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Smart spray can turns photos into large-scale street art
Don't worry about needing artistic sensibilities to produce street art -- if researchers have their way, all you'd need is a good photo and the right tools. They've developed a robotic spray can that produce large murals based on pre-supplied images. By tracking the can using a PC, two webcams and QR codes, the system automatically knows when to spray to replicate the intended picture. All you have to do is wave the can over your target area and let the hardware do the rest -- if you're producing a multi-color image, you just swap cans.
Smallest-ever optical switch revolves around one atom
We've seen some ridiculously tiny electronics in our day, but this might take the cake. Swiss researchers have built an optical networking switch so small that it's measured on the atomic scale -- in fact, it's smaller than the wavelength of light it needs to transmit data. The system can use just one silver atom to transmit an electrical current between silver and platinum pads. Apply enough voltage and the atom moves into place; stop and the atom shies away. Surprisingly simple, isn't it?
Disney's robot car drives up walls
As clever as robotic cars may be, they have one obvious disadvantage over flying drones: their journey stops the moment they run into a wall. Disney Research and ETH Zurich have a clever workaround, however. Their prototype VertiGo robot uses two tilting propellers to drive up walls, adjusting its thrust to stick to the surface even if it has to travel over uneven surfaces like bricks. The result, as you'll see below, is uncanny -- all it takes is a quick push from the propellers to have this machine defying gravity.
Tiny microscope lets you see the smallest-ever inkjet prints
No, that's not an up-close look at a monitor. That's the world's tiniest color inkjet image made large, and you may not need it blown up to see it in the future -- if you're willing to lay down some cash. In a hybrid of scientific discovery and publicity stunt, Scrona and ETH Zurich have used nano-sized quantum dots to print a clown fish picture measuring just 0.000014 square inches across, setting a Guinness World Record for the smallest color inkjet image to date. You need a good microscope just to see it, in fact... and conveniently, Scrona is working on just that.
Scientists create gold nuggets that are 98 percent air
Researchers at ETH Zurich have accomplished a bit of modern-day alchemy, transforming 20 carat gold into a lightweight foam. Well, technically it's an aerogel: an exceedingly light and porous matrix of material. It's so porous, in fact, that the foam doesn't conduct electricity because, at atmospheric pressure, the gold atoms within the structure don't actually touch. "The so-called aerogel is a thousand times lighter than conventional gold alloys. It is lighter than water and almost as light as air," Raffaele Mezzenga, Professor of Food and Soft Materials at ETHZ, said in a statement.
Four-legged bot uses drone sidekick to avoid rough terrain
Even with a sure-stepping robot like DARPA's Big Dog, there is still plenty of terrain that today's robo-mules simply can't handle. That's why a team of researchers from ETH Zurich's Autonomous Systems Lab has devised a way to ensure these robots never get bogged down by impassible terrain: pair that robot with a forward-scouting UAV.
ICYMI: Drone architects, radar attachment for phones & more
#fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-805596{display:none;} .cke_show_borders #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-805596, #postcontentcontainer #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-805596{width:570px;display:block;} try{document.getElementById("fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-805596").style.display="none";}catch(e){}Today on In Case You Missed It: Scientists programmed quadcopters to autonomously construct a basic rope bridge that could support the weight of a person, all part of an effort to use drones when distances or climbing might be necessary. A new Kickstarter campaign takes aim at antiquated radar guns for sports like baseball, adding a smartphone attachment that determines the speed of balls while simultaneously taking video and notes. And a new mini-cartridge startup is targeted at console game lovers. They look like a original Nintendo cartridge but connect into a smartphones audio jack.
Watch these drones build a rope bridge
One of the big selling points of drones is that they can get to areas that aren't exactly safe or accessible by humans. That's why watching quadrocopters assembling a rope bridge that's sturdy enough for a person to walk across is so damned awesome -- it immediately calls to mind a real-world use scenario that probably all of us can relate to. The video below was filmed at RTH Zurich Flying Machine Arena in Switzerland, and, according to the YouTube description, aside from the scaffolding on either side of the bridge, the structure is "entirely realized by flying machines." Every knot and braid in the 7.4 meter (just over 24 feet) bridge was tied by the UAVs using Dyneema rope. As Robohub tells it, the material has a low weight-to-strength ratio that makes it pretty great for aerial construction uses.
