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Your Lost Gadgets Will Find Each Other

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Graphic by Christine Daniloff, via MIT News Office

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Sometimes when one of my remotes is missing, I interrogate the others: “Where’s your friend? I know you know something!” In the future, with wireless positioning systems, a version of that method might actually almost work.

Researchers at MIT’s Wireless Communications and Network Sciences Group think networks of devices that communicate their positions to each other will work better than all of the devices transmitting to a single receiver. The latter is how GPS works, and if you’ve used it, you know it isn’t always very precise. In the lab, MIT’s robots can spot a wireless transmitter within a millimeter.

This seems almost intuitive: the more “eyes” you have on an object, the easier it is to triangulate — the robot version of “the wisdom of crowds.” But the key conceptual breakthrough here isn’t actually the number of transmitters or their network arrangement, but what they’re transmitting. MIT News’s Larry Hardesty writes:

Among [the research group's] insights is that networks of wireless devices can improve the precision of their location estimates if they share information about their imprecision. Traditionally, a device broadcasting information about its location would simply offer up its best guess. But if, instead, it sent a probability distribution â€” a range of possible positions and their likelihood â€” the entire network would perform better as a whole. The problem is that sending the probability distribution requires more power and causes more interference than simply sending a guess, so it degrades the networkâ€™s performance. [The] group is currently working to understand the trade-off between broadcasting full-blown distributions and broadcasting sparser information about distributions.

Much of this research is still theoretical, or has only been deployed in lab settings. But Princeton’s H. Vincent Poor is optimistic about the MIT group’s approach: â€œI don’t see any major obstacles for transferring their basic research to practical applications. In fact, their research was motivated by the real-world need for high-accuracy location-awareness.â€ Like precisely which cushion my remote control is underneath.

Warning: Very Dry Flash Video Of Robots Finding Things Follows

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Your Lost Gadgets Will Find Each Other

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Author: Tiffany Shoman

Graphic by Christine Daniloff, via MIT News Office

Sometimes when one of my remotes is missing, I interrogate the others: “Where’s your friend? I know you know something!” In the future, with wireless positioning systems, a version of that method might actually almost work.

Researchers at MIT’s Wireless Communications and Network Sciences Group think networks of devices that communicate their positions to each other will work better than all of the devices transmitting to a single receiver. The latter is how GPS works, and if you’ve used it, you know it isn’t always very precise. In the lab, MIT’s robots can spot a wireless transmitter within a millimeter.

This seems almost intuitive: the more “eyes” you have on an object, the easier it is to triangulate — the robot version of “the wisdom of crowds.” But the key conceptual breakthrough here isn’t actually the number of transmitters or their network arrangement, but what they’re transmitting. MIT News’s Larry Hardesty writes:

Among [the research group's] insights is that networks of wireless devices can improve the precision of their location estimates if they share information about their imprecision. Traditionally, a device broadcasting information about its location would simply offer up its best guess. But if, instead, it sent a probability distribution â€” a range of possible positions and their likelihood â€” the entire network would perform better as a whole. The problem is that sending the probability distribution requires more power and causes more interference than simply sending a guess, so it degrades the networkâ€™s performance. [The] group is currently working to understand the trade-off between broadcasting full-blown distributions and broadcasting sparser information about distributions.

Much of this research is still theoretical, or has only been deployed in lab settings. But Princeton’s H. Vincent Poor is optimistic about the MIT group’s approach: â€œI don’t see any major obstacles for transferring their basic research to practical applications. In fact, their research was motivated by the real-world need for high-accuracy location-awareness.â€ Like precisely which cushion my remote control is underneath.

Warning: Very Dry Flash Video Of Robots Finding Things Follows

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Your Lost Gadgets Will Find Each Other

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Viruses Might Help Make Better Batteries

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Author: JohnnyBells

How can you make tiny, flexible materials that conduct electricity more efficiently than today’s batteries? You can engineer expensive, high-density carbon nanotubes. Or you can use the original nanobots, made by nature itself: viruses.

An MIT group recently described an advance that brings us closer to the day when freaky, half-alive nanomachines assemble batteries you could wear.

The research comes out of Angela Belcher’sÂ Biomolecular Materials Group at MIT, which has been working on this project since 1994. They use bacteriophages to build — really, evolve — hyperdense materials from ionic particles, the same way bone, shells, chalk, and glass were made in the Cambrian period.

This week Mark Allen, a postdoc in the group, outlined the use of a new cathode made with iron flouride. Allen also described some of theÂ potential applications of this technology. The high flexibility of the nanostructured material means you can weave it into any fabric or pour it into any shape, including:

Wearable battery packs for soliders, first responders, and civilians;
Tiny rechargable batteries for portable electronics including smart phones, laptops, and GPS;
Unmanned aerial vehicles, which require lightweight, long-lasting power sources.

In 2008, the group published an article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences outlining how this would work. Viruses create a template, assembling nanowires out of cobalt oxide. These are built on top of a synthetic electrolytic polymer, called a polyelectrolyte. (Natural polyelectrolytes include protein polypeptides and DNA.) Stamp this electrode onto a platinum current collector, and:

The resulting electrode arrays exhibit full electrochemical functionality. This versatile approach for fabricating and positioning electrodes may provide greater flexibility for implementing advanced battery designs such as those with interdigitated microelectrodes or 3D architectures.

A UAV is going to provide the first real-world test of the scaled-up batteries in action. Other applicationsÂ we’ve seen touted for wearable electronics include wearable solar cells and electronic devices that stand up to repeat laundering. So much to look forward to.

