Microsoft surface

I quite like the idea behind this, of course it's in it's early stages now but I can see this being developed further so that one day we will have touch screen walls, chairs, tables, (yes this is what this is but I mean in different variety of styles and scale) can you imagine going into macdonalds and just touching your order on one of these touch screen walls? swiping your credit card over it and then your meal arriving within minutes via a conveyor belt thingy?

just a thought anyway. 

Just think how they could be utilized in the class-room/learning environment! with touch screen desks, online tutorials right at their desk and immediate access to a range of online services!

Maybe their could be a portable mini-version that users can carry around and store data on, have access to at any time? school kids could do their homework on it and bring it in, or just send it in direct via a network?

These could be used in post offices, supermarkets, retail outlets, phone shops, takeaways, the list goes on! or will everything become an online only event? will it become increasingly rare for one to actually venture out into the city and actually visit a shop and buy their own clothes? or will we do it online with an avatar built exactly to your body measurements? 

capable of showing you what the outfit would look like on you if you put on a few pounds or lost a few! capable of allowing you to see the outfit on your body and face from all angles?

anyway I'm straying a bit here, but just thought I'd write a bit about the surface and how it might affect our lives in the near future, and let's not forget virtual pets and how it will change those, such as the eye pet from sony? isn't that operated using something similar to the surface?

Necora the robotic pet cat

Necora is omrons answer to "Aibo" for those who prefer the feline counterpart, Necora is a robotic pet cat with synthetic fur for a more realistic feel, she senses touch, sound, light, tone of voice- she even recognizes and becomes accustomed to your voice and her on name, she get's angry and hisses of she is handled badly and is capable of expressing satisfaction when stroked or cradled. Necora has the ability to express desires such as wanting to sleep or cuddle.

Necora becomes attached to her owner and her personality will adjust accordingly over time.

does not need food and can be left in the house all day without the worry of coming home to find poo and wee on the floor! 

also will not rip your furniture and wake you up in the middle of the night for food, oh and she won't die!

The future of pets is here, why bother with real ones? with expensive vetinary bills, fleas and the demand to take care of them that we just can't manage these days with work, children, studying etc. these are perfect and just think how much better they will be in the future! I want one!! 

Robots of today VS robots from the past...

Robots are being used today in medicine. A robot can be so precise that it would be a great tool for performing surgery with. Robots can do insisions that are so clean that a person would not be able to see the cut from a distance after it healed. Doctors wouldn't have to fear of making the wrong insision or cutting too far. A robot would be programmed to cut a certain depth and place. Robots have been real helpful in researching. They have helped doctors excel in new discoveries and information.

 

Robots are used in industrial factories. They help weld cars and parts together. Since their percission is so accurate when it comes to welding it looks like a proffesional did it. The nice thing is that robots aren't bothered by the bright light or heat. So these machines can do more work then humans can. The only thing required is the software.

 

Robots are used for home entertainment and leasure. There are several home robot kits that people buy. Some kits make the robot follow a line or trace a line. Other robot kits are made so the robot can determine if it is on the table or on the floor and how far to go before it runs into the wall or off the table. These robots have light sensors and switch sensors. There are some robots that do house cleaning such as vacum the floor or serve other people. Pet robots mimic actual pets which provide people with entertainment. These pet robots can bark, roll-over, sit, and play with you.

 

The production and uses for robots have increased rapidly since 1970s. Robots have become more and more popular. The size of the robot has also changed. Compared to a robot made in 1970s or 80s, the robots now can be smaller and much more portable too. The way technology is accelerating there could be a robot like the one in "The Bicentenial Man". 

“Despite being quintessentially useless, home robots such as the Evolution ER1, the Probotics Cye, and Sony's Aibo are beginning to gain popularity, and the next iteration of personal robots such as the vacuuming Roomba and the Solar Mower may actually prove to be useful. As robots coopt humanity's upright mode of transportation they may even become downright ubiquitous. Consider, however, the increasingly creepy implications of current robotics research - from the emotional Kismet, to the humanoid Asimo, robots are becoming both visually accute and dextrous, capable of recharging themselves, feeding themselves as well as hunting and devouring prey, and finally reproducing themselves. Indeed, with Unmanned Aerial Vehicles rapidly becoming Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles and beyond, there may be no place for humans at all in the impending robotic holocaust.”

