[From TechNewsDaily; more information is available in an article in USA Today]

Mars Rover Curiosity Tells Her Story on Twitter

by Leslie Meredith, Senior Writer, TechNewsDaily
03 August 2012

“I’m in good health & on course for landing. Countdown to Mars: 3 days!,” said NASA’s Curiosity Rover on Twitter.

Okay, so the rover is not really tweeting from space. The voice of Curiosity is the combined effort of three women, led by NASA’s social media manager Veronica McGregor, who told TechNewsDaily that they work as a “hivemind” to communicate on behalf of the rover. All three refer to Curiosity as “she.”

The social media team brought Curiosity to Twitter on Nov. 19, 2008, three years before her launch on Nov. 26, 2011.

“I’m WAY cool, nearly built, and I need a name,” the rover “said” in her first tweet.… read more. “Mars Rover Curiosity tells her story on Twitter”

[From Goldsmiths, University of London]

Video game characters with natural responses to human body language

Published: 06 August 2012

Researchers at Goldsmiths, University of London have been using theatre performers to design computer software capable of reading and replicating the way in which humans communicate with their bodies.

Dr Marco Gillies from the Department of Computing has made virtual characters more believable by enlisting actors to teach them body movement. The actors interact with members of the public through a screen, and their responses to specific body language are memorised as algorithms by the software.… read more. “Teaching video game characters natural body language”

[From The Lost Remote]

Logitech launches TV Cam HD for living room video chats: Built-in Skype, 720p, $200

By Sharif Sakr posted Aug 3rd 2012

If Cisco’s ill-fated Umi video conferencing system had been more like this, would it have survived? Logitech is about to find out, one way or the other, once its TV Cam HD — recently spotted at the FCC — arrives in the US this month. The $199.99 device hooks up to your TV and contains all the processing power needed to run Skype and transmit wide-angle, 720p footage of your couch over WiFi or Ethernet. Unlike the previous TV Cam, there’s no need for a Viera Connect HDTV — anything with HDMI-in will do. The company is banking on the notion that families will forgo the use of their existing mobile devices and laptops in favour of an always-on dedicated system with incoming call alerts, four noise-cancelling mics and a Carl Zeiss lens that “gets the whole family in the video call, so everyone from grandparents to grandchildren can move around naturally.”… read more. “Logitech launches TV Cam HD for living room video chats”

[From Wired, where the story includes two videos]

Ikea’s Augmented Reality Catalog Will Let You Peek Inside Furniture

By Roberto Baldwin
July 20, 2012

Ikea prints 211 million copies of its product catalog every year. That’s more than 20 times the population of Sweden, the home of the build-it-yourself furniture empire. These are impressive numbers for a print catalog in a digital world, but Ikea is now changing with the times with a head-first dive into augmented reality.

“A lot digital stuff becomes very interesting when you mash it up with the tangible items of the real world,” said Andreas Dahlqvist, Global Deputy Chief Creative Officer of McCann, the creative agency behind the catalog.

Augmented reality features will roll out in the 2013 edition of the print catalog, which will arrive in customers’ mailboxes later this month. Amid pictures of Expedit bookshelves and Boksel tables, Ikea fans will see special printed symbols, each an invite to launch new iPhone and Android smartphone apps for an augmented reality experience.… read more. “Ikea’s augmented reality catalog will let you peek inside furniture”

[From Kotaku Australia, where the post includes a 1:11 minute video; more information is available from The University of Illinois at Chicago]

[Image: Individuals in the circular CAVE2 navigate 3D Mars. Image provided by Luc Renambot, UIC/EVL (data NASA & European Space Agency)]

I’d Kill To Play Games On This 72-Screen, 36-Computer Virtual Reality System

Luke Plunkett
August 6, 2012

Later this year, the University of Illinois at Chicago will take the wraps off something it’s calling CAVE2. You, however, will most probably call it “that badass virtual reality system”.

CAVE2 is big. It’s 24-feet in diameter and 8 feet tall. But then, it needs to be. It consists of 72 screens and 20 speakers, and takes 36 computers to run. That gets you a 320-degree view with visuals that can be displayed in 74 megapixels (or 37 if you’re using its 3D capabilities).… read more. “Next generation CAVE to open at University of Illinois at Chicago”