Popular Science - New Technology, Science News, The Future Now

A full text RSS feed

This Cuddly Phase-Change Robot Will Keep You Warm at Night

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 12:02:02 -0500

It is made of a phase-change material, which stores and releases energy as it changes from a solid to a liquid or a gas. Hagent contains a type of PCM that can store heat and release it. It also comes with an on-board thermosensor and wheels, so it can roll around and find heat sources in your home, drawing in the warmth and storing it.

It also has ultrasonic sensors and a control unit so it can navigate around your home or office. German designers Andreas Meinhardt and Daniel Abendroth built a prototype for a contest in Paris, the Prix Émile Hermès, and won second place. In the video below, a prototype rolls around and finds a heat lamp.

It’s just a prototype for now, but I would love to see these on sale in the space heater aisle.

[via IEEE Spectrum]

Play the PopSci Tourist-Or-Local Game

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 13:01:03 -0500

Were these photos of New York taken by tourists, or by natives?

Eric Fischer analyzed thousands of photos of New York. Based on the historical data from each uploader's Flickr account, he deduced which were taken by tourists and which by locals, and plotted the results on a map.

Now we've turned the geo-data into a game. Can you figure out which photos are which?

Attempt at the World's Highest Skydive, from 120,000 Feet, is Rescheduled for August

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 16:13:07 -0500

Felix Baumgartner would be the first human to go supersonic outside of a vehicle

Jumping from that altitude is extremely challenging of course. The current jump record is held by former Air Force pilot Joe Kittinger, who jumped from nearly 103,000 feet in 1960, back when we were still trying to figure out just how high the human body could go. Others have failed to break Kittinger’s record. One person has died trying. It’s cold up there, there’s not a lot of air to breathe, and air pressures are significantly lower than at sea level. Biologically speaking, man was not designed to fly this high.

As such, Baumgartner will make the ride up to 120,000 in a custom-built pressurized capsule tethered to a 600-foot-wide balloon. A special pressurized suit, similar to a space suit, will protect him from the conditions outside once the door comes open and Baumgartner takes the plunge. About 35 seconds after he jumps, he’ll break the sound barrier. Then he’ll continue to fall for another five minutes, pulling his parachute about a mile from the ground.

Records bested would include the highest skydive, the highest manned balloon ride, and the longest free fall ever recorded. Or they might include highest manned balloon disaster and worst idea ever. We’ll just have to wait and see. Regardless, the team should learn quite a bit about high altitude pressure suits, which could in turn inform the designs of future space suits.

[SPACE]

Drones Will Be Admitted to Standard US Airspace By 2015

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 14:02:45 -0500

By Sept. 30, 2015, drones will have to have access to U.S. airspace that is currently reserved for piloted aircraft. This applies to military, commercial and privately owned drones — so it could mean a major increase in unmanned aircraft winging through our airspace. That’s airspace to be shared with airliners, cargo planes and small private aircraft.

As it is now, drones can only use some pieces of military airspace and they can patrol the nation’s borders. Some 300 public agencies can also use drones, according to the AP, but they must be at low altitudes and away from airports.

The FAA has spent years planning its NextGen upgrade, a new system designed to streamline traffic at airports, save fuel and reduce air travel headaches. NextGen is a behemoth program that consists of several complementary systems, notably the Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast, or ADS-B in airspace lingo. This system uses GPS to determine aircraft location, and it will enable planes to land in a more efficient, steep glide, rather than the fuel-wasting stair-step descents of the past and present. This is already being rolled out in some places, but the new bill requires the FAA to set up new arrival procedures at the country’s 35 busiest airports.

Eventually, planes will all have GPS that can update a plane’s location every second, instead of the six to 12 seconds it takes with current radar systems, AP points out. This will allow pilots to know where their planes are relative to each other, and this could help ease congestion and make for smoother taxi procedures.

NextGen has been planned and debated for years, and the modernization plan has been stymied by Congressional wrangling since 2007. This new bill, which now goes to President Obama for his signature, will finally get things moving again.

[via NPR]

Augmented Reality Will Help Future Astronauts Perform Surgery on Each Other

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 15:29:36 -0500

For now, the Computer Assisted Medical Diagnosis and Surgery System, CAMDASS, only works with ultrasound, which is already available on the International Space Station. But the goal is to use it for any biomedical procedures future astronauts might need, according to the European Space Agency.

CAMDASS users don a 3-D display headcam, which includes an infrared camera to track the ultrasound device. Markers placed on a patient’s body denote sites of interest, and the system recognizes the patient and calibrates the display according to the CAMDASS wearer’s vision, an ESA news release explains. The headset displays little floating cue cards in the wearer’s field of vision, which match up with the markers on the real patient. Aligning the markers helps the user position the ultrasound probe, or whatever other device is needed. Then reference images show what the CAMDASS wearer should be seeing.

