3d illusion arts: Walyou

Walyou

Biological Drones Could Explore the Surface of Mars
Razer’s VR Headset to Include Leap Motion Hand Tracking Sensor
How a Marketing Chatbot Fooled Hundreds of Tinder User

Biological Drones Could Explore the Surface of Mars

Posted: 25 Mar 2015 01:55 PM PDT

Growing drones after reaching the Red Planet’s surface is a much more convenient alternative to shipping all the hardware and assembling it there, or at least that’s what some genius students are trying to prove.

The thought that future drones might be developed in Petri dishes instead of hardware factories is a bit scary, and could bring some of David Cronenberg’s movies to mind. However, this approach has its advantages, as evidenced by a team of students from Stanford University, Spelman College, and Brown University. Their biological drone was an entry in the 2014 International Genetically Engineered Machine competition, and chances are that a version of that drone could one day fly across Mars.

The iGEM team collaborated with Lynn Rothschild, a synthetic biologist at the NASA Ames Research Center in California, to develop a drone using not much besides fungi and plants. Considering the type of biological material that has been used, one may be concerned of the fungi colony that might form in the event of a crash. However, the “components” of the drone are already dead by the time it’s airborne, so no one should worry about that.

“These are lightweight, cheap, and won't litter the environment. It’s about as big a concern as leaving your sweater outside,” claimed Rothschild, emphasizing only a few of the bio-UAV’s advantages.

Of course, there still is some technology involved, as designing the bio-drone needs to be done in 3D modelling software. Next, the design file is sent to biomaterials company Ecovative Design that uses vacuforming to create an 8-inch square of fungal mycelium. The hard structure of the drone is composed of straw and dead leaves that are placed in the mold. “The biomaterial gets inoculated with fungus, then fungus grows throughout all the material in the mold,” pointed out Eli Block, one of the team’s members. “Before where it was kind of a loose material, after growing for a few weeks, it was a single solid chunk.”

The bio-drone’s chassis is actually made using two such molds, as Rothschild explained: “So it looks like a dried sandwich, and it's the weight and feel of Styrofoam.”

Block also emphasized the importance of having the bio-drone sterilized: “The point of it is you’re not flying anything that could introduce negative organisms into the environment. Also you have this new biomaterial that you don't want to get eaten by mold. So you don't want it to break down immediately.”

Needless to say, in order to withstand Red Planet’s harsh atmospheric conditions, the drones need a bit more than that. However, the iGEM team has managed to create radiation and extreme temperature-resistant bacteria by inserting genes of “extremophile” bacteria in E. Coli.

“Let’s say you have certain cells that can sense carbon dioxide levels or radiation, and do some kind of color readout. You could be sensing things in parallel, without bulky sensors on your drone,” said Block, pointing out that genetically-modified biological sensors could even be used to replace conventional sensor hardware.

Not at last, the team intends to waterproof the bio-UAVs, and they turned to paper wasps to achieve this. “Paper wasps are an organism that when they build their nests they actually use cellulose, plant cellulose,” explains Jotthe Kannappan, a junior at Stanford, and a member of the iGEM team. “They chew bark on trees, spit it out, and something in that saliva makes cellulose really waterproof and really thermal-resistant. So our experiment was to figure out what protein in the saliva does that.”

The team even thought of a way of making the radiation-resistant cells become biodegradable: “It was changing what some of the genetic code stood for,” says Rothschild. “It’s like you took a book and every time you saw the word ‘today,’ you read the word ‘blue.’ The idea is that if this crashed somewhere and there were living cells on it, they would be speaking a different language than other cells in the environment.”

This is a very ambitious project that should become a reality, if we are to go to Mars anytime soon.

Be social! Follow Walyou on Facebook and Twitter, and read more related stories about the Zano selfie drone, or the GoPro action drones.

Razer’s VR Headset to Include Leap Motion Hand Tracking Sensor

Posted: 25 Mar 2015 12:38 PM PDT

As a manufacturer of all-things-gaming, Razer couldn’t have missed the VR revolution. In order to distinguish itself from the competition, Razer plans to integrate Leap Motion hand tracking into its future VR headset.

