Rats Communicate Through Brain Chips

Rats Communicate Through Brain Chips: The researchers also demonstrated the brain-to-brain communication with whisker stimulation in the first rat. Like a cat, rats use their whiskers to determine how wide an opening is, and the rodents can be trained to turn their head to the left or right depending on whether a hole in their cage is narrow. Similar to the first experiment,  the brain activity of the first rat was translated into a particular pattern of pulses sent to the second rat, which had been trained to poke its head left in response to electrical pulses, and right in the absence of pulses. With these tests, the second rat chose the correct side about 62 percent of the time.

Telerobotics offers third way for space exploration - New Scientist - New Scientist

Telerobotics offers third way for space exploration: The most plausible way to have robotic telepresence on Mars would be to station astronauts in orbit around the planet...
Mars is a bigger challenge, of course, as is Venus, which is usually considered beyond the scope of human exploration because of its boiling, corrosive atmosphere. A Venus mission could be shorter as it is closer to us than Mars...

One Per Cent: Microsoft's MirageTable allows AR teleconferencing

One Per Cent: Microsoft's MirageTable allows AR teleconferencing: The system, called MirageTable, uses a Kinect sensor to record 3D images of the user, which are then displayed on a curved screen with a 3D projector. This allows users to make virtual copies of real-world objects and interact with them without the need for gloves or other tracking devices. For example, MirageTable lets you make virtual duplicates of a single real-world bowling pin, then knock them down with a virtual ball.

Connecting two MirageTables allows for remote interactions that seem far more real than a simple video conference call. Users at each end can make virtual copies of their real-world objects and manipulate them in a shared environment as if they were sitting across a table from each other.

Life-size 3-D hologram-like telepods may revolutionize videoconferencing in the future

Life-size 3-D hologram-like telepods may revolutionize videoconferencing in the future: Two people simply stand infront of their own life-size cylindrical pods and talks to a 3D hologram-like images of each other. Cameras capture and track 3D video and convert into the life-size image.

Since the 3D video image is visible 360 degrees around the Pod, the person can walk around it to see the other person's side or back...


Dr. Vertegaal and his team used mostly existing hardware – including a 3D projector, a 1.8 metre-tall translucent acrylic cylinder and a convex mirror.

Bell Labs builds telepresence 'robots' - News - iTnews Mobile Edition

Bell Labs builds telepresence 'robots' - News - iTnews Mobile Edition: Researchers are working on a low-cost camera and screen that swivels on a set of robotic shoulders, and sits at a meeting table with physical attendees...

Bouwen highlighted the value of a “turn-taking mechanism” that determines who should be next to speak.
In person, two people who begin to speak to a group at the same time tend to take their cues from the direction in which most group members are looking...
“Someone showing clear agreement or clear disagreement is [also] important. If you’re trying to explain something, knowing who is confused and not following is important.”

Telepresence Robots Seek Office Work - Technology Review

Telepresence Robots Seek Office Work - Technology Review: Other companies are preparing to launch telepresence robots aimed at addressing what Colin Angle, cofounder and CEO of iRobot, says is a need for significantly more intelligence. For example, instead of having to steer a robot like a remote-controlled car, he says, a user should be able to ask it to navigate to a particular meeting room, or click on screen to indicate which person to follow or walk alongside...
His company, which makes the Roomba vacuum cleaner and the military PackBot, is working on a version, dubbed Ava, that he says will solve some of these problems.

A Robot With Your Face - Technology Review

A Robot With Your Face - Technology Review: "It's slated to go on sale next year and sets out to solve a major problem as seen with the two robots already on the market: while a person inhabiting an Anybot or VGo robot gets a good(ish) view of their prosthetic body's surroundings and the people around it, those people don't get a good view of the operator's face.

Anybots' robot displays only a still photo of the current user, while VGo's machines have a very small, low resolution screen about four feet off the ground. 'Those are really spy bots,' Steve Cousins told me when I visited Willow Garage yesterday, pointing out that the people you're interacting with can't see you very well. Texai's big selling point over the competition will be that a user's face is clearly visible to the people his robot-double interacts with, enabling true, two-way communication, said Cousins."

