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Welcome to Cyber Dump number 66, your look at what's going on in this insane age of technology that we live in. As always, all source links mentioned are below.
AR / VR
Loads of augmented and virtual reality news this week. Firstly, Logitech unveiled the VR Ink, a pen which lets you draw and control virtual objects with fine precision, both on flat surfaces, and in floating 3D space. I think we'll be seeing more, non-gaming related VR developments like this in the future.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MduBtmijXZc
NReal announced a $500 price point for their light augmented reality glasses, slated to come out later this year. The android based system is a little light on details, but the formfactor is interesting.
https://www.nreal.ai
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DT3wEY5NnU
Varjo showed off their XR-1 augmented reality headset the other day too. The device has 2x 12mp cameras on the outside, for high resolution video passthrough, and depth sensing, and on the inside it boasts built in eye tracking.
https://vrscout.com/news/varjo-xr-1-human-eye-resolution/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCv0hJGBo_I
VRgineers have also added a similar augmented reality addon for their monster XTAL enterprise headset, which already sports massive 180 degree field of view and two 5k displays.
https://venturebeat.com/2019/05/30/vrgineers-debuts-ar-module-for-xtal-enterprise-vr-headset/
And looking to the future now, Mojo Vision revealed the world's smallest, and highest density micro display the other day. This experimental display is 0.48mm across, and has an insane 14k pixel-per-inch density, which could make for incredibly small VR and AR headsets in the future.
https://venturebeat.com/2019/05/30/mojo-vision-reveals-the-worlds-smallest-and-densest-micro-display/
https://mojo.vision/
DIY
Another week, another mini raspberry pi computer video, this time Igor Brkic shows off more of the features of the open source hgterm. It's a pretty cool project, with all the source files and instructions are on Igors website.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCdwgVnjggA
https://hyperglitch.com/articles/hgterm
ROBOTICS
It's been a while since we've seen some strange looking robots, but the Biomimetic Millisystems Lab from Berkley have developed the SALTO, a small hopping robot which looks pretty awesome. Again, similar to the hummingbird bot last week, it seems the more robots mimic the natural world, the more natural, and less clunky they look and operate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hy2XTDMr0co
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Ctrl shift face is a new youtube channel that displays only deepfakes, face swap videos. What's surprising about these though is just how good the changed faces look. Just imagine what this will mean for news, and criminal evidence in the future once it's indistinguishable from reality.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKpH0CKltc73e4wh0_pgL3g
In other news, researchers have been training an AI to play Quake III Arena in Capture the Flag mode. After thousands of games playing against other AIs and humans, and only using pixels and game points as inputs, the AI got to a point were it could beat humans, even when it's reflex times were handicapped to make it fairer for human players.
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/364/6443/859.full
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXkD77ioGi0
https://deepmind.com/blog/capture-the-flag-science/
3D PRINTING
Researchers in Germany have been exploring whether laser-melted moon dust could potentially make for a good construction material for future missions on the moon, with an eye to building permanent bases, without having to carry as much material up there.
https://3dprinting.com/news/moon-dust-printing-laser-melting-construction/
In a similar vein, NTU Singapore have been experimenting with printing fully workable bathroom units using their giant, concrete-extruding 3D printers. According to them, this process takes less than a day.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzkgNz8oxjU
And finally, MechBioPrinter on Instructables uploaded a very interesting guide the other day, showing you exactly how to modify a 3D printer, to turn it into a bioprinter, and best of all, the whole thing costs about $375 to make.
https://www.instructables.com/id/Low-Cost-Bioprinter/
Alright, that's it for this week. Thanks for watching, and I'll see you in the next video.
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CREDITS
Music: Xtract - Audiotool Day 2016 (CC License)
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BY NODE