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Viruses Might Help Make Better Batteries

Poof! After Wireless, the Computer Mouse Turns Invisible

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Author: Sriram Reddy

In a magic trick that only geeks can pull off, researchers at MIT have found a method to let users click and scroll exactly the same way they would with a computer mouse, without the device actually being there.

Cup your palm, move it around on a table and a cursor on the screen hovers. Tap on the table like you would click a real mouse, and the computer responds. It’s one step beyond cordless. It’s an invisible mouse.

The project, called “Mouseless,” uses an infrared laser beam and camera to track the movements of the palm and fingers and translate them into computer commands.

“Like many other projects in the past, including the Nintendo Power Glove and the Fingerworks iGesture Pad, this attempts to see how we can use new technology to control old technology,” says Daniel Wigdor, a user experience architect for Microsoft who hasn’t worked directly on the project. “It’s just an intermediate step to where we want to be.”

Though new user interfaces such as touchscreens and voice recognition systems have become popular, the two-button mouse still reigns among computer users. Many technology experts think the precision pointing that a cursor offers is extremely difficult to replicate through technologies such as touch and speech.

Last week Intel CTO Justin Rattner said though Intel research labs is working on new touchscreen ideas, the mouse and keyboard combination is unlikely to be replaced in everyday computing for a long time.

In the case of the Mouseless project, the infrared laser and camera are embedded in the computer. When a user cups their hand as if a physical mouse was present under their palm, the laser beam lights up the hand that is in contact with the table. The infrared camera detects this and interprets the movements.

A working prototype of the Mouseless system costs approximately $20 to build, says Pranav Mistry, who is leading the project.

Mistry is one of the star researchers in the area of creating new user experiences. He previously developed the “Sixth Sense” project,Â a wearable gestural interface that lets users wave their hands in front of them and interact with maps and other virtual objects — much like Tom Cruise in Minority Report.

The Mouseless idea is not as big a breakthrough as Sixth Sense. Though it is fun, it is difficult to see a real-world case for getting rid of hardware while keeping interaction the same. User interfaces are going beyond the point-and-click interaction that the computer mouse demands. And mouse hardware itself is cheap, so there’s not much of a cost saving here.

Check out this fun, partly animated video to what the Mouseless can really do and how it works:

Photo: Mouseless Project

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Poof! After Wireless, the Computer Mouse Turns Invisible

Inhabitat’s Week in Green: salad spinners, diapers, and solutions to the Deepwater catastrophe

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Author: Tiffany Shoman

The Week in Green is a new item from our friends at Inhabitat, recapping the week’s most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us.

This week renewable energy received a giant jolt forward as Google unveiled plans to invest $40 million in North Dakota wind farms. Solar power is also having a moment in the sun as MIT unveiled the world’s first solar cells printed on paper – we can’t wait to see a post-it version that we can stick to our walls! Meanwhile a team of Swiss researchers are harnessing rays of light for an entirely different purpose — they’ve figured out a way to create rain clouds by shooting laser beams into the sky.

With the Deepwater Horizon oil spill still saturating the sea weeks after the leak sprung, we also looked at an array of innovative solutions for cleaning up the catastrophe. The first step to stemming the spill’s damage is predicting its spread, which is why scientists are harnessing advanced virtual reality models to aid in cleanup efforts. We also took a look at the BP’s first massive oil containment dome, which the company plans to lower 5,000 feet below the sea to plug up the leak.

This week we also looked at several ingenious inventions that find incredible new uses for everyday items. Two students at Rice University have transformed a simple salad spinner into a centrifuge that can save lives by diagnosing diseases, and a Japanese company called Super Faith has invented a machine that can transform used adult diapers into an energy source.

Finally, we were dazzled by two high-tech garments that harness LEDs to light up the night. Katy Perry recently took to the red carpet wearing a shimmering gown studded with thousands of blinking rainbow lights, and we were impressed by this LED-laden coat that keeps bicyclists safe when they hit the streets at night.

Inhabitat’s Week in Green: salad spinners, diapers, and solutions to the Deepwater catastrophe originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 10 May 2010 03:42:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Baseball Robots – PitchBot vs BatBot

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Author: William Miller

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These robots were built as a cooperative effort between MIT and the University of Tokyo, apparently Japans version of MIT. Both can pitch, bat, and demand millions of dollars per year just for showing upâ€¦ Alright maaayyybeee not demanding the nice salary, but they can bat and pitchâ€¦

As the video shows, both in normal speed and slow motion, one robot, lets call it a pitchbot, has been fitted with a three fingered hand and will throw the ball towards the other robot, the batbot. The bot that has the bat type appendage, instead of the hand, then swings to connect with the ball. Watch the two ray gun looking things on either side of the batbot. They are apparently the eyes that determine the location of the ball so the connection can occur.

[pinktentacle]

MIT Fabric Camera

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Author: William Miller

This cross section shows two rings of light-sensitive semiconductor material in the fiber. The eight thicker parts are electrodes to carry signals.

Here is the gist of it. Basically MIT has figured out a way to use fibers to detect two frequencies of light. A computer connected can then translate those frequencies into an image.

Researchers suggest that this technology could eventually be as a uniform. The person wearing the uniform could use a HUD to see in all directions simultaneously. Imagine being able to see behind you, and in front at the same timeâ€¦

[CNET]

Posts Tagged ‘MIT’

Your Lost Gadgets Will Find Each Other

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Viruses Might Help Make Better Batteries

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