It turns out there was more to Google's WebM technology than just a plan to revolutionize Web-based video. The company also wants to revolutionize still images on the Web with a new format called WebP.
Google plans to announce the new WebP graphics format today along with its research that indicates its use could cut image file sizes by 40 percent compared to today's dominant JPEG file format. That translates to faster file transfers and lower network burden if Google can convince people to adopt WebP.
An image encoded with WebP.
This image has been encoded with WebP. Because browsers can't show WebP natively today, this WebP image actually is displayed here as a PNG graphic that captures the WebP version without changes. In its WebP incarnation, the image is 36,154 bytes.
(Credit: Google)
An image encoded with JPEG. Its file size is 46768 bytes.
The same image encoded with JPEG. Its file size is 46,768 bytes.
(Credit: Google)
WebP, like JPEG, lets its users trade off image quality for file size. And like JPEG, it's a "lossy" format, meaning it doesn't perfectly reproduce an original image but tries to keep as true to the original as possible when viewed by the human eye.
Unlike JPEG, though, it's not built into every camera, Web browser, image-editing program, pharmacy photo-printing kiosk, and mainstream operating system in existence. That's not stopping Google, though, whose goals with WebP are ambitious even if not as ambitious as replacing JPEG.
"When we took a bunch of images, recompressed them from their current lossy formats into WebP, we saw on average about 40 percent decrease in size, which is staggering," said Richard Rabbat, lead product manager on Google's "make the Web faster" effort. Shrinking images by that much is particularly important considering that, by Google's estimate, "65 percent of bytes on the Web are from images," he said.
JPEG is a powerful incumbent. Microsoft has been trying for years to promote an alternative, now standardized as the royalty-free JPEG XR format, which offers greater dynamic range, a wider range of colors, and more efficient compression. But JPEG XR so far hasn't made much progress beyond standardization and native support in Internet Explorer and Windows. An earlier effort, JPEG 2000, also hasn't much dented JPEG's popularity.
Google, like Microsoft, knows it's in for a long effort to promote its graphics format.
"The challenges are tremendous," Rabbat said. "We foresee it's going to be a very long conversation."
It's begun that conversation with some that share Google's faster-Web motivations: browser makers. "We're talking to other browser vendors about supporting WebP," he said. "Initially, we want to spread this widely on the Web."
WebP is derived from WebM, Google's open-source, royalty-free technology for encoding and decoding video. The higher compression efficiency measurement came from a sample of 1 million images that Google plucked from the Web. Of them, about 90 percent were JPEG, and Google's tests showed WebP offering the same quality with 40 percent smaller file sizes. The remaining 10 percent were formats such as PNG and GIF, which are used more for illustration images such as logos rather than the photo-oriented JPEG.
Google plans to release WebP software to let people judge image quality for themselves. At first that will include a utility to convert graphics into WebP images, but more important perhaps in the long run is support built into Google's Chrome browser.
"We expect in a few weeks we will have native support for WebP in Chrome," Rabbat said.
That browser move is where Google's efforts to speed up the Web are interesting. Because Google has some very popular Web pages along with a widely used if not dominant browser, the company can make something practical and real out of technology that in another company's hands would be merely academic unless it signed up partners.
Google's doing the same thing with other Web technologies, for example by building into Chrome the SPDY protocol to speed interactions with Web servers, and the Native Client software to run downloadable software at native rather than JavaScript speeds. With Chrome as a vehicle and Google's Web properties as a destination, neither of those need be universally adopted for Google to benefit.
For some more details on WebP, check Google's blog post on it or the open-source WebP project site, which includes an FAQ, the WebP converter command-line tool, and gallery.
Image-quality techies also will want to look at Google's detailed studies comparing WebM to JPEG and JPEG 2000.
The company wants WebP to be used beyond just its own servers. However, it will be tough to persuade Web developers to create variations on their current Web pages that use WebP rather than JPEG images, especially with no browsers supporting it today.
But Google has an answer: check to see if the browser supports WebP, and if it does, generate the necessary WebP images on the fly for delivery to the browser, Rabbat said.
