TSA, American Airlines test 3-D bag screening in Phoenix
The Transportation Security Administration and American Airlines are testing a 3-D carry-on bag screener in Phoenix, technology they hope will eventually allow travelers to keep liquids and laptops in their bags and speed up the screening process.
Sky Harbor International Airport is one of two U.S. airports to add a computer tomography (CT) scanner at a security checkpoint. Boston's Logan Airport is the other.
American, which has a hub at Sky Harbor, said the new CT screening equipment shoots hundreds of images with an X-ray camera that spins around the conveyor belt, providing three-dimensional views. The airline said the system uses algorithms to better detect explosives, firearms and other banned items.
See the full story here: https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/flights/todayinthesky/2017/06/23/3-d-luggage-screening/423790001/
The Magik Gallery Debut was a Landmark Event for Immersive Art
The Magik Gallery debut exhibition promised “painted worlds, invisible sculptures, and immersive illustrations,” but it delivered something much bigger: a message that immersive art is something, well, magical—and it should be treated with the same kind of awe that audiences give more classical forms.
“The goal of the first exhibition was to spark a change in the conversation around immersive technology—getting people to talk about the artists and their work first and the hardware second,” said Magik Founder and CEO Ochoa.
A perfectionist by nature, Ochoa meticulously chose the location (Terra Gallery), planned out the spread of hardware, and limited the number of attendees (the event ran all day in three “batches”)—all in service of building an environment where the art would be given the reverence he believes it deserves.
en artists’ work were featured in the show: Abraham Aguero, Wesley Allsbrook, Danny Bittman, Stuart Campbell (“Sutu”), Sougwen Chung, Isaac Cohen (“Cabbibo”), Liz Edwards, Edward Eyth, Mike Jelinek, and Steve Teeps. Each was selected for their unique style and contribution to the burgeoning form (for more information about each, refer to the thread at the bottom).
See the full story with many videos here: https://vrscout.com/news/magik-gallery-landmark-immersive-fine-art/
Facebook, Microsoft, YouTube and Twitter form Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism
Today Facebook, Microsoft, YouTube and Twitter collectively announced a new partnership aimed at reducing the accessibility of internet services to terrorists. The new Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism adds structure to existing efforts by the companies to target and remove from major web platforms recruiting materials for terror groups.
Together, the four tech leaders say they will collaborate on engineering solutions to the problem, sharing content classification techniques and effective reporting methods for users. Each company also will contribute to both technical and policy research and share best practices for counterspeech initiatives.
See the full story here: https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/26/facebook-microsoft-youtube-and-twitter-form-global-internet-forum-to-counter-terrorism/
Disney experiments look to make kid-robot interactions more natural
Sooner or later, our children will be raised by robots, so it’s natural that Disney, purveyor of both robots and child-related goods, would want to get ahead of that trend. A trio of studies from its Research division aim at understanding and improving how kids converse with and otherwise interact with robots and other reasonably smart machines.
The three studies were executed at once as a whole, with each part documented separately in papers posted today. The kids in the study (about 80 of them) proceeded through a series of short activities generally associated with storytelling and spoken interaction, their progress carefully recorded by the experimenters.
As human-robot dialog faces the challenges of long-term interaction, understanding how to use prior conversation to foster a sense of relationship is key because whether robots remember what we’ve said, as well as how and when they expose that memory, will contribute to how we feel about them.
Despite recent progress, AI remains imperfect in recognizing children’s speech and understanding the semantics of natural language. Imperfect speech recognition and natural language understanding imply that the robot may not respond to children in a semantically coherent manner. With these impeding factors, it remains an open question whether fluid collaborative child-robot storytelling is feasible or is perceived as valuable by children.
The papers also suggest that this kind of work is highly applicable in situations like speech therapy, where kids often engage in games like this to improve their understanding or diction. And it’s not hard to imagine the broader applications.
See the full story here: https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/26/disney-experiments-look-to-make-kid-robot-interactions-more-natural/
THE WORLD’S CUTEST ROBOT NOW TEACHES YOU TO CODE
Using the scripting language Python, researchers could program Cozmo to do pretty much anything. But Anki design Cozmo for kids, not roboticists. “What we figured out was there was no reason why we couldn’t make the exact same functionality available for our more core audience,” he says. “So not for a Carnegie Mellon researcher, but for an 8 year old.”
That required translating all that code from Python to Scratch, a simple programming language MIT developed developed for use in elementary and middle schools. Today, nearly all of Cozmo’s functionality is tidily wrapped up in graphical blocks of code that users drag and drop onto the app’s interface. That makes easy to make Cozmo do things like roll forward and then turn left. Repeat that block of code four times, and you’ve taught Cozmo to make a square on your kitchen table.
See the full story here: https://www.wired.com/story/anki-cozmo-robot/
A First Look at VRotica, a $220 Virtual Reality Headset Just for Watching Porn
Hologram is arguably playing in a league of its own: Its VRotica headset only plays porn, and nothing else.
The headset ships with six videos preloaded, and gives consumers the ability to buy additional content on a per-title basis. In the near future, Hologram aims to also sell content from other studios as well as user-generated uploads to VRotica users, with plans to have more than 1000 videos available before the end of the year. And eventually, the company plans to include live streaming as well as simple adult-themed games as well.
VRotica’s display comes with a resolution of 1920 by 1080 pixel, and a field-of view of 83 degrees. As a comparison, the latest Gear VR, when combined with a Samsung Galaxy S8, features a field-of-view of 101 degrees and a display resolution of 2960 by 1440 pixels.
In layman’s terms, this means that the image quality of Samsung’s Gear VR headset notably better than that of VRotica’s headset. Then again, the content playable on the VRotica device also doesn’t require a whole lot of bells and whistles.
Without getting into too many juicy details, most VR porn videos follow the same basic formula: One actor (typically but not always male) is filmed from the chest down, sitting or lying and initially not doing much else. Then another actor (typically but not always female) appears and initiates the undressing, and whatever else follows after. It’s what the industry calls point-of-view, or POV, and it is meant to give viewers the ability to imagine themselves as part of the action.
See the full story here; http://variety.com/2017/digital/news/virtual-reality-porn-vrotica-vr-headset-1202478721/
Everywhere But Nowhere, Virtual and Augmented Reality Art: Immersive Pop Up Experience
Just a few weeks ago, the immersive pop up Everywhere but Nowhere, Virtual and Augmented Reality Art took viewers quite literally into a new dimension. A project of District Gallery sponsored by the Los Angeles Downtown Arts District Space, virtual and augmented reality artists created new worlds of art and reality.
See the full story here: https://artandcakela.com/2017/06/24/everywhere-but-nowhere-virtual-and-augmented-reality-art-immersive-pop-up-experience/
Steam VR “Knuckles” controller has a lot of capacitive sensors
The “Knuckles”, Valve’s nickname for the next gen Steam VR controller, does this by having nearly a dozen capacitive sensors in it.
...And while Knuckles still has a stick yo need to grasp, it also comes with a strap that slides over your knuckles, hence the name. This will help give users the confidence to let go of the controller when needed or grasp it with individual fingers, and you’ll probably be doing a lot of that with this controller.
The controller has at least eight capacitive sensors marked in a newly revealed documentation for the device. Each of the top four interaction points, namely, the trackpad, inner face button, outer face button, and system button, are capacitive. The trigger underneath is also capacitive. This allows the system to detect not just actual presses but also whether a finger is simply resting on the surface or even how hard the user is pressing.
See the full story here: https://c.slashgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/943495896_preview__cap_sense_2.png
