We’re one step closer to creating the Terminator with iVisit’s “SeeScan” object recognition technology. Intended for the blind and visually impaired, enabled mobile devices can announce the name of an object after looking it over with its camera. Identification only takes a second or two, and the video above shows how the device even recognizes a $20 bill even when it’s folded up. It can also provide estimates of range and orientation, detect landmarks and provide directions with GPS and Google Maps. Beta versions are coming later this year on major 3G network and Windows Mobile phones, with Symbian and iPhone versions to follow. [thanks Eyal]
With everyone talking about the daring rescue of a Navy captain from Somali pirates with only three sniper shots, it would seem the US has the whole proficiency thing down. But not content with skills alone, the defense department is looking ahead to more advanced sniping. The EXACTO (Extreme Accuracy Tasked Ordnance) program, in development now, hopes to create advanced ammo that changes directions in mid-air to account for moving targets and environmental conditions. Meanwhile, a super scope in development accounts for changes in the atmosphere with a goal of bagging ten times more kills per sniper, and yet another project would use the shimmer we see on warm days to render snipers invisible from afar. Insert “headshot” joke here. [via Wired]
For people who suffer from severe asthma, sometimes the cause of an attack is obvious — pollen in a field of blooming flowers, or dander from a pack of pets — but that’s not always the case. With the help of willing asthmatics, David Van Sickle, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is looking for a better way to hunt down triggers. His team of students will use global positioning technology, embedded in patients’ inhalers, to locate triggers around campus, hopefully uncovering previously unknown environmental factors for the lung disease. The US government’s Centers for Disease Control is backing the study.
Van Sickle tells the University of Wisconsin News that known risk factors don’t fully explain asthma’s prevalence. An example: one outbreak of asthma attacks in Barcelona throughout the 1980s baffled scientists who were looking for all the usual triggers. But after eight years of reports from the victims, they traced the source to the city’s waterfront. Soybean dust — once unsuspected as a trigger — was ultimately flagged as a serious threat to asthmatics. Obviously, with the help of GPS technology, researchers can get a faster handle on what’s making people sick.
Van Sickle has another asthma project in the pipe, too. Another group of his students are trying to build a cheaper spirometer, which can detect asthma and other diseases by measuring lung health. These devices typically sell for $1,500 a piece, and the students are trying to whittle the cost down to $50 with an open source mentality; their designs are available to anyone online.
When uploading to Flickr, users set tags, locations and other data– upon which an enterprising group of MIT researchers have built a project called “The World’s Eyes”. Now exhibited in the Design Museum in Barcelona, “Los Ojos Del Mundo” tracks photographers both local and tourist throughout their photographic adventures in Spain. As described by MIT’s SENSEable City Lab:
When posting photos online, users of the photo sharing platform Flickr transmit to the world their perspective of a place or event through the lens of a digital camera. Each digital photo file codes both the time when that photo was taken and the location it captures. Analyzing this information allows us to follow the trail that each Flickr photographer travels through Spain. (Un)photographed Spain maps thousands of these public, digital footprints over one year. As photos overlap in certain locations, they expose the places that attract the photographer’s gaze . In contrast, the absence of images in other locations reveal the unphotographed spaces of a more introverted Spain.
The result is a visually stunning display of the collective photographers’ view of Spain. Where and when do these photographs take place? What objects and locations are the most photogenic? We salute the work of MIT’s SENSEable CITY, as the art captured by Flickr photographers has been visualized into collective art from 30,000 feet. [MIT via datavisualization.ch]
Godzilla better watch its back, because toy maker Bandai is going to erect a 60-foot tall Gundam robot suit at an artificial Toyko Bay island (pardon the obvious Godzilla joke there, it was too good to pass up). Bandai is creating the statue in honor of the anime series’ 30th anniversary. The steel-framed statue is in production now and should be ready to defend Tokyo by July. However, it’ll only stay there for two months before it’s removed from the display site. After that, who knows? Maybe the U.S. could stand it up next to the Statue of Liberty. [via CrunchGear]
Though the details are a bit fuzzy, these solar panels from start-up Veranda Solar are a promising new product that could revolutionize the concept of solarizing your home. Sure everyone wants to go solar…in theory. But who actually goes the full mileage and procures the funding, installs all the equipment and gets their house producing its own energy from sunlight? Not seeing a lot of hands. Now, hanging a panel out the window and plugging ‘er in– that sounds like something the average American could actually get into. Unfortunately, there seems to be no indication of how much power you’ll actually be able to produce with this $400-600 investment. To be fair, Veranda is still in the production stages, so there’s plenty of time to fill us in. These panels seem to be a solid step in a realistically sustainable direction. Kudos. [Crunch Gear]
Wednesday, March 11, 2009 3:00PM - By Jared Newman
Armed with Garmin GPS devices, fourteen test subjects are living their lives and beaming their moveent to the Centre for Advanced Spacial Analysis at UCL in London. The result is, well, not particularly surprising. Saturday is a peak activity day, for example, and most of the weekday movement happens between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. Also, not much changes from week to week. “Unfortunately our [lives] do not quite cover as much ground in the city as we might like to think, the routines we follow are rather strong,” the experimenters write. “Nevertheless, to find that the perception is different, is already a good finding.” Another positive? The results are cool to look at. Check out the video above, with time-lapsed routes superimposed on Google Earth. [Urban Tick via BB Gadgets]
Wednesday, March 11, 2009 11:30AM - By Jared Newman
When it comes to improving a car’s mileage and power consumption, the answer for BMW lies in space, sort of. The luxury automaker is looking to NASA for efficiency solutions, adding thermoelectric generators similar to those used on satellites. Though BMW’s version obviously lacks nuclear power, the generators pull heat exhaust from the engine to generate up to 200W of power. In addition to powering secondary electrical systems, this increases fuel efficiency by 5 percent. For NASA, I imagine this private consulting gig will result in much-needed cash during a time when taxpayer spending is under the microscope. Look for the space-inspired Bimmer in 2014. [CAR via CrunchGear]
There are already a couple of bionic eyeexperiments floating around in the scientific world, but one man is working full-time on a DIY solution. As a child, Canadian filmmaker Rob Spence lost one of his eyes in a shotgun accident. Now, with the help of “whiz kid” Kosta Grammatis, Spence wants to stick a tiny camera onto his glass eye, with no budget and only a handful of volunteers and corporate backers to help. The so-called “Eyeborg Project” is still a work in progress, and the mini documentary above ends on a cliffhanger, but you’ve got to appreciate the group’s can-do spirit. [The Eyeborg Project via CrunchGear]
