Many times when I go to Boston I try to pay a visit to a little shrine of technology called the Sony store in the Prudential Center. They always have some cool gadgetry on display. I was not disappointed a few weeks ago either. This time it was an all-in-one desktop computer that caught my eye, the Sony Vaio L Series. The best part: it is multitouch enabled running Windows 7.

Here at the lab we are very interested in multitouch technology as reported before. Our research is made even more relevant with the commercialization of affordable touch computers. Other companies have also come up with multitouch desktop systems for personal use: HP, Dell, etc. But Sony always puts a bit of extra effort in making their products even more stylish. And with the advent of Windows 7, an inherently multitouch operating system, touch computers start to make perfect sense. The Vaio L also dubs as an HDTV and a Blue-ray disk player/recorder.

I quickly double tapped the virtual globe application on the desktop. The Virtual Earth / Bing Maps style environment popped up quickly. I was multitouch navigating to my home town in no time. The feel of touching the computer screen was a little bit strange, because until now we all tried to keep fingers off from our beloved monitors. The feel of it was sleek, like our TouchKit table and unlike the Microsoft Surface, which is textured. All in all it was a very pleasant experience using this computer. It is going to be interesting to see how this new concept of human computer interaction will change the perception and use of desktop computers in the coming years.

Oszkar

Matthew Lape, a recently graduated Project54 student, passed along this interesting video (shown below) regarding a device being developed at MIT called SixthSense. This wearable gesture-driven device consists of a pocket projector, a camera, and a mirror. These components are driven by the user’s smartphone and allow the user to make various gestures on different surfaces to not only obtain information (such as detecting what items the user picks up at the grocery store) but to also display information pertinent to the user (is the item a good buy for the user?). It’s certainly interesting to see the importance of not only selecting pertinent information to show the user, but the methods on how to display them is equally important as well. Here at Project54, Michael, Ankit, and Oszkar provide an example on the importance of displaying information with work on the multi-touch table.

Mark Taipan

Microsoft is either loved or hated by most of society these days. But no matter where you stand on the company, you have to agree that the vision they show in the video below is amazing, and displays great contributions to society. The video is an envisioned future of 2019, just ten years ahead. It’s amazing how Microsoft takes the time to make such a production out of their ideas for future technology, so that the rest of society can understand their vision. My favorite part is the personal devices that people carry around, which interact with many other devices wherever they go. Enjoy.

Mike Litchfield

Here is an interesting design on home automation using Twitter from http://matthewmorey.com/. The setup utilizes Twitter to communicate with a variety of electronic devices. There is a computer with access to Twitter that looks at the Tweets and parses them looking for commands. Attached to the computer are different types of devices such as an LCD display, a thermometer and a light.  The setup can take a picture and post it online, display text on the LCD, figure out how bright it is in the office and more.

You can find the twitter page here:

http://twitter.com/MattsOffice

Eric Ojala

Both Rohm and NEC are focused on unveiling new chip designs for integrated circuits that would consume no standby power. Integrated circuits are briefly inactive in between cycles on chips, and the new chip designs take into account that not all parts of the circuit require constantly receiving full power. In an attempt to curtail this leakage power that is consumed by an IC,  the companies have implemented “power gating” in the new designs. “Power gating” is a method of turning off individual circuits on a chip that do not need power. NEC plans to release a prototype by the end of 2009, but Rohm, Inc. hopes its chip will be in consumer products within the same time frame. Popular Science Magazine writes, “The new chip designs differ [from current IC chips] in that they don’t require the inactive portions of the circuit to receive full power at all times, allowing for more efficiency both during use and in a traditional ’standby mode’.” It is predicted that the new designs’ efficient energy usage will help decrease overall power consumption and could improve efficiency  within a device.

