Items tagged with Motion
If you're of the mindset that Kinect on the Xbox One is simply a more advanced version of what we saw on the Xbox 360, you'd be grossly underestimating it. In a TechNet blog post, Microsoft goes into some great detail to explain what makes its next Kinect so amazing - and it's not just one or two things; it's a variety of things. I'll be honest in saying that prior to reading through this and checking out the videos, I had no special respect for Kinect - but my opinions have pulled a 180. As the video below shows, Kinect can read people three different ways. For starters, it can convert the person standing in front of Kinect into a skeleton with numerous joints, where even the closing of a hand...
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At this point, you've probable heard of Leap Motion. You may not be entirely familiar with what the company is about, or what kind of products it hopes to offer, but the name has been able to cut through the noise of late. In a lot of ways, it's a company built on outlandish dreams, but as duos such as Woz and Jobs have proven before, sometimes it takes a little bit of wild to change the world. David Holz and Michael Buckwald have founded a company and helped invent Leap Motion, which essentially allows users to easily interact with a PC via hand gestures. Credit: Leap Motion, Inc. If you're familiar with Sony's Move or Microsoft's Kinect, you get the gist. Behind the product is an even larger...
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3D body sensors are soon to be useful for more than just video games and sci-fi movies. Xsens has just introduced what it's calling the "world's first wearable 3D body motion tracking system" that's based entirely from consumer-grade MEMS combo sensors. The kicker here is the "consumer-grade" part. Finally, the cost is coming down in the world of 3D body tracking. As part of a broader strategy, Xsens now offers IP originally developed for professional (B2B) applications of 3D body motion tracking using wearable motion trackers for mass market application in the consumer electronics industry. Xsens has supplied 3D body motion tracking technology for Hollywood productions such as Ted, John Carter,...
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Motion sensing is very much "all the rage" these days, largely thanks to just how popular it has become in console gaming. Every major console maker now has some sort of motion/gesture-based control rig, and a lot of that technology is shifting over to the PC realm as well. Razer just released a firm ship date on their Hydra control, and now Invensense -- a company whose parts are inside a ton of those motion-based peripherals -- has unveiling their latest platform. The new SmartMotion platform with 9-axis MotionFusion engine looks to be the next major leap in motion sensing, with SmartMotion 4.0 engineered specifically for the mobile handset and tablet market. SmartMotion 4.0 is a complete software...
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CES is just now starting to take shape this year, and while tablets will no doubt play a large role, we get the feeling that wireless streaming will also be a huge topic of discussion. The time has come for wires to take a back seat to wireless, but there's still a lot of work that needs to be done to ensure that transfers are quick, lag-free and free from glitches. PrimeSense, which is the company behind the Microsoft Kinect peripheral, has now teamed up with Asus at CES to deliver yet another new wireless streaming solution to the world. The WAVI Xtion is a uniquely named device that has a next-gen user interface and is designed to extend PC usage to the living room. The WAVI Xtion media center...
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Apple's iPad may have arguably rebooted the tablet revolution, but Motion Computing has been producing tablets before the iPad was even a concept in the back of Steve Jobs' mind. The company's new J3500 Rugged Tablet PC isn't your average toy; instead, it uses a tough exterior, durable Gorilla glass and a more solid construction in order to give you tablet-like abilities no matter where life takes you. Even if that's out into the wild. It's the newest member of the J-Series tablet family, and it features an Intel Core vPro processor, dual touch screen technology (the ability to use your hands or a digitizer), Windows 7, and an expanded storage system that can hold a 160GB hard drive and (not...
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Never heard of Gorilla Glass? That's a shame, and if we had our druthers, we'd like to see it on every notebook out there. Of course, it's pretty darn expensive, so maybe we'd only like to see it when prices sink down a bit. At any rate, Motion Computing has decided to offer the extremely durable screen on its C5 and F5 tablets, both of which are designed for field use and are apt to come into contact with some pretty rough environments.The C5 and F5 are both within the outfit's "rugged tablet" lineup, and now they can be ordered with Corning glass in order to keep your screen free from breaks even in the wild. The Motion C5 and F5 were designed for mobile professionals across vertical industries...
