Category: reader

The First Billion-Pixel Mosaic of Mars

StartsWithABang writes In 2012, Mars Science Laboratory performed the first robotically-controlled soft landing of a vehicle of such incredible mass: nearly half a tonne. A few months later, the rover, Curiosity, took the first ever billion-pixel mosaic from the Red Planet’s surface, with breathtaking views of the terrain and alternate views of what the soils would look like were they here on Earth. Now in its third year on Mars, Curiosity is roving the low slopes of its ultimate destination: Mount Sharp. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

See more here:
The First Billion-Pixel Mosaic of Mars

Boeing Patents Star Wars Style Force Field Technology

An anonymous reader was one of many to point out that Boeing doesn’t want to rely on a sad devotion to an ancient religion to protect aircraft and conjure up the stolen data tapes, but plans on using force fields instead. “Boeing’s new patent may let the force be with you even in real life. The aircraft and defense company has taken a cue from science fiction with its plan to develop a Star Wars style force field that would use energy to deflect any potential damage. Just liking the luminescent shields seen in the film, Boeing’s “Method and system for shock wave attenuation via electromagnetic arc” could provide a real-life layer of protection from nearby impacts to targets. The downside: It won’t protect from direct hits.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Continue reading here:
Boeing Patents Star Wars Style Force Field Technology

Big solar plants produced 5% of California’s electricity last year

Today, the US Energy Information Agency announced that California had passed a key milestone, becoming the first state to produce five percent of its annual electricity using utility-scale solar power. This represents more than a doubling from the 2013 level, when 1.9 percent of the state’s power came from utility-scale solar, and means that California produces more electricity from this approach than all of the remaining states combined. The growth in California was largely fueled by the opening of two 550MW capacity photovoltaic plants, along with two large solar-thermal plants. In total, the state added nearly two GigaWatts of capacity last year alone. The growth is driven in part by a renewable energy standard that will see the state generate 33 percent of its electricity from non-hydro renewables by 2020; it was at 22 percent in 2014. Other states with renewable standards—Nevada, Arizona, New Jersey, and North Carolina—rounded out the top five. Both Nevada and Arizona obtained 2.8 percent of their electricity from solar; all other states were at one percent or less. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

View article:
Big solar plants produced 5% of California’s electricity last year

First Prototype of a Working Tricorder Unveiled At SXSW

the_newsbeagle writes The $10 million Tricorder X-prize is getting to the “put up or shut up” stage: The 10 finalists must turn in their working devices on June 1st for consumer testing. At SXSW last week, the finalist team Cloud DX showed off its prototype, which includes a wearable collar, a base station, a blood-testing stick, and a scanning wand. From the article: “The XPrize is partnering with the medical center at the University of California, San Diego on that consumer testing, since it requires recruiting more than 400 people with a variety of medical conditions. Grant Campany, director of the Tricorder XPrize, said he’s looking forward to getting those devices into real patients hands. ‘This will be a practical demonstration of what the future of medicine will be like, ‘ said Campany at that same SXSW talk, ‘so we can scale it up after competition.'” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

View the original here:
First Prototype of a Working Tricorder Unveiled At SXSW

Bring On the Boring Robots

malachiorion writes: After a successful 6-month pilot, Savioke’s ‘butler bots’ are heading to hotels around the country. These are not sexy, scary, or even technically impressive machines. But they were useful enough, over the course of their 2, 000 or so deliveries, to warrant a redesign, and a larger deployment starting in April. Savioke’s CEO had some interesting things to say about the pilot, including the fact that some 95 percent of guests gave the robot a 5-star review, and only the drunks seemed to take issue with it. Plus, as you might expect, everyone seemed to want to take a damn selfie with it. But as small as the stakes might appear, highly specialized bots like this one, which can only do one thing (in this case, bring up to 10 pounds of stuff from the lobby to someone’s door) are a better glimpse of our future than any talk of hyper-competent humanoids or similarly versatile machines. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Originally posted here:
Bring On the Boring Robots