Watch a four-finned robot fish swim in any direction
There's now at least a few robots that swim like fish, but they have their limits: they still take time to turn around, and they're not exactly precision instruments. Researchers at ETH Zurich are well on their way to solving those problems with their Sepios robot, though. As you'll see in the video below, the cuttlefish-inspired creation undulates its four fins in tandem to move in any direction, even through obstacles (such as seagrass and metal frames) that would trip up other animal-like automatons. It's quiet, too, so it can float near real fish without immediately causing a panic.
Your smartphone is changing the way your fingers work
Your smartphone is changing more than just your habits -- it's changing the way your hands work, too. Swiss researchers have discovered that activity in the brain's cortex associated with index fingers and thumbs is enhanced directly in proportion to how often you use your phone's touchscreen. That area of your mind will light up if you message your friends all week, but it'll fade the longer you spend away from your device. People with basic cellphones don't see this, according to the scientists. This suggests that repetitive smartphone use is altering your sensory processing, and that your brain is perceiving your digits in a different way. Whether or not that's a good thing is still up in the air, but it shows that you don't have to be in a profession driven by hand dexterity (such as music) to see a shift in how your brain and fingers work together. [Image credit: Shutterstock / nenetus]
Cirque du Soleil turns drones into dancing lampshades
Before quadrocopters become the four-winged horsemen of the robopocalypse, we're quite happy making 'em dance for our entertainment. A new artistic collaboration between the ETH Zurich university and Cirque du Soleil isn't your standard swarm show, though, imagining a more intimate relationship between man and machine. "Sparked" is the short film born out of this partnership, featuring the talents of several pre-programmed quadrocopters, one human performer and zero special effects. Rather than a technical demonstration, it's a story of a lonely lamp-maker and the (seemingly) inanimate creations that fill his workshop. We won't spoil any more of it for you, so head past the break for the full film, as well as an explanation from the creative and technical minds behind the project about how it came to pass.
Disney Research uses trippy camerawork to tell a tale of immortality
Disney Research has done an awful lot of neat stuff in the past, but it hasn't really approached Walt's bread and butter before: video. Instead of going with animation, though, the team is using some pretty slick camera tricks to tell a live-action story about unconditional love and a mother attaining immortality through her son. Yeah, we thought the premise was kinda weird too. Dubbed Lucid Dreams of Gabriel, it features techniques like novel computational shutters, high dynamic range tone-mapping and a scene with a few different frame-rates happening all within the same shot. By applying these effects in post, the filmmakers, with help from ETH Zurich, were able to achieve results that otherwise couldn't be produced with conventional camera equipment. Fitting, considering the title references conscious dreams, eh? The full version of the short is due sometime in August, but you can watch the teaser for yourself just after the break.
Cheap, tiny robots serve as terrain scouts for expensive ones (video)
Big robots like Cheetah and Big Dog cost a lot to make, so it would be such a shame if they get put out of commission after slipping on, say, a patch of ice. To prevent that from happening, UC Berkeley and ETH Zurich researchers propose sending a team of small, expendable robots ahead of the big, expensive one to scout terrain conditions -- in the event that they do get used for real missions, that is. The researchers demonstrated their idea at the IEEE robotics conference in Hong Kong, where they used UC Berkeley's tiny cardboard robot called VelociRoACH to do recon work for ETH Zurich's StarlETH.
Disney uses adorable little robots to illustrate big ideas
Disney Research has had some neat ideas in the past (capacitive touch feedback for plants, as an example), but the lab's amped up the cute factor lately. Its newest project? Getting tiny, LED-adorned robots to illustrate things such as The Big Bang. Like a good deal of Mickey's science projects, the experiment, dubbed "Pixelbots," is based around interactivity. The 2-inch swarm bots use magnetic wheels to move about on vertical surfaces. Meanwhile, an algorithm ensures that they won't hit one another and RGB diodes keep the robots looking pretty. Individual units can even be plucked out of formation and the pack will intelligently work to fix the gaps and reform the original shape.
Thieves beware: future ATMs will spray foam that helps track stolen cash
ATM thieves are increasingly focused on digital heists, but many of these robbers still prefer old-fashioned currency. They may want to think twice about stealing cash in the future, though, as ETH Zurich has developed a chemical defense system that both deters theft and helps track ill-gotten goods. Based loosely on bombardier beetles, which produce acid to spray attackers, the technique creates a defensive surface on an object (say, a cash box) using film layers filled with hydrogen peroxide and manganese dioxide. Break the surface and you trigger a reaction that covers everything nearby in hot foam -- by itself, enough to ruin the day of any would-be purloiner.
