New Meta-Optic Lens Tech Enters Commercial Development

Instead, Metalenz technology is a “single lens built on a glass wafer that is between 1×1 to 3×3 millimeter in size” with nanostructures that “bend light rays in a way that corrects for many of the shortcomings of single-lens camera systems.” Company co-founder and chief executive Robert Devlin spent a decade at Harvard University working on his Ph.D. on this topic with Metalenz co-founder and physicist Federico Capasso. The company spun out of their research group in 2017.

Devlin said that the nanostructures enable them to bend and shape light “much in the way that a curved lens speeds up and slows down light to bend it.” The resulting image is “just as sharp as what you’d get from a multilens system,” with the nanostructures eliminating or reducing aberrations “common to traditional cameras.”

The company just announced a $10 million investment that will enable it to scale production and speed up development of miniature optics and a new lens system targeting smartphones, consumer electronics and applications in the automotive and healthcare industries.

Metalenz has inked partnerships with “two semiconductor leaders … meaning the optics are made in the same foundries that manufacture consumer and industrial devices — an important step in simplifying the supply chain.” The company is slated to “go into mass production toward the end of the year” to provide “the lens system of a 3D sensor in an [unnamed] smartphone.”

Devlin also pointed out that Metalenz technology can be used “in everything from instruments for healthcare to augmented- and virtual-reality cameras, to the cameras in automobiles.”

See the full story here: https://www.etcentric.org/new-meta-optic-lens-tech-enters-commercial-development/

Houston Symphony and virtual-reality technology merge in event

This weekend, the Houston Symphony is bringing virtual reality technology into the concert hall, allowing audience members to see music in ways beyond their imagination.

As the orchestra, led by guest conductor Ming Luke, plays light classics such as Debussy’s “Clair de Lune” and Saint-Saëns’s “Carnival of the Animals,” the Austin-based artist Topher Sipes will use Tilt Brush, Google’s virtual reality painting app that recently transitioned to an open-source project, to translate the sprightly tunes into life-sized works of art by way of structured improvisational, full-body movement.

In her search for a collaborator, Sabol was referred to Sipes, who had won the inaugural Tilt Brush competition presented by Originator Studios in 2016, after which he facilitated various Tilt Brush performances and installations, including one for Smartcar during South by Southwest.

The canvas serves as his dance floor, so to speak - a concept that is far from new to him. In 2011, Sipes co-founded ARTheism, an immersive dance company for which he projected motion graphics that he drew using a digital drawing tablet or a multi-touch screen onto performers such as his partner Samantha Beasley.

“This, to me, is like ‘Fantasia’ in real time,” says Lesley Sabol, the Houston Symphony’s director of popular programming.

See the full story here: https://preview.houstonchronicle.com/classical/houston-symphony-and-virtual-reality-technology-15932082

Palantir leaps 15% after revealing partnership with IBM on artificial-intelligence applications

• Palantir soared as much as 15% on Monday after the firm revealed a new partnership with IBM.
• The companies will collaborate on an artificial intelligence product meant to help businesses leverage large data sets.
• Palantir has surged through the new year amid strong retail-investor demand and encouraging deal news.

See the full story here: https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/palantir-stock-price-ibm-partnership-artificial-intelligence-product-announcement-pltr-2021-2-1030056072

FROM BEAR TO BULL: HOW OCULUS QUEST 2 IS CHANGING THE GAME FOR VR

See the full story here: https://www.oculus.com/blog/from-bear-to-bull-how-oculus-quest-2-is-changing-the-game-for-vr/

TIKTOK AND UNIVERSAL MUSIC GROUP SIGN GLOBAL LICENSING DEAL

After announcing deals with Sony Music in November and Warner Music Group in December, The ByteDance-owned video app revealed today (February 8) that it has struck an “expanded” global licensing agreement with Universal Music Group.

Coincidentally, the timing of the announcement comes just days after UMG pulled its catalog from TikTok’s biggest rival, Triller, with Universal accusing that platform of withholding payments to UMG artists. 

According to a statement, the new global agreement between UMG and TikTok “delivers equitable compensation for recording artists and songwriters and significantly expands and enhances the companies’ existing relationship”.

Marc Cimino, Chief Operating Officer of UMPG, said: “This alliance sets an industrywide example of social media companies acknowledging, respecting and compensating the music creators whose songs are instrumental to their platforms. We appreciate Tik Tok’s partnership and look forward to working together to provide support and opportunities to our songwriters.”