 

 

http://memepool.com/Subject/Robotics/

Robotics

The first robot that can jump and roll over rough terrain has been created by a PhD student from bath, U.K, Rhodri Armour and his colleagues claim that they have been looking to nature for their inspiration, wanting to design a robot that can jump obstacles in it’s path like an insect would.

The robot is said to be ideal for space exploration due to the way in which it can handle rough terrain, the “jollbot” is shaped like a spherical cage which can roll in any direction, giving it manoeuvrability without the problem of overturning or getting stuck in potholes.

The robot is also small and flexible, weighing less than a kg, meaning it won’t get damaged after a jump.

Armour explains: “others in the past have made robots that can jump and robots that roll; but we’ve made the first robot that can do both”.

Cleaning robots are now being employed by companies such as Fuji heavy industries ltd and Sumitomo Corporation in Osaka city, Japan.

One in particular operated by Reibi has laser sensors so that it can avoid obstacles, it is also able to communicate with elevators so that It can go from floor to floor on it’s own.  As a final bonus it also is equipped with cameras that will record it’s entire shift! I don’t know why or what use this will be of? Maybe as crime prevention tool? Or so that the employers can see that it has been doing its job properly?

 

Another robotic invention, the microscopic wheel could save lives apparently, developed by two scientists from the universities of Sheffield and Barcelona, Ramin Golestanian and Pietro Tierno, The nanomachines will be able to travel around in your body and release small amounts of medicine directly into your system, this will be useful in treating aids and cancer victims as well as a host of other illness’s.

Here is the link with more information on this:

 

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026856.500-tiny-paddleboat-could-ship-drugs-around-the-body.html

THE AGE OF THE ROBOT digital cultures and technologies post

The age of the robot is here, officials predict that by 2015 every home in Japan will have their own personal robot, we already have an array of pet robots on the market ranging including fur real pets, pleo the dinosaur, robo-dogs, and the paro- a robotic baby harp seal, 200 units were manufactured initially with a retail price of $4,400- they sold out in less than 50 hours.

The paro was designed with the elderly in mind, pertaining to give them comfort and company as many of them suffer from loneliness and depression and are increasing finding themselves in care homes with little company from loved ones. The seals have proved to be a huge success as tests have shown that they decrease stress and loneliness in the elderly by giving them a companion with over 30 A.I sensors and the ability to recognise their masters voice and hand gestures.

The pleo dinosaur pet has over 38 sensors that feed information about cleo's environment to one of 8 processors that can handle a collective 60 million calculations per second! A complex computer programme determines what the dino does next, whether he sneezes, turns he neck 180' to see who's scratching his back or peers over the edge of a table! the possibilities go on.

 Alsok- the worlds second largest security company have even developed a line of robo-cops as a result of Japanese youth shying away from 3k jobs- referring to the Japanese words for labour that is dirty.

The guard robots, one version of which is being used by a client in southern Japan, can detect and thwart intruders using sensors and paint guns. They can also put out fires and spot water leaks.

It is perhaps no surprise that robots would find their first major foothold in Japan. Japanese dolls and toys, including a moving crab using clockwork technology dating to the 1800s, are considered by some to be among the first robots.

Rather than the monstrous Terminators of American movies, robots here are instead seen as gentle, even idealistic creatures epitomised by 'Astroboy', the 1960s Japanese cartoon about an electronic kid with a big heart.

Kazuya Abe, an official at Japans NEDO Institute which co-ordinates national science research and development on robots: 

"People are and will be living alongside robots, which are seen here as more than just machines. This is all about AI [artificial intelligence], this is about the creation of something that is not human, but can be a complement or companion to humans in society. That future is happening here now."