From Tech On!:

Erika Swanson

In this article from MSNBC.com, the Associated Press explains how Cyberdyne, a Japanese Robotics company has been showing off their newly designed rehabilitation suit. The HAL (hybrid assistive limb) is aimed to help those with weak leg muscles and mobility issues in daily life. It has sensors that read brain signals directing limb movement through the skin and sends them to the mechanical leg braces that are strapped to the thighs and knees, as well as belted to the waist.

Although it is very expensive now, it may be more affordable in the future, and definitely seems like a more portable option for some people with disabilities.

Mike Litchfield

Can one say today that they purchase a cellular phone mainly to use it to talk, without all the little features that comes with them? For the technologically savvy, the answer is “no”. Its inventor, Dr. Martin Cooper made the first US analogue mobile phone call in 1973.  The Motorola DynaTac has broken the barrier of calls being made from a stationary location when he made a call while walking to his rival, Dr. Joel Engel, from AT&T’s Bell Labs.  Three and half decades later, cellular phones have evolved into mini computers while still having the capability of making local (US) and international calls. They give us the ability to surf the net, read and write emails, use Microsoft office applications, sync with our PC, listen to any media, real-time GPS, games, bar-code scanner, take pictures and videos, and much more. The next step for cellular phone usage is in the medical field.

At the University of California Berkeley, “researchers have developed an add-on to a mobile phone that can take detailed images and then analyze them to diagnose diseases such as tuberculosis”.  David Breslauer and his colleagues hope that this device will be useful in the developing world; and where diagnostic medical issues are difficult, but the ownership and coverage of a cellular phone are commonplace.  Knowing these facts, they hope to make medical diagnoses and/or medical care portable at one’s own convenience without the inconvenience of going to the doctor’s office.

kamal

While looking online, I found some articles about AI that talked about how certain kind of technology could be helpful in the next years for us in order to create better artificial intelligence. Some days later, I was on facebook and my friend posted this link about how computers and machines would “take over” our world. It’s not like it hasn’t already. I mean, we use technology in our everyday lives, but scientists and researchers worry about it being more than just a tool used for our benefit. The link for this article is here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/26/science/26robot.html

This got me interested in discovering more about AI, so I found this article about a technology called “Imagination Machine”. It’s composed of two artificial neural networks, one of them is in charge of dreaming about an idea and the other one checks if the idea is valid for it to be able to resolve a given task. The link is http://www.wfs.org/May-June09/Thalerpage.htm. Supposedly, this technology would be able to replicate a human brain. And if you think about it, the complications and ethical issues are huge. But I think if we manage to use technology for the greater good, then we should not be worried to much about it.

For example, in this other article that I found, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8164060.stm,some scientists say that they would be able to re-engineer a artificial human brain in the near future. This is also alarming, but if we think about the outcome of what we could accomplish with this, like learning more about the most obscure part of our bodies and how would we help our future generations or use it for medical reasons.

Erick Janampa

So this last week in technology was all about the moon landing that happened on July 20th, 40 years ago. And I found this youtube video that makes you think of the possibilities for our future:

Erick Janampa

This week UNH’s Tech Camp visited Project 54 to take a look at the simulator.

The tech camp is a program based out of Kingsbury Hall, where kids from seventh through tenth grade are able to get a sense of STEM professions (These include Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math). The camp is designed to give students interested in STEM professions a closer look into what these jobs are all about.

Tech Camp students visited the Project 54 simulator, as well as a model of a New Hampshire State Police cruiser. Students were given a short briefing about Project 54, and were then allowed to ask questions about what the system does.

Above: Oskar Palinko demonstrates the use of the Project 54 simulator to UNH Tech Camp Students

Many students enjoyed testing the simulator, which allows the user to get a first hand look at Project 54. Students learned about how the Project makes operating a police officer’s cruiser safer, using speech controls and an integrated computer system, rather than a multitude of buttons and switches.

Above: Mark Taipan demonstrates Project 54 to UNH Tech Camp students with a state police cruiser model.

Devin Mullen