| Iowa State students take a lighter, more autonomous 'lunabot' to NASA competition |
| Jared Peterson, working away in the Caterpillar Mechatronics Laboratory in Iowa State University's Hoover Hall, recently held up a small electric motor. |
| Wrinkle-traveling Clothbot makes its IEEE debut (w/ Video) |
| (Phys.org) -- As any gathering of scientists working with robots will suggest, attempts toward perfecting techniques and outcomes of grasping and maneuvering are key issues for researchers working on climbing robots. At this week’s IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation in Saint Paul, Minnesota, the robotics community got to see what a Chinese team has achieved in its presentation of Clothbot. This is a climbing robot that easily climbs up your pants or shirt. The Clothbot is small and lightweight, which did not deter from bloggers’ reactions that the device was “creepy.” System and Design of Clothbot: a Robot for Flexible Clothes Climbing, by Yuanyuan Liu, Xinyu Wu, Huihuan Qian, Duan Zheng, Jianquan Sun and Yangsheng Xu from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese University of Hong Kong, was presented Tuesday at the IEEE event. |
| NLT announces naked-eye display with better 3-D view |
| (Phys.org) -- NLT Technologies has announced its development of an autostereoscopic multiview display based on the success of its HxDP technology. HxDP stands for Horizontally x times Density Pixels. The company reports impressive end results as improvements in 3-D and 2-D viewing. NLT Technologies together with its sales and marketing channels in the Americas and Europe, Renesas Electronics America and Renesas Electronics Europe GmbH, announced the autostereoscopic multi-view high resolution display earlier this week. |
| Review: Android 4.0 phones from HTC aren't identical twins |
| It seems there is a new crop of Android phones every few months, which is great if you're in the market for a new phone. |
| Kyocera releases smartphones for easy listening |
| (Phys.org) -- "Can you hear me? You’re dying? Oh, you're drying. Are you talking into your phone?" While smartphones continue with noisy attempts to deliver stunning visuals and entertaining apps, the fundamental problem of hearing a phone caller properly remains a less strident but universal pain. Kyocera, for one, is a company that wants to be a hero in commercializing smartphones with improved sound quality. This week, Kyocera is introducing smartphones in Japan that carry its special bone conduction system technology. |
| Optimus LTE 2: LG unveils new smartphone to revive business |
| South Korea's LG Electronics on Thursday unveiled a new version of its Optimus smartphone with greater memory and a more powerful battery, in an attempt to catch up with its rivals. |
| New MacBook Pro Retina display will cost Apple, consumer too? |
| Apple Retina displays are reportedly already in the supply channel for the rumored redesigned MacBook Pros, but they are not going to come cheap. |
| IPhone to get larger screen: A report to take with a grain of salt? |
| Apple has begun preparing to launch an iPhone with a larger screen than its previous models, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. |
| Japan's DoCoMo to launch smart phones for elderly |
| Leading Japanese mobile operator NTT DoCoMo on Wednesday unveiled its first smart phone specially designed for elderly users, as the company bids to tap into an ageing consumer population. |
| NEC unveils gesture controlling device |
| Japanese technology titan NEC has unveiled a gadget that allows users to control their TV, mobile phone or tablet computer using a virtual input device. |
| AMD's Trinity is out to rattle Intel's Ivy Bridge |
| (Phys.org) -- AMD has announced Trinity, its second-generation A-Series accelerated processing units (APUs), which are out to rival Intel’s Ivy Bridge processors. AMD’s Trinity is an update to its Llano, which attempted to challenge Intel’s Sandy Bridge. Trinity includes up to four CPU cores ad single GPU, with features especially suited for supporting laptops and ultra thin notebooks. The Trinity chips will appear on HP’s Sleekbook machines when the Sleekbook debuts next month. With Trinity, AMD is promoting its two appealing strong suits that sit well with manufacturers and consumers, in the name of graphics performance and power consumption. |
| Panasonic to release 65-inch Interactive Plasma Display |
| Panasonic Corporation announced today it will start shipment of its 65-inch "Interactive Plasma Display" (TH-65PB1), incorporated with electronic pen functions, in Japan, the U.S., and Europe at the end of June, followed by other parts of the globe for the use of professionals. Panasonic also plans to commercialize an 85-inch model, the size of a standard whiteboard, and the world's largest 103-inch model by the end of this year. The TH-65PB1 and an 85-inch prototype will be exhibited at the Educational IT Solutions EXPO to be held from May 16 in Tokyo. |
| Buffalo shows SSDs with MRAM at Japan show |
| (Phys.org) -- Japan-based storage experts, Buffalo, has introduced a new line of solid state drives (SSDs) that use MRAM cache (instead of standard SDRAM). The company’s new line of solid state drives went on show this month in the form of a 4-Gbyte SSD equipped with an 8-Mbyte MRAM cache memory at the Embedded Systems Expo in Japan, which ran from May 9 to May 11. The show is an important gathering of the latest technologies, systems integration platforms and development platforms serving embedded systems. Buffalo’s initial targeted end users for its MRAM line are to be corporate customers in industrial settings requiring high reliability. |
