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Fabricated: Scientists develop method to synthesize the sound of clothing for animations (video)
Developments in CGI and animatronics might be getting alarmingly realistic, but the audio that goes with it often still relies on manual recordings. A pair of associate professors and a graduate student from Cornell University, however, have developed a method for synthesizing the sound of moving fabrics -- such as rustling clothes -- for use in animations, and thus, potentially film. The process, presented at SIGGRAPH, but reported to the public today, involves looking into two components of the natural sound of fabric, cloth moving on cloth, and crumpling. After creating a model for the energy and pattern of these two aspects, an approximation of the sound can be created, which acts as a kind of "road map" for the final audio. The end result is created by breaking the map down into much smaller fragments, which are then matched against a database of similar sections of real field-recorded audio. They even included binaural recordings to give a first-person perspective for headphone wearers. The process is still overseen by a human sound engineer, who selects the appropriate type of fabric and oversees the way that sounds are matched, meaning it's not quite ready for prime time. Understandable really, as this is still a proof of concept, with real-time operations and other improvements penciled in for future iterations. What does a virtual sheet being pulled over an imaginary sofa sound like? Head past the break to hear it in action, along with a presentation of the process.
Cornell students build spider-like robotic chalkboard eraser out of Lego, magnets, fun (video)
While you were trying to pass Poetry 101, Cornell seniors Le Zhang and Michael Lathrop were creating an apple-polishing Lego robot that automatically erases your prof's chalkboard. A final class project, the toady mech uses an Atmel brain, accelerometers for direction control, microswitches to sense the edge of the board, magnets to stay attached and hot glue to keep the Lego from flying apart. As the video below the break shows, it first aligns itself vertically, then moves to the top of the board, commencing the chalk sweeping and turning 180 degrees each time its bumpers sense the edge. The duo are thinking of getting a patent, and a commercialized version would allow your teacher to drone on without the normal slate-clearing pause. So, if designing a clever bot and saving their prof from manual labor doesn't get the students an 'A', we don't know what will.
Google simulates the human brain with 1000 machines, 16000 cores and a love of cats
Don't tell Google, but its latest X lab project is something performed by the great internet public every day. For free. Mountain View's secret lab stitched together 1,000 computers totaling 16,000 cores to form a neural network with over 1 billion connections, and sent it to YouTube looking for cats. Unlike the popular human time-sink, this was all in the name of science: specifically, simulating the human brain. The neural machine was presented with 10 million images taken from random videos, and went about teaching itself what our feline friends look like. Unlike similar experiments, where some manual guidance and supervision is involved, Google's pseudo-brain was given no such assistance. It wasn't just about cats, of course -- the broader aim was to see whether computers can learn face detection without labeled images. After studying the large set of image-data, the cluster revealed that indeed it could, in addition to being able to develop concepts for human body parts and -- of course -- cats. Overall, there was 15.8 percent accuracy in recognizing 20,000 object categories, which the researchers claim is a 70 percent jump over previous studies. Full details of the hows and whys will be presented at a forthcoming conference in Edinburgh.
Intel designs neuromorphic chip concept, our android clones are one step closer
Most neurochip projects have been designed around melding the brain and technology in the most literal sense. Intel's Circuit Research Laboratory, however, is betting that we might get along just fine with neuromorphic (brain-like) computers. By using valves that only have to respond to the spin of an electron, as well as memristors that work as very efficient permanent storage, the researchers believe they have a design that operates on the same spikes of energy that our noggins use rather than a non-stop stream. Along with simply using power levels closer to those of our brains, the technique allows for the very subtle, massively parallel computations that our minds manage every day but which are still difficult to reproduce with traditional PCs. There's still a long path to take before we're reproducing Prometheus' David (if we want to), but we've at least started walking in the right direction.
