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Hume: the bipedal 'Parkour' robot (video)
A future threatened by wild robotic rottweilers with no humanoid dog-walkers to keep them in check? That must not happen. Fortunately, we'll have a fleet-footed droid named "Hume" to keep us safe: he's the work of engineers at Meka Robotics and the University of Texas at Austin, who want to be the first to build a bipedal robot with Parkour skills, aka rough terrain free-running or "Human-Centered Hyper-Agility". Sure, they still have some way to go, but watch the video after the break, then imagine it without the wobbly coat stand, and then re-imagine it from the POV of an angry pup.
Plasmonic cloak makes objects invisible, but only in the microwave region of the spectrum
Okay, so we're not up to USS Pegasus levels yet, but for the first time researchers have been able to cloak a three dimensional object. Don't start planning your first trip to the Hogwarts library restricted section just yet though, the breakthrough is only in the microwave region of the EM spectrum. Using a shell of plasmonic materials, it's possible to create a "photo negative" of the object being cloaked in order to make it disappear. The technique is different to the use of metamaterials, which try to bounce light around the object. Instead, plasmonics try to deceive the light as to what's actually there at the time -- but because it has to be tailored to create a "negative image" of the object you're hiding, it's not as flexible, but it could be an important step on the road to that bank heist we've been planning.
Schizophrenic computer may help us understand similarly afflicted humans
Although we usually prefer our computers to be perfect, logical, and psychologically fit, sometimes there's more to be learned from a schizophrenic one. A University of Texas experiment has doomed a computer with dementia praecox, saddling the silicon soul with symptoms that normally only afflict humans. By telling the machine's neural network to treat everything it learned as extremely important, the team hopes to aid clinical research in understanding the schizophrenic brain -- following a popular theory that suggests afflicted patients lose the ability to forget or ignore frivolous information, causing them to make illogical connections and paranoid jumps in reason. Sure enough, the machine lost it, and started spinning wild, delusional stories, eventually claiming responsibility for a terrorist attack. Yikes. We aren't hastening the robot apocalypse if we're programming machines to go mad intentionally, right?
Gaming gets immersive thanks to union of pico projector and eye tracking camera (video)
Although in the earliest stages of development, this virtual reality gaming rig already looks pretty intriguing. Engineered by clever kids at the University of Texas at Austin, it hot-wires an eye tracking camera to a motorised pico projector with the result that the player literally can't take their eyes off the screen. Wherever they look, that is where their view of the gaming world is projected. The rig makes most sense in a first-person shooter, although the students have also tried it in a flight simulator where the player uses their head to roll and pitch the aircraft. Yes, it looks rather similar to the Microvision PicoP laser projection gun we wielded at CES, but there's a key difference: the player does not need to hold anything or have anything attached to their body. This unencumbered Kinect-esque approach could potentially allow a greater sense of freedom -- except that, for it to work, the player is forced to sit directly in front of the eye tracker. Find a way to fix this, dear Longhorns, and you could be onto something. Video after the break.
UTexas researchers develop organic battery, aim for week-long use in smartphones
Christopher Bielawski, a brilliant mind working at the University of Texas at Austin, had this to say about his newest discovery: "I would love it if my iPhone was thinner and lighter, and the battery lasted a month or even a week instead of a day; with an organic battery, it may be possible." Anyone that has ever owned an iPhone (or a smartphone or any sort, really) can grok just how bold those words are, but according to Mr. Bielawski, "we're now starting to get a handle on the fundamental chemistry needed to make this dream a commercial reality." At the center of this potential revolution is a newfangled organic battery recently detailed in the journal Science, but just as important is the artificial photosynthesis that the research also touches on. Bielawski and colleague Jonathan Sessler have seemingly figured out how to create an electron transfer process that can proceed in the opposite direction, with this forward and backward switching of electron flow opening up new avenues for the historically stagnant battery innovation market. Granted, these guys have yet to demonstrate that the process can occur in a condensed phase, so actual commercialization is probably a century millennium or two out, but hey -- at least our list of "awesome thing that'll probably never happen" has grown by one.