| Samsung defends Android Galaxy S3 PenTile display |
| (Phys.org) -- So what's a hot new Galaxy S3 smartphone doing with a PenTile AMOLED display like this? That is a question that surprised developers and smartphone blog sites earlier this month when Samsung announced in London its new Galaxy S3 with a 4.8-inch 720p resolution display that uses a PenTile subpixel layout. Expectations were that the Galaxy S3 would carry another type of upgraded display The PenTile design had drawn disappointed reviews when it had earlier appeared on the Galaxy Nexus phone. This week, however, a Samsung spokesperson stepped forward to explain why PenTile was still chosen: Samsung wants the S3 phone displays to last longer. |
| Whirr, click, hum: Robots go at it in 2.007 finale |
| MIT’s Johnson Athletic Center took on the aura of an old-fashioned county fair on Thursday night, complete with popcorn, balloons, jugglers, cotton candy and pitchmen wearing brightly colored jackets and bowties. But rather than ring tosses and sheep-shearing, the central event was a series of one-on-one matchups between an amazing variety of robots that students have spent the whole semester designing, building and testing. |
| Transformer Pad TF300 a weak replacement for laptop |
| Asus' new Transformer Pad TF300 is among the first of a new class of convertible devices that are heading toward store shelves. |
| Samsung unveils ultra high-end TV |
| South Korea's Samsung Electronics on Thursday unveiled its new-generation premium television as global manufacturers seek to drive slowing sales with lucrative models. |
| Robots learn to pick up oddly shaped objects |
| (Phys.org) -- When Cornell engineers developed a new type of robot hand that could pick up oddly shaped objects it presented a challenge: It was easy for a human operator to choose the best place to take hold of an object, but an autonomous robot, like the ones we may someday have helping around the home or office, would need a new kind of programming. So they have developed a procedure -- an algorithm -- that allows a robot to learn grasping skills from experience and apply them in new situations. |
| Microsoft offers $99 Xbox consoles with a catch |
| Microsoft began testing whether a pricing strategy that has been a hit with smartphones will invigorate sales of its Xbox 360 videogame consoles. |
| Vacuum robot is trilingual, knows witty dialect |
| (AP) -- It looks just like iRobot's Roomba vacuuming machine, except the new circular roaming vacuum cleaner from Sharp Corp. is trilingual, and even knows a hip humorous dialect. |
| Samsung smartphone debuts in London |
| South Korea's Samsung Electronics unveiled its latest flagship smartphone at a London launch as it seeks to cement its position as the world's best-selling mobile phone maker. |
| Apple iPad outmuscles Android in global tablet sales |
| Apple's iPad outmuscled its Android-powered tablet computer rivals in early 2012, in a global market suffering from post-holiday hangover, a survey showed Thursday. |
| Flying 3-D eye-bots |
| Like a well-rehearsed formation team, a flock of flying robots rises slowly into the air with a loud buzzing noise. A good two dozen in number, they perform an intricate dance in the sky above the seething hordes of soccer fans. Rowdy hooligans have stormed the field and set off flares. Fights are breaking out all over, smoke is hindering visibility, and chaos is the order of the day. |
| RIM says will still make keypads for BlackBerrys |
| (AP) -- Research in Motion Ltd. says future BlackBerry models will still offer physical keyboards. |
| New robot butler "HERB" can microwave your dinner (w/ Video) |
| (Phys.org) -- One of the big disappointments of the computer age is the distinct lack of robots in our everyday lives. For years we’ve all been teased by the possibilities of robots in SciFi movies and television shows, and still, the only robots in our lives are those little Roomba vacuum cleaners. |
| British police get 360 degree accident scene camera |
| (Phys.org) -- When car accidents happen, typically road closures soon follow. This is because police need to study the scene to try to determine what happened, who was at fault, etc. Part of that investigation involves measuring things such as length of skid marks, distance between vehicles, or even how much a car compressed during impact; all of which takes a considerable amount of time while still leaving room for errors. Now, a new way of recording accident scenes is being used by police in Essex England. It’s the RIEGL VZ-400 - part camera, part scanner that is able to faithfully record an accident scene in a 360° panorama. |
| Bird-like robot perches on a human hand (w/ Video) |
| (Phys.org) -- Among the many challenges of designing flying robots is getting them to land gracefully. By taking a cue from birds, a team of engineers has developed a flapping-wing flying robot that can land by perching on a human hand. |
| Target phasing out Amazon's Kindle |
| (AP) -- Target Corp. says it's phasing out Amazon.com Inc.'s e-reader Kindle at its more than 1,700 stores and its website. |
| Wearable devices track people via wireless network |
| Mobile technology is opening new channels for remotely monitoring family members and others who need to be tracked. |
| An environmentally friendly robot |
| Robots that decompose once they have reached the end of their mission could soon be deployed in the environment, thanks to a Research Project Grant of over £200,000 from the Leverhulme Trust. |