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Computing Hardware Science 

Nano quadroters in autonomous action

The University of Pennsylvania’s GRASP Lab has been working with quadrotors from some time, demonstrating how the flying robots can be used for everything from assembling structures to flying through moving hula hoops. Back in January, they put out a video demonstrating the capabilities of their minaturized ‘nano quadrotors’ flying in formation. Vijay Kumar of U Penn gave a talk at TED 2012, and the video above goes into greater detail about the hows and whys of quadrotor development and application.  The second half of the video shows even more complex…

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Buzz Words Approaching: “Game Layer”

By now, we’re used to letting Facebook and Twitter capture our social lives on the web – building a “social layer” on top of the real world. At TEDxBoston, Seth Priebatsch looks at the next layer in progress: the “game layer,” a pervasive net of behavior-steering game dynamics that will reshape education and commerce. Ten thoughts, questions, comments and micro-rants about what Chief Ninja Priebatsch is presenting here…

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Too Good to be True or too True to be Good? Brainwave computing

Courtesy of TED, Tan Le demonstrates her take on the old Mind/Machine Interface trope. The Emotiv Systems’ EPOC headset uses 16 sensors to scan the brain and some very fancy algorithms to identify neural activity and translate this into control signals. Here are ten questions to keep in mind to the degree that the mind can keep anything. 1. Funny how this one seems to be as advanced as it is when speech recognition is still pretty clumsy. Will we jump into full mind/machine connectivity and bypass language altogether? (Just…

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District 9 Director Neill Blomkamp’s TEDxVancouver video

TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is a foundation known for its conferences devoted to what it calls ‘ideas worth spreading’. Along with the regular TED event, held in Long Beach CA, and the TED Global conferences (held in different cities each year), there are now independently organized TEDx events happening around the globe. In November 2009 TEDxVancouver took place at the Electronic Arts Burnaby campus. The event’s theme was ‘Forever Young’, and one of the invited speakers was Neill Blomkamp, South African born Canadian, and Vancouver Film School trained, director of…

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