This summer at Project54 I have been working on my senior project, of which the ultimate goal is to allow wireless control of police cruiser devices via a motorola handheld PDA. The first part of this project requires an application on the PDA that allows the user to connect to a wireless device in the …
Category Archive: R&D
Jul
11
Games for the Microsoft Surface Presentation
My partner Shawn and I gave a presentation a couple weeks ago focused on the games available for the Surface. For our Senior Project we are working on designing a virtual air hockey game for the Microsoft Surface, I will be focusing my work on creating a controller that tracks a users movements and how …
Jun
18
Pressurometer: Pressure Sensitivity Through Tagged Objects
This is another idea I have had over the last month working on Multi-Touch Environment under Andrew Kun, on Microsoft Surface. One of the key features lacking on the multi-touch surfaces is the ability to measure the pressure levels exerted by the user, which can be effectively used to gauze certain parameters that the user …
Jun
15
Scent Based Virtual Reality System
Researchers at the University of Tokyo, Japan are working on developing a virtual reality system that not only integrates sight and touch, but sense of smell as well. Their past research indicates that a person’s sense of smell can affect how certain foods taste. They developed a virtual reality apparatus composed of a camera, goggles, individual scent tubes, air pumps, and a …
Mar
10
Incredibly Realistic Android
Unlike the creepy animatronic people in Disney Land, the Geminoid DK, while still kind of creepy, is a stepping stone in android research. The android is controlled by motion capture technology. A user sits at a computer which replicates their facial movements. So as of right now it still could be just animatronics, BUT, it …
Dec
02
Garrett Weinberg's Visit
As a continuation of the great series of lectures in the ECE900 Graduate Seminar, on November 18th we hosted Garrett Weinberg of the Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories (MERL). Garrett is a Member of the Research Staff at MERL in Cambridge, MA and I had a chance to work with him for the second year in …
Nov
09
Web Mapping Service Tile Stitching Server
Recently, Project54 was asked to create a demonstration of a Web Mapping Service (WMS) application for the Microsoft Surface. To maximize the usefulness of the demo, we were attempting to allow multiple WMS layers to be displayed at the same time. Doing this would allow the end user to find correlations between different sets of …
Oct
21
Lexus Driving Simulator
The future of simulated driving has arrived… The developers at the Lexus research campus at Higashifuji, Japan, have created a highly sophisticated driving simulator. According to the automotive company, this is the largest and the most advanced driving simulator available today. The simulator serves as a symbolic pledge of Lexus’ dedication to the concept of …

