[From The Guardian’s Film blog] 3D technology has even sceptical directors embracing another dimension From Herzog to Coppola, big names are filming stereoscopically – and the technique’s full potential is still to be revealed Posted by Ben Walters Thursday 17 March 2011 guardian.co.uk Six years ago, 3D cinema seemed about as likely a candidate for a revival as Odorama. Today it owns the multiplex. After swiftly dominating CG animated features, it gained toe-holds in horror, action and concert films, achieving inarguable momentum even before the success of Avatar. Now – objectionable as it might be to refuseniks such as Walter…

[From DigInfo TV, where the story includes additional pictures and a 1:35 minute video] 3D Multi-Viewpoint Fog Projection Display 17 March 2011 At Interaction 2011, a research group from Osaka University exhibited a fog display that enables multi-viewpoint observation. “Ordinary fog displays use a single projector with fog on a flat surface, but this display uses three projectors, each showing a different picture. So when the observer moves around the fog, they get a three-dimensional view.” This system utilizes the fact that dispersion of light by fog has directionality. It projects different pictures, from different angles, onto a cylindrical fog…

[From the IEEE Spectrum blog Automaton; a 2:26 minute video is available here] BrainDriver: A Mind Controlled Car POSTED BY: Markus Waibel  /  Thu, February 17, 2011 Imagine you could drive your car using only your thoughts. German researchers have just made that possible — and they have the video to prove it. Following his recent interview on the Robots Podcast about autonomous vehicles, Raúl Rojas, an AI professor at the Freie Universität Berlin, and his team have demonstrated how a driver can use a brain interface to steer a vehicle. …

[From Parsippany New Jersey’s Daily Record] [Image: Staff Sgt. Joshua Johnson controls a virtual bomb-disarming robot using patented software developed at Picatinny Arsenal. Looking on is Staff Sgt. Christopher Duff at the Sgt. Ryan E. Doltz Software Engineering Center.  Staff Photos: Bob Karp] Virtual robot controller preparation for reality Picatinny engineer’s software incorporated into video game By Abbott Koloff Mar 20, 2011 Because bomb-disarming robots cost about $140,000 apiece, Bernard Reger’s superiors asked him to design a virtual training system that does not require using robots that might get blown up during an exercise or fall off a cliff. The Army already…

[From the web site of BBC Radio 4’s Today program, where the story includes images and a 0:36 minute audio clip; more information and a 4:08 minute video are available here] Musical sweet spot for 3D sound An enhanced way of creating 3D sound using computer software is attracting interest from the TV industry and Hollywood. By Matt Wells Today programme 19 March 2011 I am standing in a foam-clad chamber with my eyes closed, listening to the sound of scissors dancing around my head. All that is missing from a real visit to the barber is the feel of…

[From Northwestern University’s Medill Reports, where the story includes a 1:31 minute video; see also the web site of The Electronic Visualization Lab and Lab’s materials on YouTube] [Image: Dan Sandin, co-founder of the Electronic Visualization Lab at the University of Illinois at Chicago, is a pioneer in electronic visualization and virtual reality. Annie Koval/MEDILL] Visualization pioneer creates virtual worlds by Annie Koval March 16, 2011 Left-brained or right-brained. Dan Sandin leaves such differences in the dust. He’s both technical and creative. A computer science wiz and an artist. A logical and abstract thinker. Sandin, 68, is a pioneer in…

[From The Chronicle of Higher Education’s Wired Campus blog] In Japan, Rescue Robots Are Poised to Go From Lab to Quake Scene March 15, 2011 By Ben Wieder Last Thursday night, Robin R. Murphy, director of the Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue at Texas A&M University, held a goodbye party in College Station for Japanese robotics researchers who had come to the center for workshops on using their creations in an emergency. The next day, the workshops became reality. The massive earthquake and tsunami that ravaged Japan that Friday meant the scientists, already booked on a plane, were rushing home to…

[From MIT’s Technology Review blog Mims’ Bits] Don’t Expect Mobile 3D Movies to Look the Same Film buffs and video game junkies could be surprised by how media look on the Nintentdo 3DS and 3D-equipped mobile phones. Christopher Mims 03/04/2011 Viewing 3D movies on small screens could lead to radically different perceptions of relative depth when compared to seeing them in the theater or on a television, conclude Nokia engineers. In a paper published in the Proceedings of Stereoscopic Displays and Applications, Jukka Hakkinen and colleagues tested three short animations on viewers. What they discovered is a direct consequence of how…

[From TV Squad; more videos and information are here] TV’s Green Screen Revolution Is Here by Ryan McKee, posted Feb 19th 2011 As savvy television fans already know, many shows do not shoot on location. Seeing TV characters walk down Broadway in New York does not mean they were actually there. In fact, chances are they weren’t even in the Big Apple, or even within thousands of feet of it. It’s getting even easier for television studios to create locations or backdrops thanks to green screen technology, and TV is taking as much (if not more) advantage of green screen as…

[From Fast Company, where the story includes a video and additional images] Will the Human, Non-Geminoid Henrik Scharfe Please Stand Up? By Kit Eaton Mar 7, 2011 How would you feel if you met Danish Professor Henrik Scharfe and then moments later were introduced to another Henrik Scharfe, this time an almost identical android? You can now actually do this, courtesy of a new Geminoid bot that points the way to our robotic future. A product of Japanese scientist Hiroshi Ishiguro, the Geminoid series robots have always been a weird headline-grabbing affairs due to their incredibly convincing human “skins,” but…

[From Whatsonstage.com; more information about the reviewed work is available here and here] Jo Caird Blog: Truly Involving Theatre 8 March 2011 In the past couple of years I’ve spent far too much time on Twitter, so I’ve been aware of some of the interesting theatre-related events that have taken place there, such as the RSC’s Such Tweet Sorrow, which saw an online cast improvise a story based on Romeo and Juliet over the course of five weeks, and American playwright Jeremy Gable’s The 15th Line, a four-hander which took place entirely on Twitter (you can read its script here).…

[From MIT’s Technology Review] A Laptop that Knows Where You’re Looking Eye-tracking cameras offer a new way to control your computer. Friday, March 4, 2011 By Tom Simonite A camera over the screen is a standard feature for laptops. But only Lenovo’s new model has a pair of cameras below its display to track the movements of a user’s eyes. The prototype laptop can be controlled with eye motions, reducing the need to use the mouse and making it faster to navigate through information such as maps or menus. The laptop can notice when its user has read to near…