"You don't have to make a decision--do I need to rebuild my corpus [of graphics] into WebP?" he said. "The conversion happens pretty fast. It's just a bit of CPU [processor power] you have to throw at the problem. When you've done the conversion once, you can cache the image so you don't have to do it again."
There is a penalty for the quality. Encoding WebP images takes about eight times longer than JPEG, Rabbat said, and decoding them somewhat less than twice as long. He also observed, though, that "a lot of technologies for lossy compression were invented in the 1970s when processors were slow and memory was expensive."
And hardware eventually could work in WebP's favor.
One convenient feature of WebP is that any hardware that supports WebM video encoding or decoding also supports WebP. That means a mobile phone with hardware support, for example, could take WebP photos.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Could newly discovered planet sustain life?
A team of astronomers said today that they've discovered the first solid example of a planet outside our solar system that could sustain life.
The planet, Gliese (pronounced "GLEE-zuh") 581g, orbits a star about 20 light-years away from Earth, and is just the right distance from that star to enjoy temperatures that are hospitable to water in liquid form--and are thus conducive to life, researchers said.
"Our findings offer a very compelling case for a potentially habitable planet," Steven Vogt, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and one of the leaders of the research team, said in a statement.
ALT TEXT
Credit: Lynette Cook/NASA
An artist's rendering of
the newly discovered
Gliese 581g.
The team, made up of astronomers from UC Santa Cruz and the Carnegie Institution of Washington, has published its findings in the Astrophysical Journal and online.
To discover Gliese 581g, the researchers spent 11 years working with the HIRES spectrometer on the Keck I Telescope at the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii. The spectrometer can pick up wobbles in a star's motion caused by passing planets, and thus reveal the presence of the planets themselves.
This and other techniques have been used in recent years to discover the existence of numerous Earth-size "exoplanets," or planets that are extrasolar--that is, outside our solar system. Gliese 581g is the first such planet, however, that would seem to provide the right conditions for the survival of organisms.
Such existence, though, is by no means certain. If the atmosphere on Gliese 581 "was all carbon dioxide, like Venus, it would be pretty hot," Sara Seager, a planetary astronomer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told The New York Times. Seager said she was skeptical: "Everyone is so primed to say here's the next place we're going to find life, but this isn't a good planet for follow-up."
But Vogt is more than optimistic. At a news conference in Washington, the Times reported, he said he thought "the chances of life on this planet are almost 100 percent."
The planet, Gliese (pronounced "GLEE-zuh") 581g, orbits a star about 20 light-years away from Earth, and is just the right distance from that star to enjoy temperatures that are hospitable to water in liquid form--and are thus conducive to life, researchers said.
"Our findings offer a very compelling case for a potentially habitable planet," Steven Vogt, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and one of the leaders of the research team, said in a statement.
ALT TEXT
Credit: Lynette Cook/NASA
An artist's rendering of
the newly discovered
Gliese 581g.
The team, made up of astronomers from UC Santa Cruz and the Carnegie Institution of Washington, has published its findings in the Astrophysical Journal and online.
To discover Gliese 581g, the researchers spent 11 years working with the HIRES spectrometer on the Keck I Telescope at the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii. The spectrometer can pick up wobbles in a star's motion caused by passing planets, and thus reveal the presence of the planets themselves.
This and other techniques have been used in recent years to discover the existence of numerous Earth-size "exoplanets," or planets that are extrasolar--that is, outside our solar system. Gliese 581g is the first such planet, however, that would seem to provide the right conditions for the survival of organisms.
Such existence, though, is by no means certain. If the atmosphere on Gliese 581 "was all carbon dioxide, like Venus, it would be pretty hot," Sara Seager, a planetary astronomer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told The New York Times. Seager said she was skeptical: "Everyone is so primed to say here's the next place we're going to find life, but this isn't a good planet for follow-up."
But Vogt is more than optimistic. At a news conference in Washington, the Times reported, he said he thought "the chances of life on this planet are almost 100 percent."
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Tracking the flu by tracking the tweets
Let's face it: the typical tweet in the Twitosphere (if you need help with the vernacular, consult the Twictionary) is about as revelatory as the words going into the cell phone of the girl sitting behind me on the bus last night. The vast majority are meaningless to strangers--and probably even to close friends.
