Category: Science

February 17, 2011

Ultimate list of Cool Touch and Gesture Based Video Walls

So who has the best interactive walls? Here’s some of our picks below. As we move into a world which is transitioning to devices using the NUI (Natural User Interface) there’s a lot to keep an eye on. If you know any more please post them in the comments.

1.University of Groningen:
Pros: Looks awesome, very responsive. Multi-user capable.
Cons: You can’t go out and buy one off the shelf. Touch based only?

2. Microsoft Xbox 360 Kinect AND Windows Phone 7, working together!
Pros: Kinect SDK on the way for PC (fingers crossed) so a very affordable way to develop. Multi user. Facial recognition. Supports second screen in this video.
Cons: None. Seriously! SDK pending, this will be the easiest entry point to start building your first video wall.

3. Toyota Vision Multi Touch Wall:
Pros: Massive 82 inch screens at high res. Very responsive.
Cons: Expensive setup.

4. HD 18 Screen 20 ft Paint Wall with iPad integration.
Pros: Very cool. Huge. HD. Responsive. Works with a second screen (iPad)
Cons: Looks a bit like a one off application for now. Can’t go out and buy one.

5.Yahoo’s Gesture based Video Wall. http://vimeo.com/19177169
Pros: Looks good, hi-resolution and seems responsive.
Cons: Tiled screens. Looks like only one user at a time?

6. Microsoft LightSpace
Pros: It’s a true 3D interface for an entire toom. It projects working interfaces onto your arm/ hand.
Cons: Early days. Long way to go here (but still very cool).

7. Hard Rock Cafe Vegas:
Pros: Multi user. Smooth and responsive. Great content.
Cons: Looks expensive?

8. Ring Wall http://vimeo.com/6648869
Pros: It’s a massive 425 square metres in size. Enough room for everyone to play.
Cons: With 15 HD projectors we’re betting the ongoing running costs might stack up?

9. The Schematic TouchWall with RFID
Pros: It recognises RFID cards allowing you access to personal info. Social integration.
Cons: Nothing obvious. This wall is pretty cool.

10. The BendDesk.
Pros: It’s horizontal AND vertical.
Cons: Not quite wall sized! It’s a prototype so a little rough round the edges.

11. Canon’s big wall – Expo 2010
Pros: It’s looks big and multi user.
Cons: We can’t quite tell if this is a ‘smoke and mirrors’ job. This video is more about the camera than the wall itself.

12. HP’s video wall of touch (link):
Pros: Nice tight looking tiled screens. Cons Already looking a bit dated compered to the others. Touch only. Touch looks a little laggy.

13. The Giant iPhone – Table Connect
Pros: Pretty simple concept. Just plug in your iphone and mount it on a wall!
Cons: Do they make a wall sized one yet?

We’re pretty sure we’ll be seeing a lot more of these soon. Please send us any good ones we might have missed!

October 26, 2010

Unboxing the Parrot AR Drone

We love unboxing gadgets! …and the AR Drone from Parrot is GREAT fun. The Drone is controlled via an iPhone app which works by tilting your phone to steer whilst viewing a live video feed through a camera mounted in the Drone. It’s a truly usable Augmented Reality device.

How to buy in Australia: We ordered it from Amazon.com. It took 3 days to be delivered to Sydney from the US and cost just under $350.00 AUD including delivery.

So here it is the unboxing through to a test flight…

Amazon delivers it in a HUGE box…

Slightly smaller, but still big box inside…

The Drone is neatly packed surrounded by protective cardboard.

No unwrapping necessary. It pops straight out. Nothing to assamble.

Battery, battery pack and stickers for the external shell.

It comes with the outdoor shell, and adaptors for Au, UK, US, EU.

Below: Unboxed looking at home in the studio…

Below: @bradyohalloran takes an instagram photo of the AR Drone:

Below: Flight Test: This a video taken from the Drone’s camera in the studio.

Below: We do like the idea of attaching a GoPro camera to the Drone to attain HD video – here’s a nice clip of someone flying the drone pretty high… (you can unlock the altitude sensor in the iphone app allowing you to go up as hi as the wifi lets you).

Below: The Promo Vid for the AR Drone.

Things you should know before you buy:

You get one battery that lasts for about 15 mins flying time.
Charger comes with four adaptors incl AUS, UK, US, EU.
You need an iphone or ipod touch to control it.
You don’t need a wifi network (the Drone creates one).
It takes about 5-10 mins to get to grips with the controls.
You need a seperate app to record video.
Onboard Video is 15fps
There is a secondary camera on the bottom of the Drone.
You need 2 of them to have a virtual dogfight.
It’s much bigger than it looks.
It’s a lot of fun.