All the robot's I have ever dreamed about are already here! I have been waiting for the day that Robot babysitters become available to the general population, and although my kids will be grown up and married when such a thing happens it is still amazing to know that all these things are happening. The babysitter Robot is called: PaPeRo and can distinguish different children's faces and then has the facility to call their parents in case of emergency.

Just think it is predicted that by 2020 personal robots will no longer be a thing of anime, they'll be here! Imagine, people walking around the street with their robotic personal assistants, no need for a phone anymore, your robot can do all that, you may be able to video call friends just by telling the robot their names who will then find them in your address book or by using some sort of online network in which we may all be on- (every aspect of our lives could be on a sever somewhere- as started by the online software sites) and then as your walking with your robot you can see your friend in a touch screen panel on your robots stomach! (or should i say area that represents a stomach in the human form) your robot can also be equipped with some kind of payment chip so you don't have to have one and it will be more secure on the robot, this means the robot can be scanned when you want to pay for anything, be it food, clothes or train tickets! 

you will be able to store all of your music, photo's and files on the robot, so bye bye I pod! your robot will play music for you through a speaker or you can connect wireless headphones! and there's no need to worry about roads whilst listening to your music as your robot will be your eyes! 

So there is yet another use for him, imagine how handy he/she would come in for the health sector? assuming we will still have blind people in the future, (as there are already technologies in place to return sight using a camera attached to the optic nerve!) the robot can guide them safely over roads and protect them from crack-heads and the like, the same goes for the elderly and infirm, the robot can take them shopping, help them dress, hell they could even hop on the back of him for a ride on experience! the robot can also have a handy storage safe for putting all your valuables and shopping in!

With voice and face recognition your robot will only respond to you and follow your orders! so there's no need for housework, cooking, cleaning, picking the kids up from school, posting mail, etc.

But what does this mean for us? will we become the fat wobbly regressed beings depicted in Disney's Wall E? so absorbed in technology that they were not even aware of walking and dancing? swimming? talking to one another in the real world as a pose to a virtual one? this is more than a strong possibility, as technology advances are we taking a step back? maybe the future will epitomize a matrix style way of living? maybe we will willingly transgress into that virtual state becoming nothing more than a brain in a jar? 

who knows, but i for one can't wait to see robots everywhere and for them to become affordable and accessible for everyone! then the next phase is the question of morality, at what point do we draw the line on using robots as slaves? as they become more advanced and human looking, they can certainly be programmed to seem to think independently and make choices for themselves, Is this how we were created? If we create an uber race of robotic beings that can technically out-live us and rule the world does that make us gods? 

to be discussed further in my next post and how robots can be used in the city of Leeds.

second life, third life, 4th life??

We had a stab at second life last week, (I was supposed to write about it then) and as we are meant to write our thoughts about it well here i am writing this post!

I wasn't sure what to write, It looked ok, having played alot of 360 games lately such as dead space, bioshock, assasins creed etc i struggled to find it interesting visually, but the concept behind the whole 2nd life thing is "interesting" I haven't really gotten into it in enough depth to give a full evaluation, I played around with it briefly last year and after meeting a series of virtual chav's, (yes they exist here too!) and some annoying naked women who were going around performing sexual acts and strip-dancing, (yes they can do that too) I just thought to myself, "what the hell I am doing here?" and decided to stick with the real world, plus my home PC at the time was absolute garbage, (smashing it up a few months ago felt so good in such a bad way) which does not help! If your going to go on it make sure your on a decent machine!! not a garbage toaster like i was on! I don't know much about specs! The cool thing about 2nd life is that you can fly and teleport from place to place, but so far i've not found anything interesting that i would want to spend time looking at.