The joy of irony: Twitter's addictive nature may help researchers track health trends.
(Credit: carrotcreative/Flickr)
But the sheer volume of Twitter activity (the site is "over capacity" as I type this) turns otherwise banal tweets into telling trends, when scrutinized in the aggregate, and health trends are no exception.
"A microblogging service such as Twitter is a promising new data source for Internet-based surveillance because of the volume of messages, [and] their frequency and public availability," according to Aron Culotta, assistant professor of computer science at Southeastern Louisiana University, who, in recent months analyzed 500 million tweets to track the flu.
Culotta and two assistant students collected these messages using Twitter's application programming interface. Only a handful of keywords were required to both track rates of influenza-related messages, and predict future rates and outbreaks.
"This approach is much cheaper and faster than having thousands of hospitals and health care providers fill out forms each week," Culotta says. "Once the program is running, it's actually neither time-consuming nor expensive--it's entirely automated because we're running software that samples each day's messages, analyzes them, and produces an estimate of the current proportion of people with the flu."
It's also, much like Google Flu Trends, less accurate. But not by much. The team found a 95 percent correlation with the national health statistics collected by the Center for Disease Control.
Culotta says analyzing tweets has an advantage over Google because of their sheer volume and frequency. (Twitter has reported having more than 190 million users posting a cumulative 65 million messages a day, with about 300,000 new users getting added daily.)
Culotta's next goal is to track messages that include location-specific data so he can segment reporting information by regions and post trending data in real time.
The team announced its findings after presenting them at the 2010 Workshop on Social Media Analytics at the Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining in Washington, D.C., in July. Its updated paper, "Detecting Influenza Epidemics by Analyzing Twitter Messages
The joy of irony: Twitter's addictive nature may help researchers track health trends.
(Credit: carrotcreative/Flickr)
But the sheer volume of Twitter activity (the site is "over capacity" as I type this) turns otherwise banal tweets into telling trends, when scrutinized in the aggregate, and health trends are no exception.
"A microblogging service such as Twitter is a promising new data source for Internet-based surveillance because of the volume of messages, [and] their frequency and public availability," according to Aron Culotta, assistant professor of computer science at Southeastern Louisiana University, who, in recent months analyzed 500 million tweets to track the flu.
Culotta and two assistant students collected these messages using Twitter's application programming interface. Only a handful of keywords were required to both track rates of influenza-related messages, and predict future rates and outbreaks.
"This approach is much cheaper and faster than having thousands of hospitals and health care providers fill out forms each week," Culotta says. "Once the program is running, it's actually neither time-consuming nor expensive--it's entirely automated because we're running software that samples each day's messages, analyzes them, and produces an estimate of the current proportion of people with the flu."
It's also, much like Google Flu Trends, less accurate. But not by much. The team found a 95 percent correlation with the national health statistics collected by the Center for Disease Control.
Culotta says analyzing tweets has an advantage over Google because of their sheer volume and frequency. (Twitter has reported having more than 190 million users posting a cumulative 65 million messages a day, with about 300,000 new users getting added daily.)
Culotta's next goal is to track messages that include location-specific data so he can segment reporting information by regions and post trending data in real time.
The team announced its findings after presenting them at the 2010 Workshop on Social Media Analytics at the Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining in Washington, D.C., in July. Its updated paper, "Detecting Influenza Epidemics by Analyzing Twitter Messages
'Star Wars' coming to 3D in 2012
"Star Wars" is entering the third dimension, LucasFilm announced today.
According to the studio, "Star Wars: Episode 1 The Phantom Menace" will be released in 3D to theaters in 2012. As with the original releases, Twentieth Century Fox is backing the movies.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, which cited unnamed sources, LucasFilm will release one of the original six "Star Wars" films in 3D each subsequent year. The films will be released in chronological order by episode.
In the meantime, Star Wars fans will be able to get their hands on Blu-ray versions of the films next year. The "Star Wars" Blu-ray box set is scheduled for release in fall 2011. It will feature revamped visuals and audio and several special features, including deleted scenes.