In order to qualify as some sort of reality, VR should include by default interaction with the surrounding objects in the virtual space. Without presence, the whole immersion concept is brought down exclusively to the visual experience, and that’s not always very satisfactory. Let’s face it, controlling things with your hands in virtual reality is much better than using a controller. If we are to leave the real world for the virtual one, the experience needs to be complete, and that’s exactly what Razer wants to do by implementing the Leap Motion hand tracking sensor in its VR headset.

There’s always the option to get any other VR headset you like and buy the Leap Motion hand tracking sensor separately. That could turn out not only more expensive, but also less convenient to use. Fortunately, Leap Motion has announced that it would cooperate with Razer’s OSVR to put the hand tracking sensors right into the headset.

Leap Motion sensors will be provided in the form of an optional faceplate in OSVR’s hardware developer kit, which means that if you don’t need or want these sensors, you could always opt for the OSVR headset that comes without them.

This implementation is not better only for the consumers, but also for the devs, who no longer have to code for multiple platforms. From a user’s standpoint, the experience is more seamless.

Keep in mind that Leap Motion did not offer exclusivity to Razer, and in fact, it wants to collaborate with other companies from the VR industry, in order to bring the sensors to more VR headsets.

“Using your hands is not only the most natural method, it’s also the most intuitive,” said Michael Buckwald, Leap Motion’s CEO and co-founder. “I love that feeling of ‘Wow, my hand is in the computer.’ When that happens, there’s connection and magic,” added David Holz, Leap Motion’s CTO and other co-founder.

While consumers might have to wait a while till they get their mittens on a Leap Motion-equipped VR headset, it’s good to know this is really happening. Pre-orders for the OSVR headset will be live in May, with shipping expected to start in June.

Be social! Follow Walyou on Facebook and Twitter, and read more related stories about the Pinc headset that puts VR at your fingertips, or the MindLeap thought-controlled VR system.

How a Marketing Chatbot Fooled Hundreds of Tinder User

Posted: 25 Mar 2015 11:07 AM PDT

At SXSW, one marketing team uses controversial dating app Tinder to promote an upcoming movie.

Tinder is no stranger to controversy as it recently decided to charge for ‘unlimited swipes’, with this feature costing more for those over 30 years of age. But tongues were wagging for an entirely different reason at this year’s South By Southwest (SXSW) event in Austin, Texas.

At the annual film, culture and technology festival, attendees in the area had their hearts set on meeting a woman named Ava. Ava had a Tinder account and her profile featured a beautiful profile image of a young woman and so as you might expect, many other Tinder users swiped ‘right’ on Ava’s profile to strike up a conversation and possibly meet up with her. Ava’s responses were convincing and she seemed like a real human being. But she was not: Ava was a fake profile that had been created by a marketing team to promote the upcoming movie, Ex Machina.

Ex Machina is a sci-fi film about a computer programmer named Caleb who spends the weekend with his reclusive friend and tech CEO, Nathan. Nathan wants Caleb to perform the Turing Test on a AI (artificial intelligence) program named Ava to see if she can convince people that she is an actual person, but Caleb accidentally grows attached to Ava which means he’s not so keen on the idea of Ava having her memory wiped if she fails the experiment. He helps her escape and thus you have the plot of an engaging techie thriller.

There was no such advanced artificial intelligence behind Ava’s Tinder profile however, as Ava only had some basic chatbot-esque brains behind her. Plus, Ava wasn’t designed to trick anyone for long, as after some conversation she linked users to the movie’s Instagram page where they learned that Ava’s Tinder profile was a setup. It wasn’t all bad news though as a lucky few one movie tickets and passes to Ex Machina’s premiere.

Source: TechCrunch

Be social! Follow Walyou on Facebook and Twitter, and read more related stories, Tinder Plus to Cost More for Users Over 28, Luxy Is the Tinder App of the One Percent