[From Ani.me, where the story includes a 6:59 minute video; information and another video about a related app that lets the user shake hands with Hatsune Miku is available from Kotaku] [News] Oculurs VR Allows Fans to ‘Sleep With’ Hatsune Miku By Scott Larsen October 5, 2013 I have friends who are absolutely obsessed with characters. They pride themselves on owning anything and everything which feature’s their obsession’s image: posters, wallets, and of course the coveted hug-pillows. To these individuals, I now simply laugh at their obviously meager efforts. Why? Because with the new Oculus Rift VR, you can take…

[From Gizmodo Australia, where the story includes several more images] Exploring The Prehistoric World, By Way Of Virtual Reality Kelsey Campbell-Dollaghan 27 September 2013 For most history students, “exploring the past” means sifting through mountains of data. But digital archaeologist Marcus Abbott wants to make early human civilisation — or its digital simulacra — freely accessible to anyone who wants to explore it. His first prehistoric VR environment? A 3000-year-old spiritual site in the East Anglian fens.…

[From the Georgia Tech News Center, where the story includes additional images] [Image: Akanksha Prakash, a graduate student in the School of Psychology, found that people assign emotions to robots, based on their face.] Putting a Face on a Robot What does the assistive robot of the future look like? It depends. Posted October 1, 2013 | Atlanta, GA A new study from the Georgia Institute of Technology finds that older and younger people have varying preferences about what they would want a personal robot to look like. And they change their minds based on what the robot is supposed…

[From The Construction Index, where the story includes additional images] Keeping it real Virtual reality has come out of the games console and onto site. David Taylor looks at a new approach to training. With any kind of training, there’s nothing quite like first-hand experience to make all that theory come alive. But on the other hand if you drop a complete rookie in at the deep end there’s always the danger they will sink instead of swim. Some trainees simply cannot be allowed to make big mistakes – think of trainee airline or fighter pilots. But on the other…

[From MIT’s Technology Review] [Image: Copy and paste: A tablet can be used to make 3-D scans of an object using the Structure Sensor and other new hardware coming to mobile devices.] Depth-Sensing Cameras Head to Mobile Devices Adding 3-D sensors to existing and future mobile devices will enable augmented-reality games, handheld 3-D scanning, and better photography. By Tom Simonite on October 1, 2013 Just over a decade since cameras first appeared in cell phones, they remain one of the most used features of mobile devices, underpinning wildly popular and valuable companies such as Instagram and Snapchat. Now hardware that…

[From NPR’s Monkey See blog, where the story includes more images and an extended video] [Image: The creators of Breaking Bad judiciously use the point-of-shot sequence in critical scenes of the pilot, including when Walter White is forced to clean the tires of student’s car. Doug Hyun/Courtesy of AMC.] Point Of View: How So Many Rooted For ‘Breaking Bad’s’ Walter White by Michaeleen Doucleff September 27, 2013 If you were still cheering for Walter White at the start of the sixth season (or, as AMC contracts call it, the second half of the fifth season), a mustard stain on a…