6.26.2007
The World Wide Web will soon be absorbed...
The World Wide Web will soon be absorbed into the World Wide Sim: an environment combining elements of Second Life and Google Earth:
Second Earth
From the article:
Second Earth
From the article:
- Second Life, which started out four years ago as a 1-square-kilometer patch with 500 residents, has grown into almost 600 square kilometers of territory spread over three minicontinents, with 6.9 million registered users and 30,000 to 40,000 residents online at any moment. It's a world with birdsong, rippling water, shopping malls, property taxes, and realistic physics. And life inside is almost as varied as it is outside. "I help out new citizens, I rent some houses on some spare land I have, I socialize," says a longtime Second Lifer whose avatar goes by the name Alan Cyr. "I dance far better than I do in real life. I watch sunsets and sunrises, go swimming, exploring, riding my Second Life Segway. I do a lot of random stuff"...
As these two trends continue from opposite directions, it's natural to ask what will happen when Second Life and Google Earth, or services like them, actually meet. Because meet they will, whether or not their owners are the ones driving their integration. Both Google and Linden Lab grant access to their existing 3-D platforms through tools that let outside programmers build their own auxiliary applications, or "mashups." And many computer professionals think the idea of a "Second Earth" mashup is so cool that it's inevitable, whether or not it will offer any immediate way to make money. "As long as somebody can find some really strong personal gratification out of doing it, then there is a driver to make it happen," says Jamais Cascio, a consultant who cofounded the futurist website WorldChanging.com and helps organizations plan for technological change.
// permalink - 2 comments - 
6.25.2007
Farms Fund Robots to Replace Migrant Fruit Pickers
Farms Fund Robots to Replace Migrant Fruit Pickers
From the article:
From the article:
- Vision Robotics, a San Diego company, is working on a pair of robots that would trundle through orchards plucking oranges, apples or other fruit from the trees. In a few years, troops of these machines could perform the tedious and labor-intensive task of fruit picking that currently employs thousands of migrant workers each season.
// permalink - 5 comments -
6.23.2007
Robots to Look for Life in Arctic Ocean
Robots to Look for Life in Arctic Ocean
From the article:
From the article:
- The organisms known to exist in the Arctic basin, where the Gakkel is located, may have evolved in a unique fashion because they were mostly isolated from the life in the deep waters of other oceans for all but the last 25 million years, said Robert Reves-Sohn, the expedition's lead scientist.
The job of reaching any new organisms at the ridge falls to scientists operating three new robotic vehicles, two of which are designed to navigate untethered under the ice.
The two robots, named Puma (other-otc: PMMAY.PK - news - people ) and Jaguar, cost about $450,000 each and received significant funding from NASA because their mission is similar to what scientists hope to do in a future exploration under the ice of one of Jupiter's moons, Europa.
The robots are built to descend to about 5,000 meters and work 5 to 6 meters off the bottom, photographing and removing samples, said Hanumant Singh, the project's chief engineer.
// permalink - 0 comments -
6.15.2007
CLARAty software from NASA
First Public Release of CLARAty Software
From the article:
Archives
From the article:
- CLARAty is the Coupled Layer Architecture for Robotic Autonomy. The first release of its software, version 0.10-beta, is now available publicly at http://claraty.jpl.nasa.gov.
CLARAty is an integrated framework for reusable robotic software. It defines interfaces for common robotic functionality and integrates multiple implementations of any given functionality. Examples of such capabilities include pose estimation, navigation, locomotion and planning. In addition to supporting multiple algorithms, it provides adaptations to multiple robotic platforms. CLARAty development was primarily funded by the Mars Technology Program and it serves as the integration environment for the program's rover technology developments...
// permalink - 0 comments -
- 08/01/2003 - 09/01/2003
- 09/01/2003 - 10/01/2003
- 10/01/2003 - 11/01/2003
- 11/01/2003 - 12/01/2003
- 12/01/2003 - 01/01/2004
- 01/01/2004 - 02/01/2004
- 02/01/2004 - 03/01/2004
- 03/01/2004 - 04/01/2004
- 04/01/2004 - 05/01/2004
- 05/01/2004 - 06/01/2004
- 06/01/2004 - 07/01/2004
- 07/01/2004 - 08/01/2004
- 08/01/2004 - 09/01/2004
- 12/01/2004 - 01/01/2005
- 02/01/2005 - 03/01/2005
- 03/01/2005 - 04/01/2005
- 04/01/2005 - 05/01/2005
- 05/01/2005 - 06/01/2005
- 06/01/2005 - 07/01/2005
- 07/01/2005 - 08/01/2005
- 08/01/2005 - 09/01/2005
- 09/01/2005 - 10/01/2005
- 10/01/2005 - 11/01/2005
- 11/01/2005 - 12/01/2005
- 12/01/2005 - 01/01/2006
- 01/01/2006 - 02/01/2006
- 02/01/2006 - 03/01/2006
- 03/01/2006 - 04/01/2006
- 04/01/2006 - 05/01/2006
- 05/01/2006 - 06/01/2006
- 06/01/2006 - 07/01/2006
- 07/01/2006 - 08/01/2006
- 08/01/2006 - 09/01/2006
- 09/01/2006 - 10/01/2006
- 10/01/2006 - 11/01/2006
- 11/01/2006 - 12/01/2006
- 12/01/2006 - 01/01/2007
- 01/01/2007 - 02/01/2007
- 02/01/2007 - 03/01/2007
- 03/01/2007 - 04/01/2007
- 04/01/2007 - 05/01/2007
- 05/01/2007 - 06/01/2007
- 06/01/2007 - 07/01/2007
- 07/01/2007 - 08/01/2007
- 08/01/2007 - 09/01/2007
- 09/01/2007 - 10/01/2007
- 11/01/2007 - 12/01/2007
- 05/01/2008 - 06/01/2008
- 06/01/2008 - 07/01/2008
- 07/01/2008 - 08/01/2008
- 08/01/2008 - 09/01/2008
- 09/01/2008 - 10/01/2008
- 10/01/2008 - 11/01/2008
- 11/01/2008 - 12/01/2008
- 12/01/2008 - 01/01/2009
- 01/01/2009 - 02/01/2009
- 02/01/2009 - 03/01/2009
- 03/01/2009 - 04/01/2009
- 04/01/2009 - 05/01/2009
- 07/01/2009 - 08/01/2009
- 01/01/2011 - 02/01/2011
- 08/01/2011 - 09/01/2011
- 10/01/2011 - 11/01/2011
- 11/01/2011 - 12/01/2011
- 12/01/2011 - 01/01/2012
- 06/01/2012 - 07/01/2012
Atom RSS
Home Page