[From TechWeekEurope; the 3D Focus article includes detailed information]

Glasses-Free 3D Teleconference Links UK And Russia

Telepresence just got more immersive….

On March 26, 2012 by Max Smolaks

A 3D teleconference that didn’t need the participants to wear special glasses linked London and Russia yesterday, in the first experiment of this kind in the world.

It was possible due to a host of inventions by Russian company Triaxes Vision, based in the Siberian city of Tomsk. During the experiment, the guests of the 3D Storytelling conference, a broadcast and gaming industry event held in London, could see and talk to an audience at Tomsk Polytechnic University.

According to the participants, the display looked like a window, opening into a different room thousands of miles away, and creating the illusion of real presence, reports Russian agency RIA news.… read more. “Glasses-free 3D teleconference links UK and Russia”

[From CNBC]

[Image: Eon Reality’s virtual reality product, the Eon iCube.]

Virtual Reality Technology Comes of Age

Published: Tuesday, 27 Mar 2012
By: Joan Voight, Special to CNBC.com

Scuba diving among the sharks along Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is a breathtakingly immersive experience. It’s also dangerous and expensive.

But exploring a virtual ocean and coming nose to nose with a real-looking shark is a viable alternative. That, in a nutshell, has been the promise of virtual reality over the years — it could put us in an artificial environment that feels entirely real, without getting our feet wet.

Movies like “The Matrix,” “Lawnmower Man“ and “Star Trek“ gave us a taste of “VR.” In the mid-1990s startups and investors jostled to bring virtual technology to the mass market; instead, VR tech became specialized, used mostly in corporate training, the military (flight simulators) and science education.… read more. “Virtual reality technology comes of age”

[From PhysOrg.com, where the story includes an additional image]

[Image: The Naval Research Laboratory’s Shipboard Autonomous Firefighting Robot (SAFFiR) is a humanoid-type robot being designed for shipboard firefighting. Credit: U.S. Naval Research Laboratory]

NRL designs robot for shipboard firefighting

March 8, 2012 By Donna McKinney

(PhysOrg.com) — In both war and peacetime scenarios, fire in the shipboard environment is serious and frequently results in excessive damage and high repair costs because the fire is not detected or controlled adequately. To help further improve future shipboard firefighting capability, scientists at the Naval Research Laboratory have formed an interdisciplinary team to develop a humanoid robot that could fight fires on the next generation of combatants. A humanoid-type robot was chosen because it was deemed best suited to operate within the confines of an environment that was designed for human mobility and offered opportunity for other potential warfighting applications within the Navy and Marine Corps.… read more. “Humanoid firefighting robot SAFFiR interacts as member of the team”

[From Mashable]

With Augmented Reality, Wallit App Assigns Virtual Walls to Physical Places

March 06, 2012 by Sam Laird

“People have wanted to leave their mark since the beginning of humanity,” says Veysel Berk, creator of the mobile app Wallit. “Now they are going to be able to do that digitally using their smartphones.”

Released Tuesday for iPhone and iTouch, Wallit is hailed by Berk as the world’s first “social augmented reality app.” Like Facebook, it enables you to interact with your friends. Like Twitter, it only lets you write in short 140-character bursts. Like Foursquare, its digital benefits are based on where you go in the real world. But Wallit combines these features — and more — in an entirely new way.

The app is essentially a virtual wall for physical locations. Here’s how it works:

You go somewhere, for example a stadium or the Golden Gate Bridge.… read more. “With augmented reality, Wallit app assigns virtual walls to physical places”

[From Scientific American’s Observations blog, where the post includes a video]

[Image: Using a virtual reality maze and brain imaging system, Princeton researchers have detected a form of neural activity the formation of short-term memories used in decision-making. The panel shows the view of the virtual reality maze as seen by the mouse. A cue or sign indicates to the mouse to turn right to receive a water reward. (Image courtesy of Nature, Christopher Harvey and David Tank; more information from Princeton is here)]

Animals Exposed to Virtual Reality Hold an Emergency Meeting [Video]

By Ferris Jabr | March 22, 2012

On the evening of Wednesday, March 21, a mouse scurried into a storm drain near the southeast corner of Central Park in New York City. If anyone noticed the mouse at all, whatever shallow impression the sight of a Manhattan rodent made on their minds likely vanished within seconds, rinsed away by a new wave of sensory experience—an approaching car, a ringing cell phone.… read more. “Animals exposed to virtual reality hold an emergency meeting”