October 27, 2004
March 06, 2004
Banryu, Robot Or Dragon?
from slashdot:
"Roland Piquepaille writes "When Yoichi Takamoto, president of the small Japanese company Tmsuk, decided to build a robotic guard for your house, he was not able to use the familiar design of a dog. The idea was already taken by Sony, with its successful Aibo. Instead, he decided to develop the Banryu (or "guard dragon") robots. After all, nobody has ever seen a real dragon. So he was free to design it as he wished. The result is a scary robot which is 90 centimeters tall, weighs 35 kilograms, has more than 50 built-in sensors and can transmit an alarm to its master's cell phone if someone tries to invade the house. It doesn't come cheap. The price is about $18,000, but you can choose between five colors. The Asahi Shimbun tells us the story, while this overview includes several pictures of the frightening dragon." This is scary?"
looking at the pics from the last link, i am reminded of the robot steph is working on. so steph, this is what i expect from you now.
January 19, 2004
June 05, 2003
Virtual presence app..
The killer app is going to be that tool that keeps us around even after we're dead. It won't need to be AI, and it won't even need to be us. All it'll have to be is a semantic database of all of our information. I will be able to continue telling you stories even after I'm dead. It won't be me of course, because I'm not longer present on this earth (hypothetically speaking), but that is no longer a problem (for you). More than being able to tell stories, we're this close to being able to ask and answer questions even though neither of us is present. I can have a script go out each hour and ask a bunch of questions... if there were another script somewhere that was able to interpret those questions and answer them for my script, then it makes absolutely no difference who's online or even who's alive. Information is travelling in this data-centric world and it has shed itself of its mortal vehicle, us.
From Eric Benson's Blog
(Thanks Leonard!)
May 29, 2003
The Meaning of Presence
Terminological and other confusions about what comprises presence, and what does not, have impeded progress in the field. In this speculative short paper we suggest that presence has a biological purpose and that a consideration of this purpose may provide a way forward. We see presence as the feeling a conscious organism experiences when immersed in a concrete external world. This feeling must be distinguishable from engagement in internally constructed mental worlds, in organisms equipped to construct such inner realities. Presence depends on the form of the media, because form determines whether a world must be constructed internally or can be said to exist outside the perceiver. From this claim, we speculate on possible future ways of applying presence in psychotherapy and the arts. In viewing presence this way we are adopting an experiential realist position, one that sees meaning as residing ultimately in concrete experiences of external worlds, real or virtual – in other words, in presence.
by Prof. John A WaterWorth on Presence-Connect
May 19, 2003
Remote Home
The RemoteHome is a flat share that will exist in two distant cities at the same time: London and Berlin. Both spaces are electronically connected through the Internet, to turn furniture and architectural elements into tangible and sensual means of communication. Sensory and kinetic devices, as well as an interactive light installation allow for the exchange between this remotely living group of friends. A mobile wireless artefact, in the shape of a transforming interactive bag, can be taken on journeys to stay emotionally in touch with the RemoteHome.
May 04, 2003
Touchy-Feely Goes Remote
Technology Research News May 1, 2003
http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/rnb_050103_2.asp
How do you communicate gesture and touch from thousands of miles away?
Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers have put together a scheme that uses an array of individual actuators, or cilia, that people can push to remotely convey physical sensations.
The scheme involves a pair of devices that look like a row of side-by-side hairbrushes. The devices' felt-tipped bristles are mounted on a rubber sheet, and each bristle is capable moving independently. A combination of magnets and electricity actuate the bristles. When a person moves the bristles on one device the remote device communicates the gesture by mirroring the movements.
The recipient can both see and feel the bristles moving. Behavioral research shows that the combination of visual and tactile feedback engages both sides of the brain and helps ensure that learned information will be retained in long-term memory.
The device could be used to draw pictures, beat musical rhythms, or send subtle physical gestures, according to the researchers.
The researchers are currently working on a prototype of the device. The idea was inspired by grass blowing in the wind, according to the researchers.
They presented the work at the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) Computer-Human Interaction (CHI) conference April 5-10, 2003.
