InteractiveWall
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Tromso students put together the best interactive display wall we've seen yet (video)
Take everything you thought you knew about multitouch and throw it out. Okay, keep the Minority Report stuff, but throw everything else out. What we're looking at here is a 22 megapixel display, stitched together from the output of no less than 28 projectors (7,168 x 3,072 total resolution), which just happens to respond to touch-like input in a fashion even Tom Cruise would find fascinating. You don't have to actually touch the wall, floor-mounted cameras pick up your gestures in 2D space and a 30-node computer setup crunches all the computational and visual data to deliver some buttery smooth user interaction. For demo purposes, the makers of this system grabbed a 13.3 gigapixel image of Tromso and took it for a hand-controlled spin. See the mesmerizing show on video after the break.
Festo shows off robot penguins and other visions of the future
The folks at Festo have already proven themselves to be more than adept some intoxicating, slightly unnerving feats of robotics, but they look to have really outdone themselves with their latest group of creations, which all fall under the banner of the company's Bionic Learning Network. While they're all certainly impressive, the real star is undoubtedly the AquaPenguin which, in addition to being creepily realistic, is fully autonomous and even able to outperform its real-life counterpart in a few tasks, like swimming backwards. Of course, Festo apparently couldn't help themselves and also built a flying, blimp-like AirPenguin, and they applied some of the same basic technology to a number of other devices, including a robot arm that's precise enough to change a lightbulb, and a freestanding interactive wall that's sure to spruce up any lobby. Hit up the YouTube link below for a video that provides a brief overview of the whole lot, or head on over to Festo's site for the even better German version (plus some additional details on the projects themselves).Read - YouTube, "Festo Bionic Learning Network 2009"Read - Festo[Thanks, Gunter]