New material could make robot muscles better, faster, stronger
There's already been countless advances in the always exciting field of robot muscles, but a team of researchers from the University of Texas have now made what appears to be a considerable leap forward, which they say could allow for "performance characteristics that have not previously been obtained." The key to that is an entirely new material comprised of ribbons of tangled nanotubes, which can expand its width by 220% when a voltage is applied and return to its original shape in just milliseconds when the voltage is removed. What's more, the material is not only "stronger than steel and stiffer than diamond," but it's able to withstand an extreme range of temperatures from -196 °C to 1538 °C, which could allow robots equipped with the muscles to operate with ease in a wide variety of off-world colonies, er, "harsh environments." Head on past the break for a demonstration of the material in its non-robot form.[Image courtesy NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory]
UT Austin creates world's highest resolution tiled display: Stallion
If you thought 220 million pixels was a lot, well, you'd be right. But given how things are in Texas relative to everything else, we'd say there's no denying that 307 million pixels is indeed a lot more. Dubbed the world's highest resolution tiled display, Stallion has just been unveiled by the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at The University of Texas at Austin. Designed for studying diminutive cells and checking out old game footage, the system boasts 75 Dell 30-inch LCDs, each of which has a native resolution of 2,560 x 1,600. It also packs 36GB of graphics memory, 108GB of system memory and 100 processing cores. And just think -- if the Longhorns could get that one game back against the Red Raiders, every fan within a 10-mile radius of Austin could see their team in the championship game on this thing.[Via KanYeWest Blog]
Researchers at the University of Texas studying World of Warcraft [Updated]
A tipster informs us that researchers at the University of Texas at Austin are conducting a study to try to determine the "personalities and motivations" of people participating in World of Warcraft and other online games. And they're asking for our help! So if you have 10 or 15 minutes of free time, why not go fill out their MMORPG Survey? (Or if learning about the personalities and motivations of yourself and fellow players doesn't interest you, there's another study running at the university that seeks to understand how people interact in online environments. However, I've got to warn you, that one will take 20 to 30 minutes of your time.) The survey itself looks like a standard personality test, and, I have to say, is pretty uninteresting. However, I'm quite interested in seeing what sort of results they come out with in the end -- and if you're as curious as I am participating will only lead to more varied results in the end.Update: There is a great deal of discussion in our comments about the possibility of this site being a scam of some sort. While I agree that the domain name of the site is fishy, the content looks completely legitimate. (And, yes, I did run through this on my personal computer before passing it on to you.) With the original and subsequent e-mails we've received about the site, I would say it's legitimate. However, I have removed the link to the site pending further verification.Update 2: After trading e-mails with Austin Harley (yes, through a valid University of Texas mailing address), one of the researchers involved in the study, I am convinced that this is, in fact, a valid project. Of the odd hosting arrangement, he says:A good friend of mine offered to build a web page for my site and link it to an already functional database he had. He said this would be easier on him than building one off a webpage on the utexas server so I happily agreed since he was really doing me a huge favor. I had no idea so many people were worried about a potential scam or that my site would cause such a stir.Update 3: To further assure anyone's concerns, I have talked to a member of the UT faculty overseeing this project, who, again, assures me that this is a legitimate study.