According to the studio, "Star Wars: Episode 1 The Phantom Menace" will be released in 3D to theaters in 2012. As with the original releases, Twentieth Century Fox is backing the movies.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, which cited unnamed sources, LucasFilm will release one of the original six "Star Wars" films in 3D each subsequent year. The films will be released in chronological order by episode.
In the meantime, Star Wars fans will be able to get their hands on Blu-ray versions of the films next year. The "Star Wars" Blu-ray box set is scheduled for release in fall 2011. It will feature revamped visuals and audio and several special features, including deleted scenes.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Sci-fi wars? Pilots say UFOs knocked out nukes
There are those who fear that aliens are bellicose beings, ready to swallow us whole and spit us out towards the moon.
Stephen Hawking appears to be in this pessimistic camp.
However, testimony offered by seven former U.S. Air Force pilots Monday makes me feel giddy with anticipation at contact with beings from afar. For it seems they might be the sort who put the fist into pacifist.
The pilots declared that they had either seen UFOs personally descend on nuclear establishments, or had received related reports from their colleagues.
According to CNN, Robert Hastings, a UFO researcher, declared: "I believe--these gentlemen believe--that this planet is being visited by beings from another world, who for whatever reason have taken an interest in the nuclear arms race which began at the end of World War II."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUv56n7kyYk&feature=related
These pilots described red glowing objects and things that sent beams down from thousands of feet above.
In one incident, at the Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana in 1967, they claimed that some of the nuclear missiles were temporarily disabled by these beaming beings, according to CNN.
Yet, their conclusion is that whatever it is that exists beyond us wants us to stop our international bickering and get back to simple domestic spats about global warming.
I paraphrase, naturally.
But please listen to the warmly peacenik feelings offered by Hastings at the news conference: "Regarding the missile shutdown incidents, my opinion...is that whoever are aboard these craft are sending a signal to both Washington and Moscow, among others, that we are playing with fire--that the possession and threatened use of nuclear weapons potentially threatens the human race and the integrity of the planetary environment."
The question is, why would extra-terrestrial beings care about how we are choosing to destroy ourselves?
Stephen Hawking appears to be in this pessimistic camp.
However, testimony offered by seven former U.S. Air Force pilots Monday makes me feel giddy with anticipation at contact with beings from afar. For it seems they might be the sort who put the fist into pacifist.
The pilots declared that they had either seen UFOs personally descend on nuclear establishments, or had received related reports from their colleagues.
According to CNN, Robert Hastings, a UFO researcher, declared: "I believe--these gentlemen believe--that this planet is being visited by beings from another world, who for whatever reason have taken an interest in the nuclear arms race which began at the end of World War II."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUv56n7kyYk&feature=related
These pilots described red glowing objects and things that sent beams down from thousands of feet above.
In one incident, at the Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana in 1967, they claimed that some of the nuclear missiles were temporarily disabled by these beaming beings, according to CNN.
Yet, their conclusion is that whatever it is that exists beyond us wants us to stop our international bickering and get back to simple domestic spats about global warming.
I paraphrase, naturally.
But please listen to the warmly peacenik feelings offered by Hastings at the news conference: "Regarding the missile shutdown incidents, my opinion...is that whoever are aboard these craft are sending a signal to both Washington and Moscow, among others, that we are playing with fire--that the possession and threatened use of nuclear weapons potentially threatens the human race and the integrity of the planetary environment."
The question is, why would extra-terrestrial beings care about how we are choosing to destroy ourselves?
Hybrid solar system for heat and electricity funded
PVT Solar is entering the solar-panel market with a twist: its system generates electricity as well as heat.
The San Francisco area-based start-up today said that it has raised a series B round of $13.7 million from Sigma Partners and named a former SunPower executive, Vikas Desai, as CEO. The money will be used to expand the company's operations, including sales and distribution.
Price competition in the global business for solar photovoltaic modules is brutal, with prices for panels falling steadily. PVT Solar is seeking to differentiate itself with multipurpose modules that produce electricity and harvest the heat generated by panels.
The company says that its combination system, called Echo, generates twice as much usable energy as a PV panel and offers a quicker payback. It does not disclose the price except to say it's more expensive than PV-only panels.