The ESA tested a prototype of this device with medical and nursing students, paramedics and Belgian Red Cross workers at Saint-Pierre University Hospital in Brussels. The CAMDASS testers could perform a “reasonably difficult” ultrasound procedure without any other help, the space agency said.

Augmented reality can be pretty fun to play with, but the practical applications of a real-life informational overlay are limitless. This is one reason why DARPA wants AR contact lenses that would require no bulky headgear. We've even seen an AR concept in which a would-be home mechanic can learn how to repair a car.

Similarly, this ESA device could be useful long before anyone takes it to Mars. It could help improve diagnostics in developing countries, for instance, or in remote locations like Antarctic research stations. Workers there have had to complete their fair share of self-diagnostics. The ESA now wants to conduct further tests.

Minecraft: Making Your Own Fun, One Brick At a Time

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 15:13:45 -0500

Building a whole new way to game

In 2001, Grand Theft Auto III introduced a mass audience to a new way of experiencing the world of a game: Instead of walking narrow corridors or outdoor environments that felt hemmed in by invisible walls and artificial barriers, you could explore a vast city.

Back then, the ability to wreak havoc in a wide-open space was enough. For decades video games were linear affairs, fraught with difficulty. Find yourself stumped by a tricky puzzle or brutal boss battle and you were left with nothing to do. Video games were rife with dead ends. Grand Theft Auto III helped change all that. Sure, the game had a plot. But you weren't limited to chasing the story. Players who found themselves stuck could blow off steam by stealing a car, blowing stuff up with a rocket launcher or punching a random pedestrian. But the kind of freedom Rockstar's blockbuster offered was ultimately limited. Players could roam a vast world, but their only meaningful way to interact with that world was to cause trouble.

The message was loud and clear, though. Players wanted more agency in their videogames – less hard and fast goals and more freedom to find fun in their own way

But what's a gamer to do when there is no princesses to rescue or universe to save? If you're one of the millions playing the wildly successful independent game Minecraft, you build. The game, from developer Mojang, seems to go against the grain of contemporary video games. Rather than concentrate on action, Minecraft leverages player creativity and curiosity to generate fun.

Playing Minecraft is like being dropped into a sprawling world made of Legos with no road-map. After years of playing games with hard and fast goals the rudderless sensation can be disarming. It doesn't help that Minecraft has no tutorial or in-game instructions. It's just you in a pristine Eden, comprised of winding waterways, verdant forests and jutting mountains Swiss-cheesed with networks of caverns. It is not uncommon for the first-time Minecraft player to think, “What now?”

Minecraft's adventure mode is about survival. Players are dropped, empty handed, into a vast, randomly generated world. Their first task is to make tools and shelter. Because when the sun sets the monsters come out. Players scrounge for wood and stone, craft a workbench and begin the gradual process of gearing up. Here is where Minecraft is most conventional – there's a rigid progression from building tools out of wood and stone to eventually mining diamonds, constructing working railroads and magical portals that can transport players to other dimensions. Once the player has built a workshop and a fortress to protect them from wandering zombies, spiders and Creepers the game tilts towards the creative. Players are free to proceed how the choose – they can gather resources, develop their base of operations or strike out into the world, looking for new adventure. It's this undirected freedom that keeps millions occupied.

That aimless feeling hasn't stopped fans from finding their own fun in Minecraft's procedurally generated worlds. The secret to Minecraft's stickiness is the voxel – the three-dimensional cousin of the pixel. It only takes one glance at the chunky, retro look of Minecraft to understand that the game isn't interested in verisimilitude. Minecraft doesn't want to trick you into thinking that you're in a world just like ours. When you see all those voxels, each like an individual Lego – one of millions of building blocks that make up the world – it is hard not to be inspired. Think of Minecraft as a God game, where the player has the ability to shape the world the way they choose, played at ground level. And to that end players can play together via online servers where they collaborate to build wonders. Some servers are geared towards pure creation, where resources are unlimited and monster never interfere.

The most ambitious have used Minecraft's voxels to build working computers and replicas of Star Trek the Next Generation's Enterprise. But the activity loop of exploration, resource gathering and creation has proven entertaining for gamers of all stripes. Obsessive compulsive disorder isn't a prerequisite for enjoying Minecraft.

