(Source: Crave Asia via Ubergizmo)
But enough of the tech speak,ugg store, check out the following video to see the “touchable holography” system (PDF) in action. This sure makes Microsoft’s Project Natal and the Wii Motion Plus look like child’s play!
Remember those uber-cool 3D projections in flicks like “Star Wars?” The University of Tokyo has turned this movie fantasy into a reality with its latest holographic projector prototype.
(Credit:University of Tokyo)
'Touchable holography' stars Wiimote
The ultrasound is radiated from above and the user feels as if one of the pictured rain drops hits his palm. The technology could prove useful for video games,ugg boots, 3D CADs,cheap ugg boots, and the like.
For added realism, it utilizes a pair of Nintendo Wiimotes for hand movement tracking and a technology known as (ready for it…) Airborne Ultrasound Tactile Display. This essentially adds tactile feedback to the hovering image via ultrasonic waves (the projected images float about 12 inches away from the display surface).
Evoking the romance of space travel, 1940s style
The Raygun Gothic Rocketship is a 1940s-era rococo rocket that Burning Man attendees will have a chance to climb through. They may even get to see it launch.
Making the rocket
(Credit:Raygun Gothic Rocketship)
The project, which is led by artists Sean Orlando, David Shulman, and Nathaniel Taylor, is one of 25 that received funding from the Burning Man organization. It is almost certainly the only one that will take visitors back in time to a place where space travel wasn’t beset by some of the real-life failures and inefficiencies of NASA and other space agencies, and the disappointments that can come from mixing politics with science.
In reality, of course, the rocket wasn’t made in the 1940s; It’s being made as we speak in a warehouse in a run-down part of Oakland, just across the bay from San Francisco. But don’t bother telling the more than 60 artists, scientists, engineers, and others who are putting countless hours of their time and energy into creating the rocket ship that their narrative is fiction: they’re having too much fun crafting that narrative as they go to listen to any naysayers.
I asked Orlando and Shulman how the idea for the Raygun Gothic Rocket ship began, and Orlando said that, from the beginning, they wanted to work on a retro rocket based on a romantic 1940s aesthetic.
At the top of the rocket is the cockpit, where a lovely pilot’s chair will be installed. The chair will be made to rotate around, and allow the pilot to engage with the ship’s flight controls. The pilot will have access to communications so that he (or she) can talk to those in the compartments below. For that,mbt sport sneaker, the team is utilizing 1930s and 1940s-era hand-cranked telephones.
How the idea began
A big part of that, said Orlando, whose father was a NASA contractor, was building up a sense of the excitement and innocence around space travel that still existed in the 1930s and 1940s, when science fiction was “still very positive and wide-eyed” and people saw nearly unlimited potential for space.
Asked where it was built, Orlando and Shulman laughed and admitted they needed a little more work on their back story.
It will feature 42 aluminum panels, as well as the three legs, and it will all be held together by thousands of rivets. All in all, complete with its rococo shape, the rocket will very much like look like what it’s supposed to be: a spacecraft built 55 years ago that has traveled through time and found its way to 2009.
Similarly, there will also be a probe launcher, which will fire off small rockets. Sticking with the narrative, the rockets are intended to travel one-to-two parsecs. Practically, they may fly three or four hundred feet, where they can be picked up by passersby, who, hopefully, will return them to the main rocket ship in exchange for small gifts.
Rather, the Raygun Gothic Rocketship is pure whimsy, mixed,cheap ugg boots, of course, with some serious research into what a rocket of this era and style would be like.
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Daniel Terdiman is a staff writer at CNET News covering games, Net culture, and everything in between. E-mail Daniel. |
Added Shulman, the idea was to bring out that sense of wonder that perhaps went away a bit when the Cold War kicked in and politicians took the space program into another direction.
Participants will be invited to climb through each of the three compartments and to explore the many displays they’ll come across. The idea is to give visitors a sense of what such a rocket would be like inside. The second compartment will feature crew quarters, navigational and observational tools, and audio and video communications and scientific instruments. All of these things will be available for participants to play with.
For the most part, the rocket and many of its components were designed using a CAD program called SolidWorks, Orlando explained when I visited the warehouse Friday.
The rocket features a telescope that crew members used to peer into space for docking.
Featuring a solid steel frame, the rocket will be skinned entirely in brushed aluminum. And befitting a Burning Man ethos of “do-it-yourself,” every bit of that aluminum is being made in the warehouse in Oakland on a set of what are known as English wheels, contraptions that can shape the metal into pieces with the rounded edges necessary for making a rocket.
OAKLAND, Calif.–Want a trip back to the romanticism and innocence with which space travel was associated in the 1940s? Then get yourself to Burning Man, starting August 31 in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert.
Just above the legs will be a main compartment serving as the engine room, armory, and life and biosciences lab. Participants will be able to look down through the floor at the rocket’s engine (see video below), which will feature six power cells, each of which will display a high-voltage lighting effect. That effect, courtesy of 12,000 volts of electricity, was crafted in conjunction with a professor from the department of engineering at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand.
In the real world, though, it will be a 40-foot-tall retro masterpiece, complete with 17-foot-tall legs and three main compartments rising another 23 feet in the air. Once installed in the desert, it will be attached to an adjacent 25-foot-tall gantry by a 10-foot bridge. Visitors will be able to climb up through the three compartments and then go down via the gantry.
(Credit:Raygun Gothic Rocketship)
And for participants who visit the rocket, Shulman said, the hope is that they will walk away with the feeling that they got to take part in a “real rocket from the 1940s.”
That’s where the Raygun Gothic Rocketship, a retro rocket “made” in 1944, will be on display for the thousands of participants at the annual countercultural arts festival to play in and around.