Under each row of panels on a roof is a vent which pulls in air from under standard PV panels. The hot air is transferred to a heat exchanger which filters the air and heats water pumped in from a storage tank. That pre-heated water is fed into an existing hot water heater to lower the amount of energy needed to run.
In addition, the system can distribute hot air to heaters in the home. At night, the cool air from outside can be pumped in as well. The system has electronic controls to manage the flow of heat and monitor the energy production, according to PVT Solar.
The idea of hybrid hot water-PV systems has been around for years and there are a number of other companies now making them, including Sundrum Solar and 7Solar Technologies.
Wicking away the heat generated by solar PV panels can actually bump up the output of silicon panels which don't perform as well in high heat. But even though these systems are more efficient, they cost more upfront and involve more complicated installation which would typically involve more than one contractor.
PVT Solar was originally funded by Khosla Ventures, which participated in this round along with Energy & Environment Investment from Japan.
The San Francisco area-based start-up today said that it has raised a series B round of $13.7 million from Sigma Partners and named a former SunPower executive, Vikas Desai, as CEO. The money will be used to expand the company's operations, including sales and distribution.
Price competition in the global business for solar photovoltaic modules is brutal, with prices for panels falling steadily. PVT Solar is seeking to differentiate itself with multipurpose modules that produce electricity and harvest the heat generated by panels.
The company says that its combination system, called Echo, generates twice as much usable energy as a PV panel and offers a quicker payback. It does not disclose the price except to say it's more expensive than PV-only panels.
Under each row of panels on a roof is a vent which pulls in air from under standard PV panels. The hot air is transferred to a heat exchanger which filters the air and heats water pumped in from a storage tank. That pre-heated water is fed into an existing hot water heater to lower the amount of energy needed to run.
In addition, the system can distribute hot air to heaters in the home. At night, the cool air from outside can be pumped in as well. The system has electronic controls to manage the flow of heat and monitor the energy production, according to PVT Solar.
The idea of hybrid hot water-PV systems has been around for years and there are a number of other companies now making them, including Sundrum Solar and 7Solar Technologies.
Wicking away the heat generated by solar PV panels can actually bump up the output of silicon panels which don't perform as well in high heat. But even though these systems are more efficient, they cost more upfront and involve more complicated installation which would typically involve more than one contractor.
PVT Solar was originally funded by Khosla Ventures, which participated in this round along with Energy & Environment Investment from Japan.
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Is the future PC a smart phone says experts
Will small, powerful, connected-to-everything devices running on non-Intel silicon become the personal computer? The CEO of graphics-chip supplier Nvidia thinks so.
Nvidia CEO Huang speaking at an Nvidia conference this week.
Nvidia CEO Huang speaking at an Nvidia conference this week.
(Credit: Nvidia)
The sentiment, voiced at the company's annual conference this week by chief executive Jen-Hsun Huang, has been expressed before. And like any strong strategy statement from a Silicon Valley CEO, it's self-serving. Nvidia is staking a good chunk of its future--as much as half of its business--on chips based on the ARM design.
But that doesn't mean Huang has got it all wrong, either. Indeed, ARM-based devices such as Apple's iPhone and iPad, Motorola's Droid, RIM's Blackberry, and countless future smartphones and tablets from Motorola, RIM, Apple, and others will use the ARM chip design. "ARM is the fastest-growing CPU (processor) in the world today. It's the instruction set architecture of choice of mobile computing," Huang said. "It is very clear now that mobile computing will be a completely disruptive force to all of computing."
Huang continued. "This (smartphone) is the first computer that is equipped with all kinds of sensors, cameras, microphones, GPSs, and accelerometers. This is the first computer that's context aware. Situation aware. Who knows, someday it may be self-aware," he said.
Huang raises interesting questions about the future. Will a future PC be a powerful, multi-CPU handheld device that wirelessly connects to large displays and a host of other devices--so the PC is carried around in your pocket or small satchel and then connects on the fly to larger devices and/or peripherals?
