Serious motion capture setups often involve dozens of optical markers, inertial sensors or both, making them a pain to set up and tear down, and producing a ton of data. This Disney Research project produces high-quality results from just a handful of sensors by making some smart assumptions about how the body works. Read More
Droughts, climate change and deforestation are putting forests at risk worldwide, so studying these ecosystems closely is more important than ever — but it’s a hell of a lot of work to climb every tree in the Sierra Nevada. Drones and advanced imaging, however, present an increasingly practical alternative to that, as a UC Berkeley project shows. Read More
Open source laptops — ones not running any commercial software whatsoever — have been the holy grail for free software fans for years. Now, with the introduction of libreboot, a truly open source boot firmware, the dream is close to fruition. The 0 laptop is a bog standard piece of hardware but it contains only open source software. The OS, Debian, is completely open source;… Read More
Smart contact lenses have been the stuff of science fiction for a long time, but as with jetpacks and faster-than-light travel, we’re still waiting on them. Research is ongoing, though, and a project at the University of Ghent shows promise not just in advancing the technology but providing some therapeutic value, as well. Read More
We’re all curious to see whether Light’s crazy 16-lens camera can live up to its own hype, but it looks like we’ll have to wait just a little bit longer for the already-delayed gadget. On the bright side, so to speak, the camera is getting a significant improvement to its many lenses’ apertures. Read More
Boosted Board, long considered the de facto electric skateboard, finally has some competition from a rival that is also based in California. Price as reviewed: $1,399 at Inboard The Inboard M1 brings a new take to the category, with hubless motors that are planted into the rear wheels of the board. This means that the motors, batteries and wires are hidden, and there’s no resistance in… Read More
If you were thinking of getting your kid a little doll or robot that they can talk to — and, critically, that responds — you should probably hold off for a few years. A complaint to the FTC filed by consumer watchdog groups highlights ongoing privacy and security concerns with this creepy class of toy. Read More
Drones are fairly off-the-shelf affairs for most people; there’s a wide range of companies making them for both commercial and consumer uses, but ultimately these are all remarkably similar. They tend to favor a quadcopter structure, and are often configured with photography in mind as a primary use. But MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence lab has come up with a… Read More
Sometimes you see a gadget and think simultaneously, “that’s insanely clever,” but also just “that’s insane.” The RokBlok was one of those situations for me: Who but a mad genius would have thought of a record player that propels itself along the groove like a little remote control car? Read More
Say you’re at a party, and someone wants to get a silent disco going. Everyone opens their phone, someone yells “play,” and hopefully everyone gets it started at the same time.
Well, that works, but it could be better. So at the TechCrunch Disrupt London 2016 Hackathon, a few developers in the United Kingdom built an app to make sure everyone’s at the same part in the song. Read More