Quadrocopter drone recovers from failures without skipping a beat (video)
Quadrocopter drones are capable of some incredible acrobatics, but they seldom handle failure all that gracefully. ETH Zurich's Mark Mueller is tackling this problem through a new failsafe algorithm that gives these flying robots a better chance of survival. As you'll see in a video demo after the break, the software automatically compensates for rotor failures, bringing a drone back to its original position before giving the owner an opportunity to land the craft. Mueller's routine works even when there's just one propeller left, and it could eventually avoid dangerous objects on the way down. While there's no mention of when the algorithm will reach copters outside of the lab, there's a patent on the way -- we'd expect it to reach production drones at some point in the future.
Heroes in a half shell: autonomous robot sea turtles in development
Sure you could have a robot assist you around the home, or even one that'll make factories friendlier, but we'll opt for a robot sea turtle any day of the week. The Swiss folks over at ETH Zurich are working on making that a reality with the Naro-Tartaruga, a turtle-inspired machine that would swim efficiently while carrying cargo in its shell. It's currently a cylindrical aluminum vessel with a couple of flippers, but concept designs include that totally bad-ass bot in the image above. The turtle-bot has a top speed of over 7 knots, so it'll handily beat any real sea turtle in a race, and the big torso has enough space for battery and sensors that are necessary for autonomous function. The fins on the turtle have a fully three-dimensional mechanism -- there are three actuators per fin, and each actuate the fin axle independently. The end goal is for the development of underwater autonomous vehicles, which will hopefully bring us one step closer to SeaQuest DSV. In the meantime, we'd like one just so we can freak the hell out of our cats.
IBM creates consistent electron spin inside semiconductors, takes spintronics one twirl closer
A fundamental challenge of developing spintronics, or computing where the rotation of electrons carries instructions and other data rather than the charge, has been getting the electrons to spin for long enough to shuttle data to its destination in the first place. IBM and ETH Zurich claim to be the first achieving that feat by getting the electrons to dance to the same tune. Basing a semiconductor material on gallium arsenide and bringing the temperature to an extremely low -387F, the research duo have created a persistent spin helix that keeps the spin going for the 1.1 nanoseconds it would take a normal 1GHz processor to run through its full cycle, or 30 times longer than before. As impressive as it can be to stretch atomic physics that far, just remember that the theory is some distance from practice: unless you're really keen on running a computer at temperatures just a few hops away from absolute zero, there's work to be done on producing transistors (let alone processors) that safely run in the climate of the family den. Assuming that's within the realm of possibility, though, we could eventually see computers that wring much more performance per watt out of one of the most basic elements of nature.
Robot uses glue gun to make tools, hopes to ace Survival Skills 101
Looking through Engadget's annals of robotic achievements, we see droids juggling, dabbling in competitive sailing and even manning prisons. Cool as they are, those functions aren't going to mean a thing when Mr. Automaton is lost in the wilderness, damaged and without a helping human hand in sight. Researchers at ETH Zurich are working to change that scenario, as they're currently developing a "self-reconfigurable" device that packs a glue gun for creating the tools it needs on the fly. It might not be the quickest method -- as you'll see in the video below, making a glue cup takes a good hour -- but it's effective enough for transporting and pouring water. That's not to say that the prototype is ready to fend for itself; it built the cup, but only under human direction. The researchers' next step is adding in autonomous capabilities so the bots can repair things -- and even build other robots -- without being told to do so. A sea of self-regenerating droids? Sounds harmless to us.
Research shocker! Keyless car entry systems can be hacked easily, elegantly
We know you are vigilant enough not to trust your car's security to a wireless system, but plenty of other folks like the convenience of putting away the metallic keys and getting into their vehicles with a bit of Bond-like swagger. Professor Srdjan Capkun of ETH Zurich found himself perched on the fence between these two groups when he recently purchased a vehicle with a keyless entry system, so he did what any good researcher would: he tried to bypass its security measures. In total, he and his team tested 10 models from eight car makers and their results were pretty conclusive: each of the tested vehicles was broken into and driven away using a very simple and elegant method. Keyless entry systems typically work by sending a low-powered signal from the car to your key fob, with the two working only when they're near each other, but the wily Zurich profs were able to intercept and extend that signal via antennas acting as repeaters, resulting in your key activating your car even when it's nowhere near it. The signal-repeating antennae have to be pretty close to both the key and the car, but that's why heist movies stress the importance of teamwork. Hit the source link for all the chilling details.
