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  • arturito 2:19 am on August 29, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

    MIT researchers unveil autonomous oil-absorbing robot 

    “MIT reveals a swarm of autonomous floating robots that can digest an oil spill. The 16-foot robots drag a nanowire mesh that acts like a conveyor belt to soak up surface oil ‘like paper towels soak up water,’ absorbing 20 times its weight and then harmlessly ‘digesting’ the oil by burning it off. Powered by 21.5 square feet of solar panels, the ‘Seaswarm’ robots run on the power of a lightbulb, and with just 100 watts ‘could potentially clean continuously for weeks’ without human intervention, MIT announced. The swarm uses GPS data and communicates wirelessly to move as a coordinated group to ‘corral, absorb and process’ oil spills, and MIT researchers estimate that a fleet of 5,000 could clean up a gulf-sized spill within one month.”

     

  • arturito 8:37 am on August 27, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

    Microsoft Surface and Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio for Multi-Robot Command and Control 

    “Dr. Mark Micire of UMass Lowell has built an intriguing new user interface on the Microsoft Surface, a multitouch-capable table computer. The interface is being used to control swarms of robots for disaster response, search, and rescue. One of the most interesting things about it is the intuitive tabletop joystick widget. Using a very fast hand-detection-and-identification algorithm, they can paint a touch joystick (dubbed the DREAM controller) directly underneath the hand. This joystick conforms to the size of the user’s hand and tracks with hand movements, making sure that the control is always directly under the hand where the user expects it, even without haptic feedback. I’ve had a chance to go hands-on with this system, and I think it’s truly remarkable.”

     

  • arturito 8:09 am on August 14, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

    Incorporating Swarm Intelligence Into Computer AI 

    From optimizing truck delivery routes to inspiring nerve-cell-based cognition models, ant intelligence has arrived. From the Economist: ‘In 1992 Dr. Dorigo and his group began developing Ant Colony Optimisation (ACO), an algorithm that looks for solutions to a problem by simulating a group of ants wandering over an area and laying down pheromones. ACO proved good at solving travelling-salesman-type problems. Since then it has grown into a whole family of algorithms, which have been applied to many practical questions. … Ant-like algorithms have also been applied to the problem of routing information through communication networks. Dr. Dorigo and Gianni Di Caro, another researcher at IDSIA, have developed AntNet, a routing protocol in which packets of information hop from node to node, leaving a trace that signals the “quality” of their trip as they do so. Other packets sniff the trails thus created and choose accordingly. In computer simulations and tests on small-scale networks, AntNet has been shown to outperform existing routing protocols.

     

  • arturito 6:31 pm on August 12, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

    Robonaut To Escort On Space Shuttle Mission 


    “The STS-133 crew will deliver robot Robonaut 2 (R2) to the International Space Station. Cocooned inside an aluminum frame and foam blocks cut out to its shape, R2 is heading to the station inside the Permanent Multipurpose Module in space shuttle Discovery’s payload bay. R2, with its humanlike hands and arms and stereo vision, is expected to perform some of the repetitive or more mundane functions inside the orbiting laboratory to free astronauts for more complicated tasks and experiments.”

     

  • arturito 2:50 pm on August 6, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

    Swinging Robot Excels At Wall-Climbing 

    “Engineers have used a variety of techniques to create robots that can scale walls — the Climber uses a rolling seal, while the insect-like robots from SRI have caterpillar tracks with electro-adhesive properties. While such robots generally focus on speed, adhering to the wall and deciding how and when to move, the creators of a small robot named ROCR say it is the first wall-climbing robot to focus on climbing efficiently. And it does so by using the momentum of a tail that swings like a grandfather clock’s pendulum.”

     

  • arturito 7:54 am on August 4, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

    Human Tests of Mind-Controlled Artificial Arm To Begin 

    “The world’s first human testing of a mind-controlled artificial limb is ready to begin. A joint project between the Pentagon and Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, the Modular Prosthetic Limb will be fully controlled by sensors implanted in the brain, and will even restore the sense of touch by sending electrical impulses from the limb back to the sensory cortex. Last week APL announced it had been awarded a $34.5M contract with DARPA, which will allow researchers to test the neural prosthetic in five individuals over the next two years.”

     

  • arturito 3:07 pm on July 13, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

    Fifa World Cup Final Netherlands vs Spain = Mortal Combat 

     

  • arturito 2:59 pm on July 13, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

    File Destroyer – clean up/free up disk space and deleting files or folders after a certain period of time 

    Utility to clean up/free up space in a folder and its subfolders.
    * Deleting files or folders after a certain period of time.
    * Deleting files with certain extension.
    * Supports files over 1GB
    * Supports UNC file paths


    https://sourceforge.net/projects/filedestroyer/

    Overview:

    This software frees up a disk space by removing files older than specified number of days. It supports UNC paths and large files. Further versions will support more options.

    Prerequisites:

    .NET framework 3.5
    FileDestroyer.exe

    Configuration:

    Software requires 3 parameters

    - scan <directory_path_to_scan>

    - ext <file_extension_to_search_for>

    - log <directory_path_where_to_save_logs>

    -days <number_of_days>

    Examples:

    FileDestroyer.exe -scan “D:\SQLBackup” -ext bak -log “D:\Logs\” –days 2

    This command removes all files with extension bak that are found in directory D:\SQLBackup that are older than 2 days

    To execute over the network use:

    \\svdapp62\Tools\FileDestroyer.exe -scan “\\svdapp62\SQLBackup” -ext bak -log  \\svdapp62\Logs -days 0

    Here option –days 0 removes all *.bak files.

    Logs:

    22/06/2010 02:56:43 INFO: Found 1 files with extension bak
    22/06/2010 02:56:43 INFO: Removing files older than 0 (22/06/2010).
    22/06/2010 02:56:43 INFO: File removed: \\svdapp62\SQLBackup\Default\bosap31_audit\asdasd.bak
    22/06/2010 02:56:43 INFO: Removed 1 files
    22/06/2010 02:57:23 INFO: Found 1 files with extension bak
    22/06/2010 02:57:23 INFO: Removing files older than 0 (22/06/2010).
    22/06/2010 02:57:23 INFO: File removed: \\svdapp62\SQLBackup\Default\bosap31_audit\New Text Document.bak
    22/06/2010 02:57:23 INFO: Removed 1 files

     

  • arturito 10:44 pm on July 6, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

    Back to the Future Marty McFly arrives 

    For those who may remember, today (well an hour ago) is the day that Marty McFly arrived in the future after hitting 88mph in a pimped out Delorean in 1985.

     

  • arturito 8:46 am on July 4, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

    Sony Vaio VGN NW11S Memory Stick Card Reader Writer Driver for Windows 7 

    Sometime ago I bought this  model of Sony Vaio which originally came with Windows Vista installed.  Since it is not my favorite OS I partitioned , formatted disk and installed Windows 7. I managed to get most of the drivers from sony vaio website http://support.vaio.sony.eu/computing/vaio/downloads/updates/index.aspx?l=en_GB&m=VGN-NW11S_S&os=10
    There was only one device which didn’t install – it was memory stick card reader and writer. (Device Manager marked “System Base Device”  with yellow exclamation mark) I found this driver which worked for me:
    http://esupport.sony.com/US/perl/swu-download.pl?mdl=VGNFW378JB&upd_id=4315&os_id=34
    The installation is in Spanish though the download is from US mirror (????) and it says it is for VGN-FW378J/B. But I can assure you the driver works fine on NW11S.  You can also google for the file RIDMSC-00165677-64.EXE

    Good Luck!


     

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