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Robots learn to march / spell, still not capable of love (video)
Here's hoping there's more than a few military-style marches standing between us and a complete robotic takeover. If not, we've got some dire news: these are not simply miniature Roombas as they may appear, but 15 so-called Khepera bots capable of spelling out GRITS (for Georgia Robotics and Intelligent Systems) to demonstrate grad student Edward Macdonald's Master's thesis for the department. The diminutive robots aren't told where to go in the letters -- instead, they determine their spots via a control algorithm, positioning themselves relative to their fellow rolling machines, so that if one is removed from the equation, they quickly reform the letter without it. Fortunately, they haven't learned to spell "KILL." Yet. Get to know your new robotic overlords a little bit better in the video after the break. [Thanks, Ted]
Faith and World of Warcraft at Colorado University
Buckle your seatbelts on this one -- if you aren't concerned with the bigger picture behind a virtual world like Azeroth and would rather hear about dragons fighting each other or the latest class changes, best look elsewhere on the site. But a student at Colorado University has a theory about World of Warcraft that might sound a little out there: he believes the game is a new religion.Not necessarily in the sense that you should skip church to raid (though lots of people probably do that anyway). But in the sense that it meets a sociologist's definition of religion: it provides community, ethics, culture, and emotion. And it's hard to argue with that: we're living proof of the community around the game, there's definitely plenty of culture and emotion, and... ethics? CU student Theo Zijderveld is proposing that even if the game itself doesn't promote ethical behavior, the push is there -- we're rewarded for doing the right thing, and often punished for doing wrong. Work with others in a group, get better loot. Camp someone's corpse, and their guildie or alt shows up to camp you.Intriguing idea, even if it does sound like something cooked up for a college student's thesis (which is in fact what it is). It's certainly not a religion in that there is no higher power involved (unless you believe that Ghostcrawler is in fact a god) -- obviously, we all believe that everything in Azeroth was made by men and women, or at least hard-working Gnomes. But as for what playing World of Warcraft creates in us and makes us feel, those results and ideas are very close in many ways to what organized religion does. Quite a theory.
News Brews blends RSS feeds into multicultural beverage
Getting updates on the weather and current time is no problem for modern day coffee machines, but Benjamin Brown's project aims to blend the hottest worldwide news into a multicultural cup of joe. Rather than taking time to find out what's going on in the world around you with your eyes, the News Brews hopes to shovel the latest RSS feeds into your brain via your taste buds. The steampunk-inspired device "connects to internet news feeds and parses them to determine the relative frequency at which different coffee growing regions are mentioned," which means that your brew will differ each day depending on how frequently a given country is mentioned. Of course, not everyone will be down with an unexpected coffee suicide of sorts to wake them in the AM, but trying to figure out what your mouth is reading on the drive to work certainly beats running others off the road or illegally texting at stop lights.[Via TechDigest]
Intimate controllers remind us that touching is good
After designing a Pong controller built into a bra (touch the left cup to move left, the right to move right), Jennifer Chowdhury heard the term "gamer widowhood" where men essentially abandoned their wives in favor of playing video games. This got the ole gears turning: could a game actually bring couples closer together? Behold the solution: Intimate Controllers.The idea is simple: a dozen sensors are built into a matching pair of boxers and a bra. The couple wears the undergarments and watches the game screen nearby with their hands placed on each other. At various points in the game players will need to touch certain sensors on their partner in order to progress (yes, let your imagination run free with that one). After watching the video, you'll realize there are many, many reasons you'll want to get further in this game.Jenny's thesis project is a fascinating concept, and we're not just saying that for obvious reasons. Playing video games with other people is a form of bonding, but the Intimate Controllers take the idea and run with it. You get to play a game, and there's lot of groping going on in the process. We really don't see a down side.[Thanks, Steve]%Gallery-2971%
Control Freak turns any object into a game controller
Apparently the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea doesn't mind students going a little out of the box for their masters thesis projects, seeing as they let Haiyan Zhang develop an interesting system intended to translate the motion of everyday objects into input devices for simple video games. When the Control Freak device is clamped onto a "host object," whether it's a door, an office chair or your lab partner, it starts interpreting the host's sounds and movements, representing them as simple actions in a selection of specially designed flash games. The video demonstrations on the site suggest it has a long way to go before it catches up to the refinement of Nintendo's Wiimote, but it's already a heck of a lot better than the Powerglove ever was (don't front). On a related note, we have to wonder if this school gives out masters degrees for turning video game controllers into everyday objects.