The plan, Orlando said, is to have a launch event on the evening of Friday, September 4. Prior to the event, a very, very loud siren will be set off to announce to the thousands of Burning Man participants that fueling is about to start, and then those participants will begin to gather outside a 500-foot safety perimeter. Come launch time, be prepared for some special surprises, Orlando suggested.
There will also be a telescope that participants will be able to look through for “deep scanning” of space. The idea there, said Shulman, is that crew members would need to look out into space to determine approach trajectories for when the rocket docks when it lands.
View the full gallery
“We want it to be disorienting,North Face Shoes Sale,” Shulman said, “and create doubt: is it real, or is it not.”
The Swiss world number one misfired for the first set and a half, then went on a winning run of 13 games before holding off a late comeback to win 2-6, 6-3, 6-0, 7-5 in two hours 36 minutes.
The win also ensured that Federer would stay the number one player in the world when the new rankings are released on Monday.
“I’m happy the way I was able to go on an incredible run and get the cushion with the extra break at the beginning of the fourth.
“Now the record is safe again and I’ve been able to add one more. It’s amazing. Definitely one of the most incredible things I have in my resume.”
Federer also ended the Russian’s 13-match unbeaten streak stretching back from the ATP World Tour Finals in London last November.
“Again, again, again,cheap ugg boots, it’s like the same thing that happened in the last Grand Slam. I had chances but I didn’t take them and I lost,” said the frustrated Davydenko.
He is yet to progress past the semi-final stage in Grand Slams.
“I was just a bit worried I was not going to make it this time in the semis. You always believe the streak is going to be broken.
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Federer was woefully off-form in the first 13 games, clocking up 27 errors, before he got his first break point on Davydenko’s serve in the sixth game of the second set. He broke the Russian with a scorching forehand deep to the corner as he went on a demoralising run of 13 games to seize control of the match. “I was in a tough situation at 6-2, 3-1 down and 15-40 on my serve, but that’s the beauty of best-of-five sets,” Federer said. “It was bad luck for me again in the fourth set.” The victory continued his amazing Grand Slam sequence of having never missed making the semi-finals since his third round defeat to Brazilian Gustavo Kuerten at Roland Garros in 2004. The Russian steadied and both exchanged service breaks before Federer missed his first match point in attempting to serve out for the match. No other player in history has appeared in more than 10 consecutive semi-finals. |
It was a tough ending for Davydenko, who was making his 10th Grand Slam quarter-final appearance and fourth in six years at the Australian Open.
“I wasn’t panicking, I just relaxed and thought if the sun goes and his level drops just a little bit, the whole thing might change for the better and it did. I couldn’t believe the way it changed.
But Federer had the final word, breaking Davydenko in the 11th game before serving out to love for the match.
“It’s incredible looking back on how many years it is now that I’m able to deliver at Grand Slam play, especially this year,” he said.
The 15-time Grand Slam champion, bidding for his fourth Australian title, will now play either Serbian third seed Novak Djokovic or French 10th seed Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in Friday’s semi-final.
Federer had been beaten by sixth seeded Davydenko in their two previous matches and yet again the Russian gave him problems before the Swiss sealed it on his second match point.
Federer downs Davydenko for 23rd straight Slam semi
Record-breaker Roger Federer made it to his 23rd consecutive Grand Slam semi-final after ending Russian Nikolay Davydenko’s hot streak at the Australian Open on Wednesday.
“I mean winning that many games in a row against a player that’s been on fire like this, it’s a great sign.”
If he had lost against Davydenko and Djokovic had gone on to win the final here,womens timberland boots, the Serb would have taken the top ranking.
Norway-based Think is at the forefront of a wave of electric sedans that are expected to come to market in the next few years. Although the range is limited in on these electric cars, automakers expect it’s sufficient for consumers’ daily commuting needs.
Think, originally formed when Ford sold it to outside investors, hit financial problems in December and had to stop production. It has spent the last months rebuilding and expects to have a court date in August that should allow it to emerge from bankruptcy protection, Andrews said.
(Credit:Think Global)
It also has developed a business to sell its power train to third parties. The Japan Postal Service, in a deal initiated by battery supplier EnerDel, has signed on to test the power train in thousands of its vans.
Nissan on Monday said the Leaf, an electric sedan with a 100-mile range and a set of online features . will be available for sale next year.
The company is also looking at a handful of states in the U.S. where it would produce the Think City, which has a top speed of 65 miles per hour,ghd hair products, for sale in the U.S. The Think City is a two-seater hatchback, but the company is also working on a four-seater big enough for two adults and two children, Andrews said.
Settling its debts and boosting its capital will allow Think to start producing its electric citycar by the end of year. If all goes as planned, the company hopes to start shipping the Think City, a highway-capable electric car with a 100-mile range, to European customers by the end the year, company spokesperson James Andrews said Tuesday. Already, 2,500 people have ordered cars.
The Think City: rearing to go.
“We’re the only one out with a fully integrated E.V. drive system,” Think’s CEO, Richard Canny, told The New York Times. “It’s an opportunity to get further volume and scale on the technology we already have. And it helps us get better pricing on components and further our development of E.V. drivetrain systems.”
Coda Automotive will introduce its China-manufactured sedan in California next fall. Other planned all-electric sedans include Mitsubishi’s iMiev and Detroit Electric namesake car.
Electric-car maker Think plots rebound |
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Think,The North Face Store, which plans to make a small all-electric car, expects to secure a fresh round of funding and emerge from bankruptcy next month,cheap ugg boots, according to a company representative. Martin LaMonica is a senior writer for CNET’s Green Tech blog. He started at CNET News in 2002, covering IT and Web development. Before that, he was executive editor at IT publication InfoWorld. E-mail Martin. |
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