Customizing your avatar is fun, and you could easily spend hours faffing about it! I chose a basic avatar this time as last time I used second life i remember actually spending hours on this aspect! It's funny for me, how "exposed" you feel say for example if you took your avatars clothes off, stupid i know, but that avatar is representing you and i feel that some users could become totally sucked in to the place and just practically live there, after all you can build houses, sell cars and work! 

when I was there the first time, there was a group of people i was talking to, some of them were giving me gifts, such as better hair, shoes etc which i thought was very nice of them, hell that doesn't happen in the real world! then a girl there took her clothes off and started erm spinning her "tassled tits" to put it frank! then she said she was off to work in this strip club(!) and who was coming to watch, a few of the guys there went with her and apparently they would have to pay real money to get in! I just thought the whole thing rather bizarre! I also went for a ride in someones car which was quite cool and the car could fly, so this person was in effect controlling my avatar which was pretty neat, I didn't have to hold down a shift key for example to stay in the car and we were talking along the way!

There's obviously alot more to 2nd life than meets the eye, and i think as technology advances it will become even better and of course everyone will have it as they do a mobile phone! or it could be that it will always just be an online virtual community such as facebook that some people will use and others won't, i mean alot of people, mainly the older generation are just starting to "get" using a computer and the internet, so will they absolutely hate 2nd life? or will they prefer the whole 3d environment aspect? one of the main things with it is that it just comes across as a game, so gamers will adapt to it straight away, whereas non-gamers will be drawn to the colourful environments and themes of escapism.

Speaking of games I was just playing the first silent hill game made in 1999 for the playstation that i paid £15 for on E-bay! I won't be playing anymore of it simply because the controls have advanced so much now that it's too frustrating to return to the old ways! I did this with the earlier resident evil games and a few others, paying a fortune to get them all, (as they are now advertised as "rare classics") but now they're just sat there, there's no way I'm going to play them cause i just find the controls so annoying! but i guess i just have them for collection sake.

Anyway I got to the part where you chase the girl into an alley way? go through the metal gate that says dogs beware? then they've done some really cool stuff with the camera angles and mood, so they have this creepy music and the camera keeps changing, (these are set cameras) so one minute it's behind you, then it's above you, or below your feet etc and your cutting from one scene to the next, as you journey through this strange angular alleyway, (it took me ages to get through it this time round, walking into walls, instead of turning left as I walk, the character just stops moving and turns to the left!) on one part the camera shakes as your coming around the corner which I thought was mega cool,  It reminded me of a more recent title for the 360: "Alone in the dark" in which alot of inventive camera angles are used and as rubble and stuff is dropping alot as you play there is the camera shake thing too, (this game was highly frustrating due to awkward controls, but look at how bad they were back in the 90's! and we managed fine then, I could easily fly through such games but now due to the advances in controls it's almost impossible to step back and why would you want to?) then you get to the scary part in which you see a skinned corpse hanging on a railing then you are attacked and killed by 2 dwarf like obscenities.

Playing a while ago i felt no emotion whatsoever, I just thought the music was cool, and was more aware of the technological aspect of the game than anything else- absorbed in the game? no. When I played this back in 1999-2000 I remember being shit scared at this part! and when seeing the skinned body being shocked at it's grotesqueness! but looking at it now it was just a pixelated blob with angular edges and no detail! In bioshock all the dead bodies stay on the floor and you can kick them and they'll flop around, or you can shoot them in the face or set them on fire and throw them at things, (not that i enjoy that kind of thing...ok i do but that's the whole point of a game! lol) anyway my point, (I'm not sure that i even have one or what I'm talking about anymore) Is just how fast technology grows, that was made just before the millenium, a year later the PS2 arrives with games such as timesplitters, final fantasy, tombraider and then pushing the playstation to it's limit with the stunning "shadow of the collossus" and the visually breathtaking okami, (following in the footsteps of cartoonish style zelda- windwakers for the gamecube but adding a japanese scroll painting style of art) and then of course 2006 sees the release of the current range of games consoles, such as the x box 360, the wii and the playstation 3 introducing online and vicarious gaming. So Imagine what will be out there in the next 10 years! (que all the sci-fi films) anyway I'm going to close here, I've been rambling on for far too long!