Data center Microsoft researcher Sean Parker used to think that a sewage treatment plant would be an inhospitable place for a data center professional. Now when he smells methane at a wastewater plant, he smells free energy.
Posts tagged "Microsoft"
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Microsoft Data Plant Biogas Fuel cell →
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Microsoft patents Holodeck-like 'immersive display experience' for your living room →
Anyone who has watched Star Trek has imagined what it would be like to hang out in the Holodeck, and a new patent suggests that Microsoft may one day try to bring that experience to your living room. Described as an “immersive display experience,” the concept is to expand the game past the edges of your television — so you’ll still have a primary display, but the system will project images all around you to create a more realistic experience.
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How Will Kinect Change Filmmaking? →
Jonathan Minard and James George from RGB D are using the Kinect and a DSLR to reimagine filmmaking. They have created a technique that lets you map video from the camera onto 3D data from the gaming console device, generate a CGI and video hybrid. This could make it easier and cheaper to create 3D films using commercially available hardware and open source software.
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Microsoft's MirageTable allows AR teleconferencing →
Video teleconferencing gives a better sense of “being there” than simply talking on the phone, but it still lacks true physical interaction. Now, a new system developed by Hrvoje Benko and colleagues at Microsoft allows people in remote locations to share and interact with real and virtual objects.
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Microsoft Invents Projector Eyewear for Xbox & Beyond →
It came to light in 2008 that an Apple research team was working on a visual headset for the iPod. In recent months news has surfaced that a next generation super high res micro OLED display is ready to support new visual headsets coming to market later this year. The stunning miniature displays pack quite the punch with a resolution of 2560 x 2048. Since that news, we’ve reported on a Sony research team working on a video headset for a future PlayStation while noting that Google may want in on this new market as well. While the race is clearly on to get the first commercially successful video headset to market, Patent Bolt has discovered that Microsoft has been secretly working on a video headset since September 2010. A New Microsoft patent reveals that they’ve been working two styles of headset. The first relates to an aviation styled helmet aimed at Xbox gamers while the second resembles a pair of sunglasses for use with smartphones, MP3 players and other future devices. With Microsoft’s success with Kinect for gaming and beyond, it would appear to me that they might just have the edge in this race. Today’s report provides you with a few insights into one of Microsoft’s latest projects.
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Lifebrowser
Machine learning is being applied in new ways to understand people and to assist them with daily work and activities. Presented at Microsoft TechForum 2012, Lifebrowser leverages machine learning and reasoning to help people to navigate through large personal stores of their own information, appointments, photos, and activities, including their history with searching and browsing on the Web over days, months, and years. The prototype learns about and infers “memory landmarks” — events and activities that people would find important and memorable. The system builds a timeline around inferred landmarks, and allows users to zoom in on details of the timeline around inferred landmarks with a “volume control.” The system also enables users to perform search and retrieval of content in the context of the landmarks.
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Microsoft's 'Universal Translator' Lets You Speak Foreign Languages In Your Own Voice →
Siri’s ability to speak and recognize various languages is impressive, but Microsoft is not to be outdone. Microsoft Research labs has demoed a new prototype software that could be the next big step toward a so-called “universal translator” device, one that can instantly flip one language into another and back again so a conversation can be carried on between two people even when neither can understand the other’s language.
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Two Extremes of Touch Interaction →
Microsoft Research Redmond researchers Hrvoje Benko and Scott Saponas have been investigating the use of touch interaction in computing devices since the mid-’00s. Now, two sharply different yet related projects demonstrate novel approaches to the world of touch and gestures. Wearable Multitouch Interaction gives users the ability to make an entire wall a touch surface, while PocketTouch enables users to interact with smartphones inside a pocket or purse, a small surface area for touch. Both projects will be unveiled during UIST 2012, the Association for Computing Machinery’s 24th Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology, being held Oct. 16-19 in Santa Barbara, Calif.
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Applied Sciences Group: Interactive Displays: Behind the Screen Overlay Interactions
Behind the Screen Overlay Interactions: Behind-the-screen interaction with a transparent OLED with view-dependent, depth-corrected gaze.
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Kinect Grocery Cart
Microsoft demoing a Kinect shopping cart being developed for Whole Foods.
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Holoflector
Holoflector is a unique, interactive augmented-reality mirror. Graphics are superimposed correctly on your own reflection to enable a novel augmented-reality experience. Presented at Microsoft TechForum 2012, Holoflector leverages the combined abilities of Kinect and Windows Phone to infer the position of your phone and render graphics that seem to hover above it.
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Illumishare
Seen first at Microsoft TechForum 2012, IllumiShare enables remote people to share any physical or digital object on any surface. It is a low-cost, peripheral device that looks like a desk lamp, and just like a lamp lights up a surface at which it is pointed, IllumiShare shares a surface. To do this, IllumiShare uses a camera-projector pair where the camera captures video of the local workspace and sends it to the remote space and the projector projects video of the remote workspace onto the local space. With IllumiShare, people can sketch together using real ink and paper, remote meeting attendees can interact with conference room whiteboards, and children can have remote play dates in which they play with real toys.
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Samsung SUR40 for Microsoft Surface →
The 40-inch SUR40, co-created by Samsung and Microsoft, is a thin tabletop computer that sees and responds to whatever is placed on it. Each of the table’s LCD pixels emits an infrared beam that reflects off an object back to a sensor. The processor synthesizes the sensor data to create an eight-bit image from which it can pick out shapes and large text, such as product names and numbers. Once the object is identified, the table displays related YouTube videos and other product information. Right now most apps are on the simpler side, but developers are free to program custom games and more, depending on what bar or store the table winds up in. $8,400
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Kinect weighs astronauts just by looking at them →
Astronauts will soon be able to stay fit thanks to a body tracking camera system built into Microsoft’s Kinect gaming sensor, which helps calculate their weight in zero gravity. Even during missions that last just a few weeks spacefarers can lose up to 15 per cent of their body mass because their muscles atrophy due to lack of use. To prevent this physical decline, crew aboard the International Space Station (ISS) typically spend 2 hours exercising per day.
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Microsoft's Kinect: A robot's low-cost, secret weapon →
As robots seek to mimic humans’ ability to see and hear, they have a secret weapon in Microsoft’s Kinect game motion-sensing controller.
MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Laboratory (CSAIL) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which I toured Friday, is piled high with all kinds of hardware, including laptops, unmanned submarines, and mechanical limbs. But when it comes to equipping robots with artificial eyes and ears, robotics hackers are clearly enamored with the Kinect motion-sensing controller and sensors like it.
