The OEC need some VR sets next year.
Star Trek’s holodeck, that lets people physically interact with a virtual world could be a step closer thanks to a ‘universal law of touch’, discovered by British scientists.
Continue reading “VR objects you FEEL are a step closer thanks to new ‘law of touch’” »
Seismic waves, commonly associated with earthquakes, have been used by scientists to develop a universal scaling law for the sense of touch. A team, led by researchers at the University of Birmingham, used Rayleigh waves to create the first scaling law for touch sensitivity. The results are published in Science Advances.
The researchers are part of a European consortium (H-Reality) that are already using the theory to develop new Virtual Reality technologies that incorporate the sense of touch.
Rayleigh waves are created by impact between objects and are commonly thought to travel only along surfaces. The team discovered that, when it comes to touch, the waves also travel through layers of skin and bone and are picked up by the body’s touch receptor cells.
VR Boots for gaming.
Last year I did a VR experience meant to simulate what it’s like to be at the US-Mexico border wall. The tall, foreboding wall towered above me, and as I turned from side to side there were fields of grass with some wildlife and a deceivingly harmless-looking border patrol station. I wanted to explore more, so I took a few steps toward the wall, hoping to catch a glimpse of the Mexico side through its tall metal slats.
On Sept. 29, we are launching science, tech demos, & products to the International Space Station!
🌱 Growing radishes in space
🧬 Cancer therapies
🚽 Space toilet
🌊 Water recovery
🎥 A Felix & Paul Studios Virtual Reality camera
💫 An Estee Lauder serum.
Family Mart’s robots will still be controlled by human employees.
Hardly a day goes by that we don’t find ourselves stopping into one of Japan’s many convenience stores to grab a bite to eat or something to drink. But while we’ve come to expect tasty onigiri rice balls and tempting dessert beverages when we walk through the door, soon we might be seeing robots.
Before #COVID19, we like to imagine a #future where we can get and do anything from home, including working, with the help of novel #technologies such as #VR and #AR.
However, the #COVID19 pandemic shows us the human nature, that is, “going out” is one of the basic needs for human being!
One revelation here is that: When speaking of how #technology can change our lives, we often neglect the humane factors and focus only on the technical ones. Take #VR as an example. Yes, it does allow you to have a shopping experience similar to (or even better than) shop outside. However, do you really want to stay at home 24/7 and complete everything online?
Continue reading “Report: Fewer Americans want to work from home” »
A team of researchers from the Instituto de Astrofísica VR Lab at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile has released a virtual simulation of the black hole at the center of our galaxy. Known as “Galactic Center VR,” the short video, released on the Chandra X-ray Observatory Youtube channel, offers a 360-degree view of the center of the Milky Way, which takes the viewer through about 500 years of stellar movement.
The simulation puts the viewer in the place of the black hole itself, Sagittarius A*, and allows for full rotation of the camera. The team explains in the video notes that the simulation shows “stellar giants” moving around the galactic center, while “stellar winds” blow off their surfaces to create different colors. Thankfully, they went into a little detail as to what these colors represent. They wrote:
Blue and cyan represent X-ray emission from hot gas with temperatures of tens of millions of degrees, while the red emission shows ultraviolet emission from moderately dense regions of cooler gas with temperatures of tens of thousands of degrees, and yellow shows the cooler gas with the highest densities.
Inspirational speaker and Amazon best-selling author Sanjo Jendayi once said, “Listening doesn’t always equate to hearing. Hearing doesn’t always lead to understanding, but active listening helps each person truly ‘see’ the other.”
Jendayi was providing a little philosophical advice during a motivational speech, and technology was likely the last thing on her mind. But her words in fact might best describe the notion behind groundbreaking advances by the Facebook Reality Labs Research (FRLR) team’s top scientists, programmers and designers.
A post on the FRLR web site last week provided a peek into where the social media giant is heading in the world of augmented reality and virtual reality.
In Korea, scientists are turning to better ways for improving our screen time, and this means 3D printing something most of us know little about: quantum dots. Focusing on refining the wonders of virtual reality and other electronic displays even further, researchers from the Nano Hybrid Technology Research Center of Korea Electrotechnology Research Institute (KERI), a government-funded research institute under National Research Council of Science & Technology (NST) of the Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT), have created nanophotonic 3D printing technology for screens. Meant to be used with virtual reality, as well as TVs, smartphones, and wearables, high resolution is achieved due to a 3D layout expanding the density and quality of the pixels.
Led by Dr. Jaeyeon Pyo and Dr. Seung Kwon Seol, the team has published the results of their research and development in “3D-Printed Quantum Dot Nanopixels.” While pixels are produced to represent data in many electronics, conventionally they are created with 2D patterning. To overcome limitations in brightness and resolution, the scientists elevated this previously strained technology to the next level with 3D printed quantum dots to be contained within polymer nanowires.
In June 2019, Facebook’s AI lab, FAIR, released AI Habitat, a new simulation platform for training AI agents. It allowed agents to explore various realistic virtual environments, like a furnished apartment or cubicle-filled office. The AI could then be ported into a robot, which would gain the smarts to navigate through the real world without crashing.
In the year since, FAIR has rapidly pushed the boundaries of its work on “embodied AI.” In a blog post today, the lab has announced three additional milestones reached: two new algorithms that allow an agent to quickly create and remember a map of the spaces it navigates, and the addition of sound on the platform to train the agents to hear.