August 4, 2010

They’re coming to you real soon. Creepy Robots.

The Telenoid R1 Robot makes its first video appearance below. Compared with Casper the Ghost gone wrong, “Kill it with Fire” seems a fairly apt comment from YouTuber ThePeacemakerGer. Read more here at the Daily Mail:

May 24, 2010

How Exciting: Algorithm Detects Sarcasm

The amusing nerds over at Geekosystem, and the more serious nerds over at Slashdot are reporting in that someone has created an algorithm capable of picking sarcasm in written statements. Great, just great. That immediately ruins the chance of ever messing with some straight-laced, sensible robot slave in the future.

It’s called SASI (semi-supervised sarcasm identification algorithm), and apparently “SASI achieved a precision of 77% and recall of 83.1% “on an evaluation set containing newly discovered sarcastic sentences, where each sentence was annotated by three human readers.”” More info and a couple of thoughts after the jump.

Continue reading →

May 12, 2010

Alan Wake – The Project

Here’s a little something we worked on recently for Xbox Australia that was pretty fun. We kidnapped a bunch of Xbox gamers, stuck some probes on them and then left them alone in various locations at the Quarantine Station at Sydney’s North Head. Oh, yeah, they got to play Alan Wake before anyone else in the country.

Interesting to see how the body responds to intense situations in games. Alan Wake has its share of them too. I’ve had a go myself and I’m in no hurry to go wandering in the woods at night any time soon.

Check the site out at http://www.xbox.com.au/theproject/

There’s some more videos you can check out and a bunch of pics on Flickr.

January 22, 2010

Pepsi powered mobile phone

My iphone ran out of battery last night … pesky thing. I’m too impatient to wait and see if Steve has a solution to this problem so I started searching. Anyway, I stumbled across this piece of innovation: a phone that runs on pepsi … well any fizzy pop.

This little beauty is made possible thanks to a bio battery:

Bio battery has the potential to operate three to four times longer on a single charge than conventional lithium batteries and it could be fully biodegradable. Meanwhile, it brings a whole new perception to batteries and afternoon tea.

Genius. More here

@handypearce

October 26, 2009

Augmented reality X-ray vision

X-ray vision – the thing that every 80s child dreamt about – is here. See through walls, cars and other objects … and look like a right dork whilst wearing the augmented reality headset.

@handypearce

September 15, 2009

Nature blows away Art. Again.

Recently had the pleasure of driving through Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, USA. On the way to the well known Old Faithful checked out the much lesser known Fountain Paint Pots. Amazing.

Picture several hissing, steaming, bubbling, sploshing pockets of earth spread over an area the size of a football field. Each one unique. Some with spouting geysers, some with goopy grey mud.

Personal favourite: the Celestine Pool which is every bit as colourful as this pic nabbed off Flickr if not more so…

That’s a deep pool filled with very hot crystal clear water. The colours are intense and alien.

Why is there so much geo thermal activity in Yellowstone? Because nearly the entire park sits in a caldera. The earth’s magma rises near the surface which creates steam which powers the geysers. Or something like that.

If you’re into doomsday scenarios you can read about how one day the entire park might turn into a super volcano which could potentially have an extinction level effect.

And it could happen tomorrow.

For now, enjoy the pictures…

@iclazie

September 1, 2009

Simple Machines

A beautiful game for the Museum of Science and Industry that makes physics fun. I love the way it successfully combines basic character animation with real world objects. Be sure to have your sound turned on because the music is great too.

Via Mecano

August 14, 2009

Greetings, aliens!

The inhabitants of what might be Earth’s nearest ‘waterworld’ may well be scratching their heads in twenty years time, as a barrage of 160-character messages from enthusiastic Earthlings bombard their airwaves. Twenty years is just about how long it will take the messages to reach the enormous Gliese 581d, travelling at light speed from the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex with the cooperation of NASA, and it’ll be another twenty years before we can get a reply. That is, of course, if the aliens of Gliese (Gliesians?) exist, have the technology to receive the messages, and speak English.

Hellofromearth.net is the brainchild of Cosmos Magazine’s Wilson da Silva, and was set up as part of Australia’s National Science Week. You can read others’ messages, or add your own (English only, please, and nothing inappropriate!) at the site. The short missives (well into their thousands) so far include the serious, the witty, quotes from Monty Python and Oscar Wilde, and my favourite so far:

“MY AIM OF CONTACTING YOU IS TO SEEK YOUR ASSISTANCE IN TRANSFERRING THE SUM OF THIRTY FIVE MILLION U.S.DOLLARS OUT OF NIGERIA AND INTO YOUR TRUSTED BANK ABROAD.”

http://hellofromearth.net/