University of Texas: games might slow aging process [update 1]
The University of Texas (go Longhorns) is designing games and researching their effect on older players, according to Yahoo! News. The University of Virginia (go Cavaliers) questions the Texas goal of maintaining mental and physical agility with games. The image of older gamers flailing around with touch-sensitive gloves and VR helmets is our favorite detail of the $13-million project. The future has never been so retro. Mihai Nadin, the professor who heads the research says, "This is not a marketing opportunity but a social responsibility."But we think it should be a social responsibility and a marketing opportunity. After all, the article makes the obligatory Brain Age reference, citing sales of roughly seven million total copies. Those weren't just given away. Publishers of casual games have already been selling to this older demographic; we don't think it'll take long for other games to reach an older audience.Dr. Nadin followed up with us about this post. He wanted to make sure readers understand that the University of Virginia study wasn't a response to his research with the University of Texas. The Virginia study was unrelated, although its subject of mind-maintenance through aging is relevant, which is why we mentioned it.Dr. Nadin further stressed the social responsibility of finding ways to extend mental and physical abilities -- the cost of assisted living strains individuals and government programs. But he also said that people don't need to choose social responsibility over commerce; they can go together. We were raising the point that any business -- especially franchise-driven videogames -- follows the money. We hope he's right, and publishers find a niche in games-as-therapy.[Update 1: Added last two paragraphs.]
"Godzillatron" goes live at Texas' Royal-Memorial Stadium
We've seen Varsity Blues and Friday Night Lights enough times to know that bragging rights are an important part of Texas football culture, so it's no surprise that the UT Longhorns are filled with pride over their ginormous new stadium display, nicknamed Godzillatron. At 134 feet wide by 55 feet tall, the $8 million dollar screen needed to be mounted to tree trunk-like support columns with 5-inch diameter grounding bolts, and requires 40 five-ton air conditioners to keep it cool in the sometimes unrelenting Texas heat. Problems start to arise, though, if and when school officials refer to Godzillatron as the world's largest HD display -- not only is that plain false (the Tokyo Racecourse's new Mitsubishi monster trumps it in both square footage and diagonal length), but as we noted before, it may not even be the largest display on American soil. You see, although the Longhorns' screen can boast a total area of 7,370 square feet, the other Daktronics-built display at Dolphin Stadium still has it beat on the diagonal measurement: 1,750 inches to Godzillatron's 1,738. However, as a wise man once said, "Being perfect is not about that scoreboard out there. It's not about winning. It's about you and your relationship with yourself, your family, and your friends." That may be true, but if the Longhorns don't bring home another championship trophy this season, the alumni who shelled out millions of bucks for that scoreboard are gonna be pretty darn pissed.
Texas Longhorns prepare to steal biggest HDTV crown
It was good while it lasted Miami. Daktronics, the same company who built the Dolphin Stadium twin-monster HDTVs has been contracted by the University of Texas to make one even bigger. As a part of renovations to their south end zone they are installing a 134x55-foot scoreboard, 370 square feet bigger than Miami's. As Engadget points out, it's actually slightly narrower and a little taller, bringing some conflict to the question of who is the biggest. All the same, if you want to check it out while everything is still bigger in Texas, you better hurry as a horse track in Tokyo is installing a 197-foot wide display.If they had announced this last year, maybe Vince Young would have returned to lead them to another National Championship.[Thanks for the tip Scott M!]
Longhorns to snatch "world's biggest HD display" title from Dolphins?
It's been a bad year for the Miami Dolphins: first they lost Heisman Trophy-winning running back Ricky Williams for the upcoming season, and soon their "biggest HD display in the world" may have to play second fiddle to a new scoreboard being installed this summer for the University of Texas Longhorns. At 7,370 square feet, the 134-foot by 55-foot 'board being built for the school by Daktronics (who also manufactured the Miami display) has a slightly larger screen area than the current 7000-sqaure-foot title-holder, but nitpickers may argue that since the UT model will be almost a foot shorter diagonally, that it doesn't qualify as the "world's biggest." The argument may turn out to be moot, though, as a horse track in Tokyo is supposedly planning to install a ridiculous 197-foot-wide monster of a screen later this year that will overshadow all who came before it. UT's project comes as part of a multi-million dollar overhaul of their stadium, which will also include several other large displays, a new sound system, and a $150 million renovation of the north end zone meant to enable a 90,000 person capacity.[Thanks, Brian]
