AI_interfaces_cogsci

In coming years, neuroscience will answer questions we don't even yet know to ask. Sometimes, though, focus on the brain is misleading.

Via Spaceweaver

RedOrbit
Researchers Create Touch-Based Interface That Can Be Applied Anywhere
RedOrbit
In 2002, Tom Cruise used “smart gloves” to manipulate images and video on a virtual touchscreen in Steven Spielberg's Minority Report.

Haptic technology is breaking new and promising ground in the field of surgical robots. Learn more about haptics and how it is changing the idea of senses.

Via Kalani Kirk Hausman

Residents of Auvergne, a province in south central France, may soon receive their daily paper by drone.

 

According to a blog post published yesterday, local postal service La Poste Groupe has been working for several years to modernize its delivery processes. A plan has been hatched to implement paper delivery by drone in early May with the help of local volunteers, and tests are already underway.

The drone is a quadricopter, which can be controlled by iPod touch, iPhone, iPad and Android devices, and costs over $300. It is manufactured by Parrot.com, a French wireless devices maker that also announced a partnership with La Poste this morning.

 

We have not heard back from Parrot.com after reaching out for comment. It’s not quite April Fools — but there are legal issues to consider with this insane (but awesome) idea

Via ddrrnt

Entwined, Enmeshed, Entangled – Three modes of ‘being’ pertinent to our cyborgization process

Abstract:

By redesigning the conceptual landscape of our networked inter-relationality we may finally disentangle ourselves from the all-pervading occlusion of the cyborgization process and allow a fresh recognition of the manifold human sensorium extended in hyperconnectivity.
In the re-conceptualizing of our cyber existence we may need relinquish a few cherished objects of identity such as man machine interface, virtuality and man machine co-existence but more importantly the dualistic distinction between ‘real’ life and our virtual extensions as existence.
All of these descriptive objects of identity I suggest should become ‘naturalized’ in a new cyber-existential language.

This is the first part of a three pronged approach to what I believe is the foundation of a future philosophy of and for the hyperconnected individual.
I will try to show that these three modes of beingness are the quintessential infrastructures necessary for a future of a technological civilization aiming for the firmament of freedom and equality, personal responsibility and open access culture.
A civilization, which roots, we currently inhabit but that promises changes to the perception of ourselves, the understanding of the universe and the manner by which we may develop in tandem.
The three lines of approach that will be used are: Entwinement, Enmeshment, and Entanglement.
Each of these terms represents a similar but different manner to realize the state of affairs of hyperconnectivity as the threshold infrastructure in the process of becoming a citizen of the future, a cyborg netizen and perhaps a posthuman.Entwinement, Enmeshment and Entanglement each represent a different level of intimacy in the infocology (see lexical index) one exists in and partakes of. The three terms offered here are suggestions for an illustrative strategy that will allow a deeper and more accurate description of the state of affairs of our cyber existence. Each of these terms will be expanded upon later, for now suffice it to say that the terms are distinguished primarily by the amount, depth and extensiveness of the connectivity between minds in the hyperconnected infosphere. Entwinement stands for the lowest level, Enmeshment for the medium level and Entanglement for the highest or deepest level.

Via Wildcat2030

NASA's Mars rover Opportunity has made perhaps the biggest discovery of its nearly 10-year career, finding evidence that life may have been able to get a foothold on the Red Planet long ago.

 

The Opportunity rover spotted clay minerals in an ancient rock on the rim of Mars' Endeavour Crater, suggesting that benign, neutral-pH water once flowed through the area, scientists said.

 

"This is water you could drink," Opportunity principal investigator Steve Squyres of Cornell University told reporters today (June 7), explaining why the rock, dubbed "Esperance," stands out from other water-soaked stones the rover has studied.

 

The golf cart-size Opportunity and its twin, Spirit, landed on the Red Planet in January 2004 on three-month missions to search for signs of past water activity. The robotic explorers found plenty of such evidence (much of it indicating extremely acidic water, however), then just kept rolling along.

 

Spirit stopped communicating with Earth in 2010 and was declared dead a year later, but Opportunity is still going strong. In August 2011, the six-wheeled robot arrived at the rim of the 14-mile-wide Endeavour Crater, which it has been investigating ever since.

 

Opportunity has seen signs of clays in Endeavour rocks before, but in nowhere near the concentrations observed in Esperance, researchers said. Overall, Esperance provides strong evidence that ancient Mars was habitable.

 

"The fundamental conditions that we believe to be necessary for life were met here," Squyres said. The neutral-pH water that generated the clays probably flowed through the region during the first billion years of Martian history, he added, stressing that it's nearly impossible to pin down the absolute ages of Red Planet rocks without bringing them back to Earth.

 

Opportunity's latest discovery fits well with one made recently on the other side of the planet by the rover's bigger, younger cousin Curiosity, which found strong evidence that its landing site could have supported microbial life in the ancient past.

Via Dr. Stefan Gruenwald

Social media in healthcare is primarily about reach, and what social media can provide healthcare stakeholders on the whole.

Via Fab GOUX-BAUDIMENT

NASA engineers designed a robot intended to dig soil 16 hours a day for five years.

Via ROBOLUTION CAPITAL

The torpedo-shaped underwater robots, called gliders, can read calls from four types of endangered whales and relay their locations in real time.

Via Kalani Kirk Hausman, ROBOLUTION CAPITAL

The Internet of Things is the long-prophesied phenomenon of everyday devices talking to one another—and us—online, creating new behaviors and efficiencies. It turned out to be vaporware.

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The rise of the machines has begun: Steve Sande’s household fan is now self-aware. Sande, a Colorado-based tech writer, had noticed that his cat, Ruby, was suffering on hot summer days. His house doesn’t have air-conditioning, and he wasn’t always around to turn on the fan.

So Sande bought a new gizmo called the WeMo Switch, which connects to the Internet so you can turn on an outlet remotely. It’s also programmable. Using the free web service If This Then That, Sande created a script that monitors information from Yahoo Weather. If the temperature in his neighborhood hits 85 degrees, the fan turns itself on and cools the house. “This entire thing,” he says, “revolves around a 17-year-old cat.”

I love this story, because it illustrates something fascinating: The Internet of Things is finally arriving—and it’s bubbling up from the grassroots.

The Internet of Things is the long-prophesied phenomenon of everyday devices talking to one another—and us—online, creating odd new behaviors and efficiencies. Fridges that order food when you’re almost out of butter! Houses that sense when you’re gone and power down!

Back in the ’90s, big companies built systems to do tricks like this, but they were expensive, hard to use, and vendor-specific. The hype eventually boiled away. The Internet of Things turned out to be vaporware.

Until the past few years, that is, when the landscape shifted from below.

Via Wildcat2030

Thought-controlled prosthesis (credit: Integrum) An implantable robotic arm controlled by thoughts is being developed by Chalmers University of Technology...

Via Wildcat2030