Sign language translator turns gestures into spoken letters, makes for a better world (video)
By far one of the greatest challenges of sign language has been to translate it for everyday folk that wouldn't know where to begin a conversation with the deaf. Cornell University engineering students Ranjay Krishna, Seonwoo Lee and Si Ping Wang -- along with some help from Jonathan Lang -- used their final project time this past semester to close this gap in one of the more practical solutions we've seen to date. Their prototype glove uses accelerometers, contact sensors and flex sensors to translate complex finger gestures from the American Sign Language alphabet into spoken letters: after converting hand positions to digital signals, the test unit both speaks out the resulting letters and sends them to a computer, where they can be used for anything from a game (shown in the video below) to, presumably, constructing whole sentences. Along with being accurate, the Cornell work is even designed with a mind towards how it would work in the real world, as the glove and its transmitter are both wireless and powered by 9-volt batteries. We hope that the project leads to a real product and an extra bridge between the deaf and the rest of us, but in the meantime, we'll be happy that at least one form of powered glove is being put to the noblest use possible.
Cornell students steer Pong using brain waves, can't quite play during naps (video)
We here at Engadget are always fans of brain wave experiments, and so we were delighted when two Cornell University electrical engineering students, Chuck Moyes and Mengxiang Jiang, wrapped up a final project using brain waves in the best way possible: playing Pong. Their experiment links a baseball cap full of EEG-scanning electrodes to a computer, letting the cap wearer control a paddle using Alpha or Mu waves. Depending on the waves you use, you can move the paddle either by changing your concentration level or by thinking about moving your feet. You won't rack up a high score while napping (or with a teammate narrating over your shoulder), but with a budget under $75, it's hard to find fault. You can grab the source code below, and check out a video of Jiang and Moyes' handiwork after the break. [Thanks, Chuck and Mengxiang]
Auto-composing keyboard creates tunes tailored to your taste
We love listening to our favorite tunes, as they provide a soundtrack to our otherwise dull and silent blogging existence. But, sometimes the lyrical stylings of Jay-Z and glorious jams of Trey Anastasio simply don't meet our musical needs. We need something different, something never before heard by human ears, to get us through the news day. Enter Cornell students Charong Chen and Siyu Zhan, who have constructed an electric keyboard that one ups Yamaha's singing piano by creating and playing its own compositions. Users simply select between two mood modes -- happy or tender -- to determine the tune's tempo, then play a couple notes and the piano sets to sating sonic cravings. There's another mode that allows users to play a melody to "train" the keyboard, which then plays permutations of that melody in an automated jam session. In that training mode, users can play as long as they like to give the keyboard a better idea of what they're into, which allows the algorithm to better tailor its audial output. The hardware making the music happen is comprised of a microcontroller (MCU) with the composing algorithm on board, a numpad for choosing the operational mode, and a 23-key piano that communicates with the MCU through a trio of encoders. The results are impressive, if not quite concert-hall quality. Hear it for yourself in the video after the break.
GE partners with Livermore Labs to explore efficient aircraft fuel injectors (video)
What would you do with six months of dedicated access to 261.3 teraflops of computational power? As you ponder that question, consider the case of GE Global Research, which has just announced its participation with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in an effort to design more powerful and efficient aircraft engines by way of computer simulation. Specifically, GE will partner with researchers from Arizona State University and Cornell University to study the unsteady spray phenomena that's thought to be ideal for fuel injectors. Through Large Eddy Simulation, GE hopes to discover an ideal spray pattern and fuel injector design, and reduce its number of lengthy, real-world optimization trials. While the research is initially aimed at aircraft engines, the knowledge gained from these experiments may work its way into GE's other products, such as locomotive engines and land-based gas turbines. For a glimpse into GE's current research, be sure to hop the break.
Simulated NASA mission to ask 'Are there snacks on Maaaaaaarrrrrs?'
When we've been forced to travel to an alien world, the one thing that makes us more likely to turn feral and murder our crew-mates than anything else is a lack of variety at mealtimes. Fortunately, Cornell University has teamed up with the University of Hawaii to build a simulated Mars mission to determine which foods people don't mind constantly consuming, given that there are no In-N-Out Burger franchises on the red planet. The mock base will be constructed in the midst of a Hawaiian lava flow, with the crews dressed in "spacesuits" and eating a mix of NASA-issue rations and shelf-stable foods like flour, sugar and freeze-dried meat. Applications for the four-month program remain open until the end of the month, so if you fancy all the free (bland) food you can manage, head on down to sign up!