One Per Cent: Telepresence robots go airborne

One Per Cent: Telepresence robots go airborne: The project is still an early stage, adds Hiroaki, who discussed his work yesterday at the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. He and colleague have built a blimp and shown that it can be operated remotely. Now they have to do user studies - experiments that examine what it's like to interact with the device. A blimp with a projection the size of a regular head might make the experience more enjoyable, notes Hiroaki.

3-D TV? How about holographic TV?

3-D TV? How about holographic TV?: Mark Lucente, director of display products for Zebra Imaging in Austin, Texas, which is commercializing holographic displays for videoconferencing applications, says that his company’s prospective customers are often uncomfortable with the sheer computational intensity of holographic video. “It’s very daunting,” he says. “1.5 gigabytes per second are being generated on the fly.” By demonstrating that off-the-shelf components can keep up with the computational load, Lucente says, Bove’s group is “helping show that it’s within the realm of possibility.” Indeed, he says, “by taking a video game and using it as an input device, [Bove] shows that it’s a hop, skip and a jump away from reality.”

When the playroom is the computer

When the playroom is the computer: "“We kind of see it as one reality,” says Adam Setapen, a graduate student in Professor Cynthia Breazeal’s Personal Robotics Group, who helped design the system. “One of the things we’re really excited about is having two of these spaces, one here and maybe one in Japan, and when the robot goes into the virtual word here, it comes out of the virtual world in Japan. So that kind of fits in with that one-reality concept, that there’s one robot, and whether it’s physical or virtual is based on the state of the robot in the Playtime Computing system.”"

A Step toward Holographic Videoconferencing - Technology Review

A Step toward Holographic Videoconferencing - Technology Review: "By improving the materials used to make the display and the optical system used to encode the images, they have now demonstrated a full-color holographic display that refreshes every two seconds. This work is described today in the journal Nature.

The key to the technology is a light-responsive polymer composite layered on a 12-inch-by-12-inch substrate and sandwiched between transparent electrodes. The composite is arranged in regions called "hogels" that are the holographic equivalent of pixels. Writing data to the hogels is complex, and many different compounds in the composite play a role. When a hogel is illuminated by an interference pattern produced by two green laser beams, a compound called a sensitizer absorbs light, and positive and negative charges in the sensitizer are separated. A polymer in the composite that's much more conductive to positive charges than negative ones pulls the positive charges away.

This charge separation generates an electrical field that in turn changes the orientation of red, green, and blue dye molecules in the composite. This change in orientation changes the way these molecules scatter light. It's this scattering that generates a 3-D effect. When the hogel is illuminated with light from an LED, it will scatter the light to make up one visual point in the hologram."

IEEE Spectrum: Q&A: Ken Goldberg Discusses Telerobots, Androids, and Heidegger

IEEE Spectrum: Ken Goldberg Discusses Telerobots, Androids, and Heidegger: Robots have a very intertwined history with this idea of remote operation. It might go back to Tesla’s famous experiments with a radio-controlled boat, which he demonstrated in New York in 1898. After World War II, the first robots were master-slave telerobots used to handle radioactive substances. Today telerobots are used for exploration, in space and underwater, and more recently for bomb disposal. Now, telepresence is different because you’re not manipulating an object or performing a repair; you’re interacting with people. So there are humans on both ends. The goal is to give the remote operator a sense that he or she is closer to the people on the other end. And hopefully vice versa. Naturally, the telephone and things like Skype are more or less trying to do the same thing. But the key question is, What’s missing? How can you make the experience of “being there” more fulfilling? One of the benefits of the robots is that they enhance the sense of agency, of being an agent, in the remote environment. You are not just a passive conversationalist; you can actually move around and explore. And that really matters. The ability to control where you are is empowering and gives you a different set of possibilities. There’s more spontaneity and discovery.

Telenoid R1 minimalist humanoid robot ::: Pink Tentacle

Telenoid R1 minimalist humanoid robot ::: Pink Tentacle: "The Telenoid R1 robot is designed to add an element of realism to long-distance communication by recreating the physical presence of the remote user. The robot’s actions mirror those of the remote user, whose movements are monitored by real-time face tracking software on the user’s computer. Users can also transmit their voice through the robot’s embedded speakers."