A classic of the Minecraft YouTube video genre

As much as Mojang and creator Markus “Notch” Persson have innovated with Minecraft much of the credit for the game's success goes to the people who play it. The game's long gestation period and open-ended style of play has inspired a legion of fans and supporters with the enthusiasm of evangelists. Mojang didn't need to buy ads or produce commercials to land 20 million players. Their user base grew virally. Crowd-sourced Minecraft Wikis offer clear instructions for the Minecraft newbie. And millions of user-generated YouTube videos offer glimpses of awe-inspiring Minecraft creations, allowing inspiration and creativity to spread virally. In 2010 Minecraft fans spontaneously gathered in Bellevue, Washington, to meet Persson and other like-minded Minecrafters. The off-the cuff meet-up only attracted fifty or so fans, but became a seed which would germinate into something bigger. In 2011 4,500 Minecraft fans from 23 different countries gathered in Las Vegas for MineCon – the first official convention for the game's growing legions of aficionados. In 2012, a version for XBox and Kinect is expected.

Minecraft's success story has proven inspirational to other game designers. The influence is most obviously felt among the scads of so-called Minecraft clones. Since Minecraft entered public beta testing in 2009 dozens upon dozens of imitators have cropped up. Some are straight up copies. But many others use Minecraft as a starting point and create something entirely new. Terrarria, the two-dimensional side-scroller from indie studio Re-Logic, melds Minecraft with retro games like Metroid and Castlevania. And it isn't just independent game makers who are taking the lessons of Minecraft to heart. The recently announced Fortnite from Gears of War studio Epic Games will allow players to build their own fortresses to help them survive nighttime waves of zombies.

The great contribution of Minecraft and the many games that will come after it is to fundamentally change what players can expect to do in the videogame worlds they visit. From here on out more and more players won't be asking, “what can I blow up?” Instead they'll be wondering, “what can I build?” That's real, constructive change.

This is genuinely amazing.

Gallery: the Brand-New High-Tech Rainbow Warrior

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 15:48:48 -0500

UK Report Suggests Soldiers Could One Day Plug Their Weapons Right Into Their Brains

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 18:17:08 -0500

Dangerous-sounding neuroscience

The wide-ranging document reportedly covers a lot of ground, including the ethical issues surrounding the use of neuroscience in defense. It seems to focus less on ways to impact the enemy directly, and more on the enhancement of soldiers’ fighting abilities--though neurological drugs that make enemy captives more talkative or perhaps cause enemy troops fall asleep or become disoriented also get a mention.

Of particular interest in the document: transcranial direct current stimulation, or tDCS. The idea of passing electrical signals through the skull to the brain to boost performance isn’t new to U.S. defense dreamers, as the U.S. military has already done tests on the technology (and found it helpful in improving soldiers’ abilities to detect threats). A battle helmet that can pass weak electrical pulses through the brain could sharpen a soldier’s mind, the report suggests, upping attention spans and memory as well as attention to detail.

Similarly, electroencephalogram (EEG) could work to turn the human brain into a more efficient tool, although in a somewhat backwards fashion from tDCS. Using an array of electrodes, EEG can record brainwaves through the skull, detecting things that may not be conscious but that the brain nonetheless registers. For instance, the report cites DARPA research in which subjects looking at satellite photos were monitored with EEG. Even when the subjects missed some of the targets they were looking for in the images, the brain detected them, and that was evident in their brain waves even though it was never converted to conscious thought.

Such tools could also be used to screen recruits and identify certain mental traits, helping fighting forces more efficiently organize their ranks into fast learners, decision-makers, peacekeepers, and hardened, battle-ready special ops types. But none of these ideas is as far-out as using brain-machine interfaces (BMIs) to plug soldiers’ brains directly into weapons systems.

This is based on the same kind of research that has shown that disabled individuals can move prostheses with nerve signals from the brain, but in this context such BMI technology would be used to plug the fast processing power of the brain into drone technology and other weapons technologies for faster target identification and, presumably, termination. Let’s hope the soldiers mind-melding with the killer drones aced their EEG decision-making exams.

[Guardian]

iRobot's 710 Warrior, Strong Enough to Tow a Car, is Finally Ready for the Field

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 16:16:29 -0500

Massachusetts-based iRobot already has a number of robots in the field and in the household--they make everything from the popular Roomba vacuum robots to the tiny SUGV and larger Packbots that are workhorses of American Explosives Ordnance Disposal teams working overseas. But the Warrior will be the largest, weighing in at 450 pounds and sporting a 6.5-foot mechanical arm. It can climb stairs, reach its arm up to 11.5 feet high, and negotiate obstacles up to more than 1.5 feet high. It can be weaponized, or fitted with a variety of task-specific tools. It can delicately open a car door or smash its way through the windows. Or it can just tow the car.

You don’t need us to tell you that’s awesome. Warrior’s size and weight will limit its ability to deploy in the field like Packbot and SUGV, which fit relatively well in the back of a truck or, in SUGV's case, in a rucksack. But in situations where it can be deployed it will offer handlers a far more versatile robot than its lighter brethren. See it perform many of these versatile tasks below.

[Technology Review]

State of Play: The World's Most Amazing Playgrounds

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 14:07:56 -0500

Architecture and design firms are remaking the playground in ways you'd never expect