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The Jelly Click takes mouse portability to the extreme. All the electronic circuity lives on a small flexible board. The body itself is just soft plastic. (more…)
Written by Michelle on February 1st, 2008 with no comments.
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If you’re going to win the DARPA autonomous vehicle challenge, you’ve got to be pretty clever; even so, when General Motors (GM) invited the SlashGear CES team to be passengers in their Chevy Tahoe self-driving SUV, there was a little apprehension about giving up the keys to a robot! Of course, we shouldn’t have been worried: with 25 sensors, including five radar units giving a 360-degree view of its surroundings, two lasers from specialist Continental and GPS, all feeding data about the driving environment and any potential obstacles into advanced behavior algorithms, the Tahoe had more eyes on the road than the team did!
Continental Automotive Systems are the brains behind the ‘Boss’, the heavily adapted Chevy, and they’re not really viewing this as an opportunity to pick up DARPA’s $2m first-prize. Instead, it’s seen as a test-bed for a variety of intelligent safety, telemetry and driver assistance projects that will feed back into Continental’s industry partners. Right now, they’re working on the next-gen incarnation of ABS and ESC braking, embedded telematics such as Bluetooth hands-free, security and car access control, hybrid drives and adaptive cruise control, all of which will have some aspect of the Boss educating them.
“Since there are no human drivers in the Urban Challenge, the driverless cars must “see” roads and other vehicles with cameras, lasers, radar, sensors and other smart car technologies. Planning software continuously determines where and how to drive, how to avoid trouble and how to quickly reach a destination” DARPA
Adaptive cruise control is perhaps the most entertaining of the lot, with the car maintaining not only a constant speed but a safe distance between other traffic. It can predict a potential collision, warn the driver and, if their responses aren’t deemed sufficient to prevent it, intervene itself with extra braking and directing power to different wheels.
So what’s the experience like? Crazy, that’s what. Riding in the Chevy Tahoe was both amazing and uncomfortable: unpredictable, and difficult at times to accept that this was the SUV driving and not someone directing it via remote control. Of course, most drivers wouldn’t be happy giving up ownership of the steering wheel to a computer, and so the practical applications will be more transparent. I personally can’t wait until some of the technology filters down: while I might be happy with my own skills on the road, its everyone else driving that I don’t trust!
Many thanks to GM and Continental Automotive Systems for the opportunity to experience the Boss.
Ride along in the back seat!
Ride along in the front seat!
360-degrees video tour!
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Written by Vincent Nguyen on January 10th, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on Blow up mouse and Burner and Phantom-X and defender and dts and exercise and overheating.
Filed under: Misc. Gadgets
In a scenario that could have been ripped straight from the pages of Chuck, Honeywell is apparently hoping to monitor analysts’ brains in order to more hastily break down intelligence data. The project, which is being supported by DARPA, seeks to key in on electrical activity in the brain in order to flag images as potentially interesting / useful before the human can actually determine what’s what. Head mounted sensors would be used to “detect brain signals associated with the recognition of targets analysts are looking for,” and the goal would be to increase productivity and help military / intelligence agencies analyze imagery more effectively. Of course, we’ve no idea how the system will differentiate between a legitimate signal and one triggered by the rumbling of one’s belly, but we’re sure Honeywell is all over it. [Warning: read link requires subscription]
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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
Written by Darren Murph on November 12th, 2007 with no comments.
Read more articles on 1708 and Blow up mouse.
Filed under: Robots, Transportation
DARPA’s Urban Challenge has finished, with all eleven cars making it across the finishing line. Cars from Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, and Virginia Tech were the “winners,” taking less than the six hour maximum to complete the 60 mile course which involved avoiding obstacles and fifty cars with human drivers. The overall winner of the $2 million prize has yet to be announced, although were guessing it’ll be one of the latter three teams rather than the eight other cars that completed the course. Despite the significant collision potential, there was only one minor fender bender (which didn’t even stop the two cars.) That’s a far better showing than the first ever “Desert” Challenge in 2004 where not a single car finished. Since then the number of cars completing has only increased, and with it, the potential for cars that can drive themselves.
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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
Written by Conrad Quilty-Harper on November 4th, 2007 with no comments.
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Filed under: Wireless, Networking
DARPA’s latest initiative is far from revolutionary — we’ve seen a number of installations aimed at improving communication in times of war — but the Wireless Adaptive Network Development (WAND) project looks to “exploit commercial radio components, rather than custom ones,” to “keep soldiers linked with each other on the battlefield.” Essentially, soldiers would be equipped with $500 handheld radios that would form far-reaching ad hoc networks that could “shift frequencies and sidestep interference” to make communications more pervasive and more reliable. Interestingly, WAND is reportedly set to be demonstrated as early as January of next year, but there’s no telling how long it’ll take for the project to become fully operational.
[Via Slashdot, image courtesy of SOCOM]
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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
Written by Darren Murph on November 4th, 2007 with no comments.
Read more articles on Blow up mouse and Communications, Cellphones, Cellular Providers, Smartph and puzzle games.
Filed under: Robots, Transportation
Oh man, can you taste it? That oily titanium tang is the smack of robotic cars set for release Saturday in the DARPA Urban Challenge. The final event pits 11 vehicles in competition for a $2 million first, $1M second, and $500k third place prizes. The 60-mile course at the former George Air Force Base in Victorville CA must be successfully navigated in less than 6-hours while avoiding about 50 carbon-based drivers. Can Stanford repeat their 2005 Grand Challenge victory with “Junior” or will Carnegie Mellon’s “Boss” (pictured) bust out a BFG-9000 in swift retribution? Tune in Saturday to find out.
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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
Written by Thomas Ricker on November 2nd, 2007 with no comments.
Read more articles on Audio, Video, Portable Video, Video Providers, Gadgets and Blow up mouse and Gaming, Miscellaneous and mailbox and sghp960 and tmobile.
Filed under: Robots
Boston Globe reporter Scott Kirsner got a chance to go behind the scenes with DARPA’s much publicized robotic arm, designed by a team led by Dean Kamen. The video includes an interview with Dean, along with some footage of the arm itself, including a symbolic handshake between the reporter and humanity’s future destroyer (or if not, the ancestor of humanity’s future destroyer.) Anyway, the video offers some interesting insight into the development of what could eventually be a truly bionic arm: check it out after the break.
Continue reading DARPA’s robotic arm demoed
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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
Written by Conrad Quilty-Harper on October 16th, 2007 with no comments.
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Filed under: Digital Cameras, Misc. Gadgets
DARPA’s already dropped a chunk of cash on some tiny, camera-equipped scout robots, but it looks like the ever-funding agency isn’t satisfied with its surveillance options just yet, with it now turning to a camera network that has a rather unique means of being deployed. As DefenseNews reports, the cameras developed by CDM Optics are capable of surviving terminal velocity drops, meaning they could be deployed from high-altitude aircraft or even fired from a shot gun. In the latter case, the cameras could apparently be affixed to a spike and fired at walls, forming an ad-hoc network to cover a particular area. While complete details on the cameras are obviously a bit light, they apparently have “surprisingly good performance” and are said to be “very cheap.” While there’s no word on further development of that particular system just yet, DARPA’s larger ELASTIC program has reportedly netted some other results, including an “electronically steered imager array” developed by Toyon and JPL, which has now received some follow-on funding.
[Via Danger Room]
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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
Written by Donald Melanson on September 24th, 2007 with no comments.
Read more articles on 1098 and BAE Systems and Blow up mouse and HTC diamond and Video, Portable Video, Communications, Cellphones, Mobi and cubans and spider.
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