A Swedish programmer, Hans Andersson, has used a Lego Mindstorms NXT kit to develop a robot to solve Sudoku puzzles. The robot first scans the puzzle and uses an optical sensor to map out the puzzle's pre-set numbers and blank squares. The robot scans one line at a time, inching forward a little after each line is scanned.The blurry scanned image is then converted to a black and white binary image to improve the sharpness of the picture. A threshold value calculated by Otsu's Method is used to determine whether each pixel in the image is white or black.
The Otsu Method algorithm classes pixels as either foreground or background, and then determines the optimal threshold that minimizes the intra-class variance. Pixels below the threshold are set to black, and those above are set to white. A thinning algorithm is then used to convert the resulting image of each digit to 1-pixel wide lines. The digits are then examined for features such as their width, and the number and direction of tips on the digit. The digit six, for example, has one tip, which points to the right. Following this procedure for each digit, the robot identifies all the pre-set numbers in the puzzle. Once the puzzle is mapped, the robot solves it and fills in the blank squares. A recursive backtracking algorithm would normally be used to solve puzzles such as Sudoku, crosswords, or other puzzles in which the solution has several candidates. The method carries out a systematic examination of all possible solutions, and abandons and does not re-visit any that are eliminated. The Lego Mindstorms processor is too slow to use a backtracking algorithm and it does not allow for recursive functions, so Andersson had to make sure the calculations were optimized. The result is a little robot that can solve Sudoku puzzles and get them right every time, and in only a few minutes.
MIT engineers are showing off the latest generation of so-called robofish 15 years after they built the first one. The latest incarnation is sleeker, more streamlined and capable of mimicking the movements of a real fish.And it's capable of exploring underwater terrain submersibles can't, said Pablo Valdivia Alvarado, a mechanical engineer at the school.
Some of our sponsors were thinking of using them for inspection and surveillance," Alvarado said. "Since these prototypes are very cheap, the idea was to build hundreds -- 200, 500 -- and then just release them in a bay or at a port, and they would be roaming around taking measurements.
MIT researchers built their first robotic fish, "Robotuna," in 1994. But Robotuna has gone the way of the dinosaur. Alvarado said the new generation -- modeled after bass and trout -- cost only a few hundred dollars and have only 10 parts instead of the thousands used in Robotuna.
Something about Le Petit Prince, the mobile, plant-loving greenhouse robot makes us indescribably sad. Is it his one, massive adorable eye? Or merely the fact that he's named after one of the most depressing books ever written? Either way, we can't really argue with his usefulness -- the concept can carry about plants and care for them, all the while ravaging the terrain for further specimens. He's also designed to learn about the optimal growing conditions of the plants he collects, which really makes us want one to care for a certain, finicky houseplant we won't call out by name (but we're looking at you, Venus Flytrap). Check out the darling video after the break.
Still haven't found a GPS tracker out there to suit your parenting needs? Then you might want to consider this new Amber Alert GPS 2G device, which, unlike some other similar products, is actually aimed specifically at parents, and promises to be straightforward enough for all parents to use. It's main feature, of course, is to simply act as a wearable GPS beacon for your kids, which parents can call or text at any time and instantly receive a text back with its location, or track at all times on the web. The device also takes things a bit further than most with a so-called "bread crumbing" feature that creates a trail of your child's route and alerts you when they reach their destination, and a safe zone feature that limits how far your child is able to travel. That peace of mind does exactly come cheap, however, with the device itself running $379.99, while the required monthly plans start at $9.99 and go up to $59.98.
Olympic cyclist Chris Boardman thinks that his beautiful Tron-like dream bicycle will never get stolen—even if it looks so cool that nobody would be able to resist. Fortunately, he says that they will be common in 20 years.
The new bike design has a built-in locking system that can only be activated and opened by the owner's fingerprint. The computer-equipped machine can also monitor the amount of calories burned. Made of carbon fiber, it will even have a battery that will assist you when going up a steep hill, as well as puncture-proof, self-inflating tires.
Unfortunately, for now it is just a concept, even while Boardman believes "it could be built now if there was a will. All the technologies are already there, it's just that nobody's put them all together before." The future is not coming soon enough. Heck, I would be glad if the weekend came already.