But the ARM-based vision also presumes that the largest chipmaker in the world, Intel, is standing still. Which it isn't. When asked at last week's Intel Developer Forum conference if Intel was de-emphasizing smartphones, Chief Executive Paul Otellini responded quickly. "Absolutely not. It's still a major focus of our investment. We're moving toward the launch window of a couple of major phones in 2011. And you've got to lock down before that and go through the interoperability testing with networks. And that's where we are. So, there's nothing really to say until those devices launch on the networks next year."
Nvidia's Tegra chip is aimed at small yet powerful devices.
Nvidia's Tegra chip is targeted at small yet powerful devices.
(Credit: Nvidia)
And Intel recently announced that it was acquiring Infineon's wireless unit, which currently supplies key 3G silicon for the iPhone and other smartphones. The company is also putting considerable resources into the MeeGo operating system, which is well suited for small devices. Broadly speaking, Intel's smartphone strategy is to match the next generation of Atom chips with Infineon baseband silicon and 4G technology to eventually offer a full smartphone chip solution. (And Intel isn't doing a bad job with its current Atom design either, which powers over 70 million tiny Netbooks, with many 3G-capable models sold through Verizon and AT&T.)
That said, Texas Instruments, Qualcomm, Samsung, Apple, Nvidia, and other ARM players will build the brains for many of these devices. But Intel and Advanced Micro Devices will too. And, to be sure, Nvidia's future in this market, considering all of the entrenched ARM competition, is probably less certain than Intel's.
Nvidia CEO Huang speaking at an Nvidia conference this week.
Nvidia CEO Huang speaking at an Nvidia conference this week.
(Credit: Nvidia)
The sentiment, voiced at the company's annual conference this week by chief executive Jen-Hsun Huang, has been expressed before. And like any strong strategy statement from a Silicon Valley CEO, it's self-serving. Nvidia is staking a good chunk of its future--as much as half of its business--on chips based on the ARM design.
But that doesn't mean Huang has got it all wrong, either. Indeed, ARM-based devices such as Apple's iPhone and iPad, Motorola's Droid, RIM's Blackberry, and countless future smartphones and tablets from Motorola, RIM, Apple, and others will use the ARM chip design. "ARM is the fastest-growing CPU (processor) in the world today. It's the instruction set architecture of choice of mobile computing," Huang said. "It is very clear now that mobile computing will be a completely disruptive force to all of computing."
Huang continued. "This (smartphone) is the first computer that is equipped with all kinds of sensors, cameras, microphones, GPSs, and accelerometers. This is the first computer that's context aware. Situation aware. Who knows, someday it may be self-aware," he said.
Huang raises interesting questions about the future. Will a future PC be a powerful, multi-CPU handheld device that wirelessly connects to large displays and a host of other devices--so the PC is carried around in your pocket or small satchel and then connects on the fly to larger devices and/or peripherals?
But the ARM-based vision also presumes that the largest chipmaker in the world, Intel, is standing still. Which it isn't. When asked at last week's Intel Developer Forum conference if Intel was de-emphasizing smartphones, Chief Executive Paul Otellini responded quickly. "Absolutely not. It's still a major focus of our investment. We're moving toward the launch window of a couple of major phones in 2011. And you've got to lock down before that and go through the interoperability testing with networks. And that's where we are. So, there's nothing really to say until those devices launch on the networks next year."
Nvidia's Tegra chip is aimed at small yet powerful devices.
Nvidia's Tegra chip is targeted at small yet powerful devices.
(Credit: Nvidia)
And Intel recently announced that it was acquiring Infineon's wireless unit, which currently supplies key 3G silicon for the iPhone and other smartphones. The company is also putting considerable resources into the MeeGo operating system, which is well suited for small devices. Broadly speaking, Intel's smartphone strategy is to match the next generation of Atom chips with Infineon baseband silicon and 4G technology to eventually offer a full smartphone chip solution. (And Intel isn't doing a bad job with its current Atom design either, which powers over 70 million tiny Netbooks, with many 3G-capable models sold through Verizon and AT&T.)
That said, Texas Instruments, Qualcomm, Samsung, Apple, Nvidia, and other ARM players will build the brains for many of these devices. But Intel and Advanced Micro Devices will too. And, to be sure, Nvidia's future in this market, considering all of the entrenched ARM competition, is probably less certain than Intel's.
