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In Germany, internet service providers pay you! (for loss of service)
Ever lost your internet connection? Do the loathsome words "executive customer service" resonate with you? They shouldn't if you live in Deutschland -- at least, not after today. While that course of customer service whinging can occasionally yield some form of restitution stateside (we're being generous), for Germans it's now almost unnecessary. In a ruling issued today, a federal court in Karlsruhe has determined interruption of internet service to be grounds for compensation, as it can be categorized as an "essential material item," Reuters reports. The decision, which allows impacted users to file compensatory claims, stems from a 2008 - 2009 incident in which a private German citizen incurred a loss of phone, fax and internet service over a two month period. Apparently, the man had already been partially reimbursed for having to rely on mobile phone service, but decided to take things a little further. In other news, Americans can just threaten to switch to FiOS. Worked for us.
3D invisibility cloak fashioned out of metamaterials
Those HDTV manufacturers did tell us that 3D was going to be everywhere this year, didn't they? Keeping up with the times, scientists investigating potential methods for rendering physical objects invisible to the human eye have now moved to the full three-dimensional realm. The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology has developed a photonic metamaterial that can make things disappear when viewed from all angles, advancing from previous light refraction methods that only worked in 2D. It sounds similar to what Berkeley researchers developed not too long ago, and just like Berkeley's findings, this is a method that's still at a very early stage of development and can only cover one micrometer-tall bumps. Theoretically unlimited, the so-called carpet cloak could eventually be expanded to "hide a house," but then who's to say we'll even be living in houses by that time?
Lip reading mobiles are wunderbar, still at the prototype stage (video)
We came across this lip reading prototype during our exploration of the CeBIT 2010 halls, and while we're a bit tardy in bringing it to your attention, there's a certain timeless quality to strapping your face with wired sensors that transcends conventional restrictions of timeliness. That's our story anyway. Devised by researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, it picks up the motion of speech (via electromyography) without requiring the sound, and then translates it into audible communication via a delightfully cold and robotic voice. The purposes of such a project are obvious -- from helping people who've lost their speech to making private telephone conversations actually private -- but the fun is in seeing someone use the thing in its current unrefined form. You'll be able to do that just past the break.
Swarm robot project sounds ominous, uses open source
Why would you want to build a 100-strong swarm of mini robots? Well, aside from having them as your minions, you might be able to learn about "artificial self-organization," and "control in large robotic groups," which should come in useful during the inevitable robot insurrection. The swarm robot project, undertaken by the Universities of Stuttgart and Karlsruhe in Germany, aims to produce mini drones that can communicate with one another to avoid collisions, while keeping to a volume of less than three centimeters cubed. Built using open source software and hardware (full list of components is available under the GPL), the latest prototype, titled Jasmine III, achieves those goals while also being able to run "perpetually" thanks to a wireless charging platform. You can see it in close-up after the break, or hit the read link for all the geeky details.
