Spansion says it can eliminate the need to put a battery in the tiny sensors that will deliver the measurements from the Internet of things." That should make it much more affordable to deploy billions of such sensors. The new solution uses chips that can harvest their own energy from the sun, vi...
Sent via Flipboard
What has six cameras, a large screen and tracks your head? Amazon's new phone, probably. The company's first handset has been long rumored and occasionally leaked, but now the company seems ready to make it official: Jeff Bezos is hosting a hitherto unannounced "launch event" later this month. The company's page for the event is little more than a invitation request form, but an attached teaser video meshes well with the purported phone's rumored head-tracking capabilities. "It moved with me!" exclaims an unnamed tester, staring at an object just out of frame. Sounds neat.
While the video itself doesn't show anything specific, the reactions it shows are consistent with the prototype BGR uncovered back in April. That handset had a 4.7-inch screen and a staggering five front-facing camera, which were said to be used for tracking the user's face as they combed their way through an interactive 3D interface. It was also said to be running a Qualcomm Snapdragon CPU and 2GB of RAM, but what Amazon's going to show on June 18th is still anybody's guess. Still, the teaser page revealed one more thing: the product will have a sleek black bevel and an Amazon logo (pictured above). Well, we can't say we're surprised. We'll let you know all the details when Bezos makes this thing official later this month.
Update: Amazon's teaser betrayed a little more than we thought. At 0:41, the unnamed device peeks out from behind the video's bottom edge, revealing what appears to be a blurry power button and a headphone jack. It's definitely a phone. You can thank Aaron Kasten's sharp eyes (and Google+ post) for the peek.
Let's flash back to the heady days of CES 2014, shall we? Sony embraced the wearable bandwagon (again) with the "tiniest gadget" it's ever made, and now the Americans reading this can go out and nab one of their own.
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2014/06/05/japanese-phone-company-softbank-shows-off-its-new-robot-customer/
Japanese telecom Softbank and its CEO Masayoshi Son have never been afraid to push the envelope, and now the exec is presenting a new development: robots. Presented at a press conference earlier today in Japan (take a peek at the live video stream embedded after the break) it's called Pepper, and uses technology acquired from the French robotics company Aldebaran. Those are the folks behind the Nao humanoid robots we've been covering for years, from their first steps to the inevitable dance-offs that followed. Aldebaran CEO Bruno Maisonnier credited Son for believing in its vision, saying robots that can recognize human emotion will change the way we live and communicate -- and this is a big step towards getting bots into daily lives, at least if you live in Japan. The robots will debut at two stores tomorrow in their customer service capacity, but Softbank is planning to put them on sale to the public next year, priced just shy of $2,000.
Pepper can communicate through emotion, speech or body language and it's equipped with both mics and proximity sensors. Inside, it will be possible to install apps and upgrade the unit's functionality, the plan being to make Pepper far more smarter than when you first bought it. It already understands 4,500 Japanese words, but perhaps more impressively, Pepper can apparently read into the tone used to understand its master's disposition. Maisonnier claims this will be the start of a robot revolution that rivals the rollout of the PC and smartphone. According to him "With Pepper, the future begins today."
Filed under: Cellphones, Robots, Mobile
Source: Engadget Japanese
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2014/06/05/art-projector-dancing-shadows/
You know how to turn crooked vases into an interesting art installation that remind us of Beauty and the Beast's singing pots and candlesticks? We'd like to say magic, but since we don't live in a Disney movie, the right answer is motion tracking and real-time 3D rendering. The installation's creators, artist Laurent Craste and digital agency Dpt., used a hidden projector to make the vases' shadows dance whenever a viewer swings the lamp above them. Their movements even depend on the lamp's swing, so side-to-side swinging triggers the same animation, while a more circular one also shows the lamp's shadows going in circles. Sadly, you can't see this in person anymore (it was displayed at a festival in Montreal in May), but you can watch the video after the break.
Filed under: Misc
Via: Laughing Squad, Colossal
Source: dpt, Laurent Craste
Posts