Draganfly's new unmanned aerial photography device is out, the DraganFlyer X4. It is a four-rotor UAV that measures only 30.5-inches across and since it ships with your choice of either a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX580, Watec WAT-902H2 Ultimate (for shooting in low light), FLIR Photon TAU (infrared), or the Highg Res 480 Board Camera (analog motion video with an 8GB DVR), we imagine that this thing ain't going to be cheap. That said, if you are a well-heeled creepy stalker, southern border vigilante, or even someone with legitimate military / industrial business, there are plenty of features to make it worth a second look, including: computerized stabilization, altitude hold (maintains its position in the air without user input), and an automatic landing feature that kicks in if the control link is lost. But most importantly for the airborne auteur, this guy sports a wireless video downlink that sends the viewfinder signal that can be displayed either on the device's handheld controller or a pair of video goggles, allowing real-time manipulation of zoom, tilt, and shutter settings. Get a closer look at the thing after the break.
The Copenhagen Consensus Centre—a respected European think tank which used to be skeptic on climate change—is now advising that we should spend $9 billion in building 1900 cloud-generating ships like the one above. Why? To cool down Earth:
When you spray saltwater into the air, you create nuclei that cloud condenses around, creating bigger and whiter clouds, thus bouncing more sunlight back into space.That's what David Young, a member of the panel that created the report, says. The fully automated vessels will cross the oceans absorbing water and spraying it into the skies. They say this will help the formation of big, whiter clouds, which will make the sun light bounce, lowering temperatures.
The idea seems neat, but the concept of anyone in planet Earth claiming to understand how climate works to this extend blows my mind. We are still trying to grasp how a complex system like the weather works, but someone wants to put an idea like this in motion, without knowing about the ultimate consequences? Like we say in my home country: Do you experiments with pop soda.[via Copenhagen Consensus]
We'd never considered a career in biochemistry until we saw this wild beast of a chemical microprocessor. Microfluidic chips, used to test chemical reactions and properties, have been known to be smaller, but they've never before been quite this powerful. The result of a joint study between California State University, UCLA and China's Wuhan University, the "integrated microfluidic device" is capable of performing 1,024 in situ chemical reactions at a time, making the researcher's life, oh, about 1,024 times easier. Most importantly though, costly enzymes previously used for a single test can now be split up into hundreds and tested simultaneously, which should pave the way for exponentially faster and easier medical research. It's not clear when these will be widely available, but we're sure PhDs around the world are trying to order one as we speak.[Via medGadget]
This is the Smart Measure Cup. It's a simple, great idea—a measuring cup that displays precise volume on a backlit LCD complete with unit conversion. So great, in fact, that it's been rebranded and picked up for manufacture.[Yanko Design]
Well, most of you have seen USB mouse, USB keyboard but now hose off the wall concepts of what appeared to be a next-generation USB-driven Mimo monitor seem to have found their way into the production line, as the outfit made suddenly famous for its secondary displays now has a new model on tap. The 710-S "Mobile Slider" edition is really just a tweaked version of the aforementioned 7-inch panel, but it has been completely redesigned into a "sleeker, foldable and more portable unit." We hadn't really given much thought to bringing one of these things along in a laptop case, but this critter just might change our opinion on the usefulness to road warriors. Hit the read link to get in line; you'll have the opportunity to part with $149.99 in exchange for one later this month.[via EverythingUSB]
The bionic eye's inexorable advance continued this weekend, as doctors reported they were able to implant tiny telescopes (telescopes!) into the eyes of patients suffering from macular degeneration.Better still, for squeamish emergency room pansies like myself, this is a "brief" outpatient procedure, say the inventors at VisionCare Ophthalmic Technologies.Just pop a telescope in your bad eye and you'll be avoiding home furniture by the evening. Well, after a round of intense physical therapy anyway. It seems the new vision takes some getting used to, although none of the 200 patients who tested this over the past five years reported any falling down or injury, said Dr. Henry Hudson, a retina specialist in Tuscon.
And while the devices won't allow patients to view faraway stars (not that powerful), they will allow them to see partial faces where there was once a gaping hole in their vision. "People can use it to recognize faces in a social setting," said Dr. Janet P. Szlyk. "That's a huge advance."A Food and Drug Administration advisory panel gave the tele-eyes their unanimous approval in March, and the full board is expected to give its blessing later this year. Europe is already using it.