Universal robot gripper sinks shots, throws darts, makes us feel inadequate (video)
Soon there will be little left for us puny humans. Robots have long since replaced us at most menial tasks, now they're looking to claim our lucrative professional sports contracts. They've already proven their mettle at baseball, basketball and hockey. Now researchers at the University of Chicago and Cornell are getting their coffee-filled balloon bot in on the action -- albeit with slightly less ambitious prey in its sights. Dorm room stoners proficient in NERF basketball, drunken dart fanatics and school yard marble hustlers may all be answering to this mechanical party favor soon enough. Don't believe us? Check out the video after the break. Just hope this guy is on your team in the next round of beer pong.
Cornell scientists perform optical illusion, herald invisibility through bending of light (video)
Taken at face value, you'd almost think that Cornell scientists had successfully bent the fabric of time. With gobs of fiber optics at their disposal, the researchers have devised a method to distort light in a way that makes events in time undetectable to observers. Initial success in this Pentagon-backed invisibility project has cloaked an event for 40 trillionths of a second, leading Cornell scientists to tout, "You kind of create a hole in time where an event takes place. You just don't know that anything ever happened." The feat is performed by separating light into more fundamental wavelengths, first by slowing the red and speeding the blue. A resultant gap forms in the beam, which leaves a small window for subterfuge. Then, as the light passes through another set of fibers -- which slow the blue and speed the red -- light reaches the observer as if no disturbance had taken place at all. While the brilliant researchers ultimately imagine art thieves being able to pass undetected through museums with this method, the immediate challenge will be in prolonging the light gap. This could prove frustrating, however, due to the scattering and dispersion effects of light. As Cornell scientists dream of their ultimate heist, visual learners will most certainly want to check the video after the break.
The touch, the feel of cotton, the fabric of our... transistors
Transistors of all shapes and sizes form the foundation of just about every electronic gadget under the sun, and similarly, cotton clothing is a key component of a well-rounded wardrobe. It was only a matter of time before these two got together to form a fashion-forward future, and an international team of scientists have accomplished the trick by creating a transistor using fibers of cotton. Now, this isn't the first organic transistor, but cotton's plentiful, cheap, lightweight and sustainable nature make it a great choice for use as a substrate in carbon-based transistors. To get the fluffy white stuff ready to amplify and switch electric signals, it was conformally coated (to cover all the fiber's irregularities) with gold nanoparticles, semiconductive and conductive polymers in a super thin layer to preserve its wearability flexibility. The result was an active transistor that can be used in integrated circuits sewn into your shirt, socks, or even pantaloons, if you like. The future of fashion is right around the corner, folks, and in that future your pants are the PC.
When two chatbots have a conversation, everyone wins (video)
What did one chatbot say to the other chatbot? Quite a lot, actually -- but good luck making any sense out of it. That's what researchers from Cornell's Creative Machines Lab recently discovered, after pitting two bots against one another for a good ol' fashioned talk-off. It's all part of the lab's submission to this year's Loebner Prize Competition in Artificial Intelligence -- an event that awards $100,000 to the team whose computer programs can conduct the most human-like conversations. Unfortunately for Cornell's squad, their chatbots still have a long way to go before achieving conversational coherence, though they could easily get hired as anchors on most cable news networks. Throughout the course of their frenetic (and often snippy) discussion, one bot raised heady questions about God and existence, while the other boldly claimed to be a unicorn. Basically, they had the exact same conversation we used to have in our dorm rooms every night, at around 4 am. Watch it for yourself after the break. It's nothing short of sublime.
Portable device can sniff out anthrax in an hour, won't bring the noise
Got some mysterious white powder sitting on your coffee table? A new, suitcase-sized device can tell you whether you've got dandruff, or anthrax. Developed by researchers at Cornell and the University of Albany, the detector uses a microfluidic chip (pictured on the left) to collect and purify the DNA on a given sample, before conducting a series of polymerase chain reactions -- processes that can quickly identify biological materials. The machine, which has been in the works for seven years, is powerful enough to deliver test results in just one hour (requiring a sample of only 40 microscopic spores), but is slim enough to fit in an airline's overhead luggage bin. Scientists say their creation could also be catered to pick up on other pathogens, including salmonella, and may even pay dividends for crime scene investigators handling forensic evidence. No word yet on when the device could hit the market, but we won't touch an ounce of sugar until it does.