This $300 cybernetic arm gets its smarts from your cellphone

Iron Man isn’t the only one 3D-printing artificial limbs these days. But unlike the mechanical hand delivered by Robert Downey Jr, this recently unveiled prosthetic from Japanese manufacturer Exiii costs just $300 and leverages your mobile device’s computing power to act just like the real thing. The Ghost in the Shell future we’ve between waiting for came took a step closer to reality. The Handiii bionic limb’s exterior is completely 3D-printed. This not only keeps each unit’s initial production costs low (it’s already dropped $50 since we last saw it at Maker Faire Tokyo ), the technique also makes fabricating replacement parts faster and easier as well. But despite its bargain-basement price, the Handiii is packed with electronics. An EMG sensor detects electrical impulses emanating from the user’s remaining limb stump and converts those impulses into physical movement through a series of servos. What’s more, it connects wirelessly to your cell phone or tablet using the mobile device’s CPU to interpret these signals and initiate movement. Unfortunately, there’s already a waiting list for these handy devices, partly due to a backlog of existing orders. Its creators are also focusing on getting these arms into the hands of academic and industrial researchers — potentially as an open-source platform — before beginning deliveries to the general public. Filed under: Wearables , Science Comments Via: TechCrunch Source: Exiii.jp

More:
This $300 cybernetic arm gets its smarts from your cellphone

Apple Blazes A Trail With Streaming Route Sharing Patent

 Apple has a new patent that could result in interesting use cases, including getting navigation directions from a robot scouting ahead, or live route information from your local friend when you’re visiting an unfamiliar city. The new patent (via AppleInsider) describes the sharing of live path tracking between devices, which goes beyond the kind of location sharing in Find My Friends… Read More

Taken from:
Apple Blazes A Trail With Streaming Route Sharing Patent

Crazy No-Stick Coating Is Coming to a Bottle of Glue Near You

Remember that no-stick ketchup bottle of the future an MIT professor made a few years ago? Well, the MIT team created a company to sell the super slippery technology, and Elmer’s recently signed an exclusive license to use it in their glue bottles. Pretty slick! (Sorry.) Read more…

See the original article here:
Crazy No-Stick Coating Is Coming to a Bottle of Glue Near You

Pixar Releases Free Version of RenderMan

jones_supa writes: A year ago, animation studio Pixar promised its RenderMan animation and rendering suite would eventually become free for non-commercial use. This was originally scheduled to happen in the SIGGRAPH 2014 computer graphics conference, but things got delayed. Nevertheless, today Pixar is releasing the free version into the wild. Free, non-commercial RenderMan can be used for research, education, evaluation, plug-in development, and any personal projects that do not generate commercial profits. This version is fully featured, without a watermark or any kind of artificial limits. Featuring Pixar’s new RIS technology, RenderMan delivers extremely fast global illumination and interactive shading and lighting for artists. The software is available for Mac, Linux, and Windows. In conjunction with the release, Pixar has also launched a new RenderMan Community site where users can exchange knowledge and resources, showcase their own work, share assets such as shaders and scripts, and learn about RenderMan from tutorials. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

More:
Pixar Releases Free Version of RenderMan

Facebook wants to save you a click by hosting other sites’ content

As if Facebook couldn’t get any bigger , it’s looking like The Social Network wants to start natively hosting content from news organizations. As The New York Times ‘ sources tell it, Zuckerberg and Co. have been in talks with at least six media companies about publishing their content directly on the site — no link-clicking required. The initial round of publications apparently includes The New York Times , Buzzfeed , National Geographic and our sister publication The Huffington Post . The reason? Websites take too long to load, and Facebook says that on mobile, the average eight-second page-load takes too long. The ourfit has a vested interest in mobile , hence it stepping in. Some of that load-time comes from advertisements, of course, which is how publications keep the lights on. From what the NYT says, it doesn’t seem like this pitch is going over too well, and probably for good reason. Facebook hasn’t exactly established much of a revenue (or traffic-data) sharing precedent, and at this stage, the whole deal looks very one-sided: Users stay on Facebook longer while news organizations sacrifice audience info and advertising income in exchange for eyeballs on its content. The argument here is that it could help a story get more views because, like its native video posts , these news stories would gain favor in the social media juggernaut’s curated news feed . Whether that’ll balance out for publications in the long run is anyone’s guess at this point. [Image credit: Alamy] My quote has gone viral but is being stolen by others. Read the original piece here http://t.co/7jrNn8XHcN pic.twitter.com/aO2dO25T55 – Tom Goodwin (@tomfgoodwin) March 21, 2015 Filed under: Internet , Mobile , Facebook Comments Source: The New York TImes

Read More:
Facebook wants to save you a click by hosting other sites’ content