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Over the years, the Tablet PC has become a decreasingly demanded niche, but even the Tablet bashers in the crowd can't help but give this one a serious look. Motion Computing has engineered a new Tablet that solves many of the issues that have plagued the platform for so long and even fixes a few things that weren't broken. Let's dive in, shall we?Atop the list of luxeries included on the J3400 is a dual-battery design that can supposedly provide for "all day computing." Additionally, it features a rugged, tough enclosure and a daylight-readable display that is right at home under the Arizona sun. Clearly, Motion designed this machine for those who do a majority of their work outside of the traditional...
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Some news just came across the wire regarding a strategic partnership being formed between NVIDIA and a company called MotionDSP. If you're unfamiliar with MotionDSP, the company has created custom software that decodes video files, extracts large amounts of data from dozens of video frames, filters the video using custom algorithms, and then re-constructs a new video which combines all the new data and enhanced frames. The end result is a final video that is of much higher quality and of higher resolution than the original, that shows more detail with less video noise and artifacts. We've got the full release regarding the partnership posted below, which...
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Gasoline being given away? In this age of $4 a gallon gasoline in the U.S., and much higher prices in Europe and elsewhere, would you riot over it? All right, it wasn't a riot, but it sure as heck was gridlock.Electronic Arts was trying to promote the Mercenaries 2: World in Flames game. And the promotion was free gasoline (or petrol, as the BBC prefers). Publicity they wanted, and publicity they got, but not all positive.Lynne Featherstone, MP for Hornsey and Wood Green, said: "Whilst a lucky few might have got free petrol, hundreds of residents have faced misery". The Liberal Democrat said: "Trying to recreate Venezuelan-style fuel riots on the streets of London is completely...
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In case you haven't heard, BFG is running a promotion featuring 10 special edition GeForce 9800 GX2 cards, which will be given away or sold for charity. BFG Technologies has created a limited run of special retail boxes featuring the photo of NVIDIA CEO and founder, Jen-Hsun Huang, to honor NVIDIA’s selection by Forbes as “Company of the Year.” Inside each box is a BFG NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GX2 graphics card that has been autographed by Huang and Scott Herkelman, president of BFG Technologies. Packaged in this limited-edition box, only 10 of these signed graphics cards exist in the world. Three of the cards will be given away in a drawing hosted by [H] and BFG. The prize package...
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It has been a somewhat slow weekend for tech news, but I just came across an interesting article over at the Live Science site that I wanted to share. The article centers around a cutting edge MIT robotics project dubbed Nexi.What makes Nexi so interesting is that "she" has been designed to communicate with not only the spoken word, but with facial expressions too."MIT's Nexi robot expresses emotions the same way you do - with your highly mobile face. Nexi's head and face were designed by Xitome Design with MIT. The expressive robotics started with a neck mechanism sporting 4 degrees of freedom (DoF) at the base, plus pan-tilt-yaw of the head itself. The mechanism has been constructed...
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Don't get too excited, though. The promotion is only for MSDN and TechNet subscribers who beta tested Vista.Under terms of “The Ultimate Offer,” testers can go to any retail or online store and buy a copy of Vista Ultimate (full or upgrade version) for full price and Microsoft will match it with a second complimentary Vista Ultimate Upgrade product key.To participate in the promotion, invited testers should go to the Vista Tester Offers site. The promotion ends January 15, 2008.For the suspicious among you, Microsoft has verified this isn't a phishing scam on a TechNet forum.Besides this offer, there are two drawings: one for a $250 Amazon.com gift certificate and one for a Bill Gates autographed...
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Don't we all love it when clever people take stuff that's right off the shelf, or better still, in hand, and show us how to use it in innovative ways? Simple Help outines a cheap and easy way to set up your own motion detecting security system with detailed, step by step instructions. You don't need much: 1. a PC running Windows 98, ME, 2000, XP (the software is untested on Windows 95 and NT, but should work) 2. a webcam (or two, see advanced) 3. Dorgem - an open source (free) webcam utility. To upload images 'off-site' (in case someone steals your computer) you'll need an FTP account. See the Advanced section when you're done the initial setup. Most everyone has the equipment...
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