[From io9]

Robot and Frank is the next great science fiction indie

By Jordan Hoffman
Jan 23, 2012

In the movies, technology is usually represented one of two ways: a hallelujah-worthy miracle or a soul-deadening trespass on the natural order of things. Robot and Frank, a film receiving near-unanimous praise at the Sundance Film Festival, is smart enough to know better. Technology, like everything in life, isn’t black and white, and is only as good or bad as the people who interact with it.

Okay, so here’s the pitch: Frank Langella and a robot crack safes. You’d be forgiven for offering a great big “meh.” So please believe me when I say that Robot and Frank not only nails all the heartwarming family scenes expected of a Sundance dramedy, but also has great insight into the ethical implications of artificial intelligence and the fractured lucidity of memory.… read more. “Indie film “Robot and Frank” explores human-AI implications”

[From The Los Angeles Times]

[Image: A SoftKinetic application called Guru Training Systems is shown at the Consumer Electronics Show last week in Las Vegas. (Myung J. Chun, Los Angeles Times)]

New gesture, voice technology may make remote controls obsolete

Systems that enable consumers to control TVs, smartphones, tablets and home appliances by waving a hand or saying a word are eliminating the need for clunky pointing devices.

January 20, 2012|By David Sarno, Los Angeles Times

The remote control has never been much beloved.

If it’s not getting lost or running out of batteries, the device — and its inscrutable buttons — is confusing some family member or acting as a totem in an argument about what to watch.

Wouldn’t it be nice to wave your hand, say a magic word and make the clicker disappear for good?

With a new generation of gesture- and voice-controlled televisions, that’s exactly what may happen.… read more. “New gesture, voice technology may make remote controls obsolete”

[From Discovery]

[Image: Toyohashi University of Technology assistant professor Dzmitry Tsetserukou guides the NAVIgoid telepresence robot system.]

Human Gets Immersed In Remote Robot’s Actions

These kinds of robots could represent us in faraway places, letting us interact with friends, family and coworkers as if we were there.

By Alyssa Danigelis
Dec 28, 2011

What if you could be in two places at once? Or four? A group of Japanese roboticists envisions a world where we all use robots to visit friends and family, and represent us in distant work sites. They are developing a telepresence robot they think will give humans more physical immersion in remote locations.

“Vision is not enough,” said Dzmitry Tsetserukou, an assistant professor at Toyohashi University of Technology’s Advanced Interdisciplinary Electric Research Center. “We have to provide tactile feedback to make him or her more involved, and also motion feedback so we can feel more like we are human on the robot side.”… read more. “NAVIgoid lets human get immersed in remote robot’s actions”

[From DVICE, where the story includes additional images and a video]

Contact lenses upgrade your eyes to enable true immersive VR

By Evan Ackerman
Jan 17, 2012

Our eyes are just not built for the future. It sucks, but it’s true. We can’t physically focus on things that are very close to us, which is why we’re not all rocking high-resolution immersive virtual reality displays built into our eyeglasses. How do we fix this problem? Simple: we upgrade our eyeballs.

We’ve posted about head-mounted VR displays a lot around here, but there’s always a compromise going on: you can have a small, slick system that projects a little image with a narrow field of view, or you can have a gigantic bulky system that projects a big image with a wide field of view. The reason that you can’t have the best of both worlds (a big projected display in a small system) is that our eyes simply cannot focus on images displayed at the distance of a pair of glasses.… read more. “Contact lenses upgrade your eyes to enable true immersive VR”

[From Wired magazine’s Danger Zone blog]

[Image: U.S. Department of Defense]

Army’s Virtual Reality Plan: A Digital Doppelganger for Every Soldier

By Katie Drummond
January 18, 2012

The Army wants soldiers of the future to be all they can be — onscreen and off.

As the military’s enthusiasm for virtual reality training continues to grow, the Army’s got a new plan to make the programs freakily immersive: National Defense magazine is reporting that the Army wants to give every soldier a digital doppelganger — a custom avatar they can use throughout their stints in the military, and in myriad virtual training environs, from urban combat practice to cultural prep.

“You design an avatar that has the individual facial features of a soldier,” James Blake, the Army’s program executive officer for simulation, training and instrumentation, tells National Defense. “Then you add more of what he looks like, physical attributes.… read more. “U.S. Army’s virtual reality plan: A digital doppelganger for every soldier”