Friday, September 24, 2010
Hairwashing Robot released
Lie back and let those mechatronic fingers give your scalp some love.
Bad hair day? Now you can blame your robot. Panasonic has developed a hair-washing bot that lets you lie down while your locks are gently shampooed.
Designed for Japan's growing elderly and bedridden population, the device consists of a reclining chair and a computerized washbasin.
The machine incorporates robot hand technology, with 16 mechatronic magic fingers that rinse and wash hair. It also remembers each user's individual data, such as head shape and massage preferences.
According to a Panasonic release, a moving arm in the machine first scans your head in 3D to determine its shape and the optimal amount of force to use while shampooing (one hopes this is foolproof technology).
Next, the robot's 16 fingers gently massage your scalp while a three-motor arm moves back and forth and force sensors ensure a delicate touch.
Bedbot (Credit: Panasonic)
Panasonic is also demonstrating a simplified version of its wheelchair bed, which facilitates mobility for bedridden people. The Electric Care Bed is more practical, consisting merely of a bed that partly converts into a wheelchair, and lacking the robotic canopy of the model announced last year.
The number of parts and motors has been reduced, and the chair does not have joystick control like its precursor, though it does have power-assist functions to reduce the burden on caregivers.
The shampoo bot and wheelchair bed are being shown off at the International Home Care and Rehabilitation Exhibition from September 29 to October 1 in Tokyo. Panasonic hasn't announced prices or release dates yet. These devices would join others that automate nursing care, such as Sanyo's Hirb human washing machine, and robot nurses like Riba.
It isn't fair that older folks are getting more robot toys than the rest of us.
Bad hair day? Now you can blame your robot. Panasonic has developed a hair-washing bot that lets you lie down while your locks are gently shampooed.
Designed for Japan's growing elderly and bedridden population, the device consists of a reclining chair and a computerized washbasin.
The machine incorporates robot hand technology, with 16 mechatronic magic fingers that rinse and wash hair. It also remembers each user's individual data, such as head shape and massage preferences.
According to a Panasonic release, a moving arm in the machine first scans your head in 3D to determine its shape and the optimal amount of force to use while shampooing (one hopes this is foolproof technology).
Next, the robot's 16 fingers gently massage your scalp while a three-motor arm moves back and forth and force sensors ensure a delicate touch.
Bedbot (Credit: Panasonic)
Panasonic is also demonstrating a simplified version of its wheelchair bed, which facilitates mobility for bedridden people. The Electric Care Bed is more practical, consisting merely of a bed that partly converts into a wheelchair, and lacking the robotic canopy of the model announced last year.
The number of parts and motors has been reduced, and the chair does not have joystick control like its precursor, though it does have power-assist functions to reduce the burden on caregivers.
The shampoo bot and wheelchair bed are being shown off at the International Home Care and Rehabilitation Exhibition from September 29 to October 1 in Tokyo. Panasonic hasn't announced prices or release dates yet. These devices would join others that automate nursing care, such as Sanyo's Hirb human washing machine, and robot nurses like Riba.
It isn't fair that older folks are getting more robot toys than the rest of us.
Googles weird new add
I think I have spotted a trend. Google is trying to be funny.
Please, put down that meat cleaver and hear me out. Only the other day, CEO Eric Schmidt appeared on "The Colbert Report." He explained that he is making jokes, although he conceded he needs a little more practice.
So who could not think that this new extraordinary, strange, annoying, demented, surreal work of art that Google has just emitted on behalf of its Mobile service is not another attempt at humor?
You must decide if it is a successful attempt. However, I find myself admiring the bravery inherent in getting an actor the repeat the word "pizza" so many times that your acid reflux will surely become an acid tsunami.
Please, put down that meat cleaver and hear me out. Only the other day, CEO Eric Schmidt appeared on "The Colbert Report." He explained that he is making jokes, although he conceded he needs a little more practice.
So who could not think that this new extraordinary, strange, annoying, demented, surreal work of art that Google has just emitted on behalf of its Mobile service is not another attempt at humor?
You must decide if it is a successful attempt. However, I find myself admiring the bravery inherent in getting an actor the repeat the word "pizza" so many times that your acid reflux will surely become an acid tsunami.
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