reality which aims to create an entirely synthetic experience, AR takes advantage of the users environment. It also allows you to really augment what you are seeing, overlapping digital maps or tour guides on a city as you look at it through your smart phone. AR is already prepped to be the next big innovation in combining real world and digital information.

It’s very exciting to see AR come to Nintendo. ARhrr, the zombie shooting game we reviewed previously is slated to debut on the nVidia phone, a fine platform but not nearly as popular as the DSi. When Ghost Wire arrives next year, millions of gamers worldwide will be able to purchase it and experience AR, likely for the first time. If it succeeds, other developers may pursue the AR format.

Ghost Wire’s chances are pretty good. The Nintendo DSi, with a built in camera, and stylus controls, is not only suited to AR, but comes with a history of quirky games that develop a cult following. Majesco itself is responsible for one of the stranger, but very popular games: Cooking Mama, which has the gamer helping a mother prepare food. It’s more fun than it sounds.

Ghost Wire is similarly kooky. Anyone familiar with television shows Ghost Hunters, or Paranormal State, or the new movie Paranormal Activity will recognize the game’s conceits of messages transmitted in the far ranges of the electromagnetic spectrum and ghosts needing the help of the living to “pass on”. Played something like a dating simulator, Ghost Wire has you explore your world interacting with ghosts and gaining their trusts or helping them with their problems. Ghost appearance depends on the real time of day, level of lighting, and other external phenomenon. It’s a very cool concept and when combined with an eerie musical score, it is certain to immerse users in the feel of the game.

Whether the first AR video game that hits the market features ghosts or zombies isn’t that important. (Though I am happy that this post corresponds so well with Halloween either way). The introduction of AR into the gaming world is going to happen and I’m sure that some AR title is going to be successful. As the technology develops, augmented reality will expand from entertainment and marketing to become a useful tool for digital and real-world applications. At least, that’s what my Ouija board is telling me.

[photo credit: ADifferentGame]
[video credit: ADifferentGame]

Xerox's new silver ink can be printed onto plastic or fabric to create ultrathin circuits.

What’s the most powerful sentence in the English language? “Press ctrl-p to print.” Xerox (NYSE: XRX) has announced its development of special silver inks which have a melting point below that of plastic. Crafted into different versions which can act as conductors, semiconductors, or dielectrics, this silver ink could allow users to print integrated circuits onto plastic, fabric, or film. Thin and flexible, this technology may be the key to paper-thin solar cells, adaptable sensors, and many other sought after devices. Is Xerox poised to revolutionize the use of integrated circuits, or will this new ink be like so many other printable circuit systems of the past: amazing but never quite reaching market?

If we could have printable circuits, what would that mean for the average consumer? Imagine buying a roll of fabric that was also a solar cell surface. Spread like a tarp it could provide portable energy almost anywhere in the world. Painted on a surface it could help power cars or buildings. Thin flexible circuits on plastic could become fantastic electronic readers, endless books available in an object that looks like a sheet of paper. Patients could have sensors embedded in the bandages in which they are wrapped. RFIDs could be built into any sheet of film. Every surface or piece of clothing could be alive with computing power. As hyperbolic as it sounds, printable circuitry allows for almost any such idea you want to dream up to at least be possible.

The quest to produce printable electronics has been attempted by many different companies without a clear winner yet to be announced. Hewlett Packard used metal salts and water in an inkjet printer to create a printable liquid that dried into a conductive surface. That project is still being refined. A group of researchers at Merck, PARC (a Xerox company), and Stanford developed organic polymers with conductive properties that could be applied like ink. Again, that technology and related work is still in development. Shapeways recently debuted a stainless steel material which is the first such conducting medium in 3D printing. So where are all the paper thin e-books, the smart bandages, the clothing that computes?

Like Track and Field at the Olympics after a hurricane, the path to printable circuits is littered with hurdles. First, you have to print not just conductors, but also semiconductors, and dielectric mediums. You have to overcome the increased electrical resistance inherent in any ultrathin conductor. You have to get the conducting medium to bend easily but not break. Everything has to print easily, accurately, and precisely enough to build reliable circuits. The list goes on and on. And it’s all got to be cheap and relatively simple to use.

Xerox has cleared many of these hurdles. Silver is already one of the best conductors humans have, and this new silver ink has been adapted to provide even less electrical resistance. Variations on the formation of the silver reportedly allow Xerox to print conductors, semiconductors, and dielectrics. Insulation would come from the background medium of plastic or fabric. Most impressively, the new ink melts around 140°C, less than the 150°C for many industrial plastics. This means that the ink can be melted and applied without deforming the base material. Xerox is already soliciting development partnerships from other corporations. Interested businesses can apply to Xerox for samples of the new product.

All of these are great accomplishments, but I fear that while Xerox may have more potential than many competing projects, it is still a long ways from actualization. When they present not just a new material and method of printing, but a printing system that can be mass produced, then I will be ready to declare an Epic Win in their favor. Until then, I will be dreaming up new inventions based on thin-film circuits. Best to be ready for what might be one of the most powerful technologies of the 21st century.

[photo credit: Xerox]