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Welcome to Cyber Dump number 55, your look at what's happening in this insane age of technology that we live in. As always, all source links mentioned are below.
- Youtube link
- Archive.org mirror
- Torrent
VIRTUAL REALITY
Here's an interesting use for virtual reality. Osso VR showed off their platform which is built to help medical students act out various surgical procedures when dead bodies aren't available to practice on.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqra7wslwCM
Researchers at Stanford have also been working on a cool experiment which uses small, self-assembling robots to create ondemand objects that users can pick up and use in VR. Although fairly crude at the moment, I'm interested to see how this develops.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Jewb-Mrzz0
ROBOTICS
So we have robots backflipping, but what about them being able to run, and chase us down before they kill us? Well, researchers at the University of Tokyo have developed a ACHIRES, a bipedal robot running system, which is able to achieve high speeds, and automatically adjust midstride. It does this using a high speed camera which views the landscape at 600fps.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Nm6b6YasSk
http://www.k2.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/fusion/BipedalRunningForwardBent/index-e.html
Researchers at University of Maryland have also been working on a curious little bot, which is designed to remotely monitor bridges, and is able to transition between horizontal and vertical planes easily.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkZ1l1AZ8QI
People at the Wyss institute have been at it again, this time experimenting with origami-type artificial muscles that are capable of lifting 1000x it's own weight. It does this with a simple combination of the folding muscles, and the adding or subtracting of either air or liquid for movement.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tKI8BUHFLo
NEURAL NETWORKS
Google have announced the AIY Vision Kit, which enables easy image recognition on the Pi Zero. One reason why I think this is cool, is how it can be used without a network connection too, so whatever you make won't be automatically sent back to Google HQ. It's available at the end of the month.
https://blog.google/topics/machine-learning/introducing-aiy-vision-kit-make-devices-see/
DIY
The n0where blog made an eye-opening post detailing how to set up a GSM base station, allowing you to create your own mini GSM phone network. Pretty cool, and on top of that, this setup uses open source software and hardware.
https://n0where.net/build-gsm-base-station/
SELF-DRIVING VEHICLES
Another week, another self-driving bus scheme pops up. This time, in no other than the electronics capital of Shenzen, China. I wonder how long until this sort of thing is ubiquitous?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ci4ekhVSbEI
VIDEOS
Two new videos this week. The first is a short documentary about bipedal robots, including some of the history, and where it might be going in the future.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEXVGwEfq_E
The next is a thought-provoking talk by roboticist Sabine Hauert, where she goes over different types of swarm behaviors in small robots, drones and nano particles, along with the possible future applications of such systems.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBbYuzhxpE0
Alright, that's it for this week. Thanks for watching, and I'll see you in the next video.
httsp://n-o-d-e.net/shop
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BY NODE