The historians once pontificated that we'd all be cruising about in flying cars right around the year 2000, and while that whole Y2K fiasco threw us a tad behind schedule, it looks like the future may actually still be upon us. Parajet, the same company responsible for that downright unnerving personal flying machine we peeked back in '05, has now placed its long-awaited SkyCar up for pre-order. Said vehicle has evolved quite dramatically over the years, but now that dollars (er, pounds) are being dropped on it, we have to assume that the design is near final. The vehicle is completely street legal and can accelerate to 62mph in just 4.2 seconds, thus making it the world's first "usable, road-legal flying car." If you're champing at the bit to be the first on your block with one, you can drop £10,000 ($16,381) now and pay the remaining £50,000 ($81,905) just before it ships in "late 2010." Of course, we're not making any promises about it actually shipping, but that's a risk you'll have to take.
Yaskawa Electric’s Motoman SDA10 robot has been out and about for a little while now (along with its not-so-distant relatives ), but it’s apparently not just getting by on its good looks alone, and it recently took advantage of Osaka’s International Next-Generation Robot Fair to show off its newly developed cooking skills. While there unfortunately doesn’t seem to be any video available, the word is it was able to take an order from a customer using its voice recognition capabilities and whip up some okonomiyaki (a pancake, of sorts) from scratch, with it even going so far as to serve it to the customer and top it off with some condiments.
The risky process one has to do when the day starts is nothing but waking up, Almost all stop there alarms and wakes up without actually having no interest in it. So now , lets get the boring part an interesting part, here's an alarm clock that has to be stopped not by tapping but by shooting at the target. so try shooting it and the cost of it is only $ 18
Shelves are handy things to have in any home, as they offer additional storage space for you to keep your junk - er, memorabilia. Enter the giant LED clock shelf that not only houses your collection of books and toys, the space between these square “pigeon holes” are not wasted as they have been adorned with LED strips, lighting up in different combinations to form a digital clock when seen from afar.
Flynn Product Design has come up with a stunning take on a futuristic, alien-like Bluetooth webcam concept that offers unpredecented flexibility where camera angles are concerned. This concept webcam comes with a ball and socket joint, connecting both base and body units for unparalleled viewing freedom. There is no word on resolution or any other specifications, but being Bluetooth-enabled surely means you will need to recharge it from time to time. I sure hope this thing comes with decent battery life then since it would be a bummer to hold a video conversation halfway only to get cut off after running out of juice unexpectedly.
Does they look delicious, but u have no choice of biting it, Surprised! well let me explain u these are not the food items but USB drives in food shapes. Brando have come up with these edible looking disks of their own. At theirs count there's chicken, hot wings, a slab of pork, a pizza slice, a burger, a watermelon slice, a strawberry, cookies and biscuits-- all lifelike enough that you would accidentally put it in your mouth. They hold upto 4GB worth of junk and cost only $28.
Bathsheba Grossman is an artist exploring how math, science and sculpture interconnect. Her work is about life in three dimensions, symmetry and balance, and always finding beauty in geometry. These are three excellent examples of her work. The Gyroid is a triply periodic minimal surface and was discovered by Alan Schoen. The artist then used Mathematica and Kenneth Brakke's Surface Evolver to compute this section of it, adding her own perforations. The Quintrino is a dodecahedral shape with a large and hidden inner volume. Using a variety of modeling techniques and tools the design of these shapes is created using CAD software. The next stage is to get them from a virtual model to a physical object - this is accomplished by direct-metal printing. The design is laid down, one layer at a time, in stainless-steel powder, held in place by a laser-activated binder. You can see the remnants of the layering on the finished pieces and each layer is .004" to .007" thick. The piece then goes into an oven, where heat drives off the binder and fuses the steel powder that was used during the printing process. This produces a porous steel sculpture that's about 60% dense. The next phase is to get rid of the porosity by replacing the airspace that remains in the piece with liquid bronze. To do this the sculpture is heated again, and special stems that protrude from the piece are dipped in a crucible of molten bronze. Capillary action causes the bronze to wick throughout the piece. Impossible as it seems, the end result is a composite metal that's fully dense with properties intermediate between steel and bronze.
Gyroid is a 1 3/8" cube and the Quintrino is 1 5/8" diameter.