See the full story here: https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/tiktok-and-universal-music-group-sign-global-licensing-deal/

From Lightbulbs to 5G, China Battles West for Control of Vital Technology Standards

Whoever has control of industrial norms for telecommunications, electricity transmission and artificial intelligence is in a position to dominate

Nearly every product in American homes, from lightbulbs to couches, windows and Wi-Fi routers, conforms to standards and measurements of a global system established to ensure quality and seamless operation.

Industrial standards, created by the U.S. and its allies over decades, form an invisible matrix of rules that underpin the global marketplace. Mundane though it may sound, this uniformity is critical to international trade in how it guarantees that bolts, USB plugs and shipping containers can all be used interchangeably world-wide. The standards reflect the consensus of international panels long dominated by Western technical experts.

China now wants to take the lead in fields of the future. To the consternation of many Western countries, Beijing is employing state funding and political influence to try to define the norms for all manner of cutting-edge technologies that span telecommunications, electricity transmission and artificial intelligence.

See the full story here: https://www.wsj.com/articles/from-lightbulbs-to-5g-china-battles-west-for-control-of-vital-technology-standards-11612722698

Is this an avatar I see before me? Audience takes to stage in virtual Shakespeare play

Playhouses may be dark, but the Royal Shakespeare Company is to bring immersive theatre to audiences wherever they are in the world by combining revolutionary virtual reality and video games technologies with traditional live performances.

Real-time animation will be created by actors interacting with a live audience, who will in turn influence a story inspired by A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Mischievous Puck and his fellow fairies will be conjured up by actors whose every movement will be translated by cutting-edge technology into virtual avatars that mirror them as extraordinary creatures.

In a pioneering project, to be announced tomorrow, specialists from the worlds of theatre, music and gaming have shared their expertise, developing a “prototype” that could be adopted for future live performances.

Headed by the RSC, the project’s key players include the Philharmonia Orchestra, Marshmallow Laser Feast, virtual reality creators, and Epic Games, developers of the Unreal Engine video games software.

Dream is an “Audience of the Future Demonstrator” project, part of the government’s Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund. It will be performed between 12 and 20 March. Audiences can either buy a £10 ticket, to interact directly, or view the performance passively for free. Tickets will be available via dream.online

See the full story here: https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2021/feb/07/is-this-an-avatar-i-see-before-me-audience-takes-to-stage-in-virtual-shakespeare-play

Mark Zuckerberg made a surprise appearance on the world’s buzziest social network to talk about the future

Like Tesla CEO Elon Musk before him, Zuckerberg jumped on Clubhouse to participate in "The Good Time Show," a talk show on Clubhouse.

Zuckerberg was on the show to discuss futuristic technology from Facebook's Reality Labs group, which specializes in augmented reality, virtual reality, and other platforms believed to be the future of human-computer interaction.

To that end, Zuckerberg discussed the promise of AR and VR as it applies to remote work. In the next five to 10 years, according to Zuckerberg, half of Facebook's staff could be working remotely on a permanent basis — regardless of pandemics.

See the full story here: https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-ceo-mark-zuckerberg-on-clubhouse-2021-2

New Entertainment Robot Sings and Does Impressions

See a collection of robot videos here: https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/robotics-hardware/video-friday-engineered-arts-mesmer-robot-cleo

See the Clio, the Mesmer entertainment robot video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAMYPjySY9g&feature=emb_logo

AI Dungeon-maker Latitude raises $3.3M to build games with ‘infinite’ story possibilities

“How does the AI know what’s a good story?” said co-founder and CEO Nick Walton. “Because it’s read a lot of good stories and knows the patterns involved in that.”

AI Dungeon actually started out as one of Walton’s hackathon projects. While the initial version didn’t win any prizes, he kept at it, assisted by improvements in OpenAI’s language generator, of which the most recent version is GPT-3.

“The very first version of AI Dungeon I built was coherent on a sentence level, but on a paragraph level it made no sense,” Walton said. “Once you get to GPT-2, it makes a lot more sense. Once you get to GPT-3, it’s a lot more coherent on a story level. And so I think to a degree, these issues with coherency, the story not making sense, get solved as the AI gets better.”

See the full story here: https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/04/latitude-seed-funding/