Researchers developing software to finger phony reviews
Opinion spam isn't a new version of your favorite meat treat, repackaged for discerning canned ham consumers. According to a team of researchers at Cornell University, it's a growing problem affecting user generated review sites, and the gang is working to stop it dead in its tracks with a new program that's aimed at tracking down fake reviews. That software, which has been tested on reviews of Chicago hotels, uses keyword analysis and word combination patterns to bust opinion spammers -- fakers, for example, use more verbs than their truth-telling counterparts. The as of yet unnamed program apparently has the ability to post deceptive opinions with 90 percent accuracy, but is currently only trained on hospitality in the Windy City. Ultimately, the group sees the software as a filter for sites like Amazon, but, for now, you'll just have to trust the old noggin to do the detecting for you.
Cornell University's microscopic camera makes photos with mathematics
Megapixel, megaschmixel -- we're more impressed when camera tech goes the opposite way and shrinks down. A happy byproduct of his neural mapping research, Patrick Gill and his Cornell University team have engineered a cam so microscopic it could fit on the head of a pin. The lensless creation is only one 100th of a millimeter thick, looks more like a miniature CD and doesn't require any budget-breaking parts. Named after the Fourier transform that inspired it -- a mathematical operation that breaks a signal down into various frequencies -- the Planar Fourier Capture Array translates pixel components into a fleshed-out image. Creators of the tiny camera tech stress that it won't be "[taking] family portraits," but you could probably count on having this nigh-invisible sucker implanted into your brain. It's definitely one small step for man, one nano-leap of the photographing kind.
Cornell's Ranger robot walks 40.5 miles on a single charge, doesn't even break a sweat (video)
A few years ago, engineers at Cornell were rejoicing when their Ranger robot set an unofficial world record by walking for 5.6 miles without stopping. Since then, the 22-pound bot has only built up its endurance, to the point where it can now chug along for a full 40.5 miles without a single battery recharge, or an ounce of human assistance. The Ranger pulled off the feat last week, when it completed nearly 308 laps around the university's Barton Hall running track, over the course of more than 30 hours. Engineers say that their bot's stamina has a lot to do with its energy efficiency. The Ranger runs on about 16 watts and uses them more sparingly than most of its mechanized brethren. It also saves juice by swinging its legs more liberally than most bipedal walkers, essentially allowing its limbs to fall freely before re-stabilizing itself. The robot's next challenge, apparently, will be to incorporate automatic steering into its gait, since walking in circles can get understandably dull, after a while. Gallop past the break for the full PR and a video of the Ranger's latest achievement.
SIM-sized satellites to lift off with Endeavour this afternoon
They won't be beaming GPS or radio signals back to Earth anytime soon, but these one-inch-square satellites could one day travel to distant planets -- without fuel. Developed over a period of three years by a team of undergraduates at Cornell University, the Sprite chips could eventually be used for communication, flying in clusters like tiny space plankton. After hitching a ride on-board the final space shuttle Endeavour mission this afternoon, the three prototype satellites will be mounted outside the International Space Station, where they'll sit for the next few years, exposed to conditions found only beyond our atmosphere. Perhaps someday we'll even see some "Spprite" KIRFs by the time China's own space station is ready to hit the launchpad in 2020.
Cornell University scientists use 3D printer to engineer human ear made of silicone
Welcome to the future, where scientists can print body parts. No, seriously: researchers at Cornell University have used 3D printing technology to engineer a human ear out of silicone. This should one day soon open the door to the creating functional human body parts using DNA-injected 'ink.' The team at the Computational Synthesis Laboratory, led by Hod Lipson, are now testing the printer as a way to crank out synthetic heart valves. Check out the ear being synthesized in the video after the break.
University of Chicago, Cornell researchers develop universal robotic gripper
Robotic hands are usually just that -- hands -- but some researchers from the University of Chicago and Cornell University (with a little help from iRobot) have taken a decidedly different approach for their so-called universal robotic gripper. As you can see above, the gripper is actually a balloon that can conform to and grip just about any small object, and hang onto it firmly enough to pick it up. What's the secret? After much testing, the researchers found that ground coffee was the best substance to fill the balloon with -- to grab an object, the gripper simply creates a vacuum in the balloon (much like a vacuum-sealed bag of coffee), and it's then able to let go of the object just by releasing the vacuum. Simple, but it works. Head on past the break to check it out in action. [Thanks, Jeremy]
