Leap Motion

Multi-touch desktop is a (miserably) failed product due to the fact that hands could get very tired with prolonged use, but Leap Motion wants to challenge this dark area again with a more advanced idea. It lets you control the desktop with fingers, but without touching the screen.It’s not your typical motion sensor, as Leap Motion allows you to scroll the web page, zoom in the map and photos, sign documentss and even play a first person shooter game with only hand and finger movements. The smooth reaction is the most crucial key point here. More importantly, you can own this future with just $70, a price of a premium PS3 game title!

If this device could completely work with Oculus Rift to simulate a real-time gaming experience, gaming is going to get a major make-over.

How Water Could Help Make Better Batteries

Water could be the key to producing a cheaper, more environmentally friendly and less dangerous way of making the lithium-ion batteries that power so many everyday gadgets, researchers say.

Currently, rechargeable lithium-ion batteries are typically found in mobile devices such as cellphones, laptops and tablet computers, and they are increasingly being used to power hybrid and electric vehicles. As their uses grow, scientists would like to manufacture the batteries in a manner that's both less expensive and more environmentally friendly.

"The application of lithium-ion batteries in electric vehicles is hindered by their high cost," researcher Jianlin Li, a materials scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, told TechNewsDaily. "For example, the cost of the lithium-ion batteries in the Nissan Leaf and Chevy Colt is about $500 per kilowatt-hour, which is almost five times of the target cost — $110 per kilowatt-hour — of an electric vehicle lithium-ion battery set by the president's EV Everywhere Grand Challenge.

FIRE FIGHTING ROBOTS Paints 3D images for Rescuers

Recent headlines regarding autonomous robots suggest that smart machines have a license to kill. But a new project from engineers at the University of California, San Diego suggests a different reality.

The UC engineers have built a pack of tiny autonomous robots that could help save the lives of both fire victims and firefighters.

These lifesaving robots, which look a lot like small Segways, were designed for mobility, agility and reconnaissance. As the first to enter burning buildings, they can serve as scouts for firefighters arriving at the scene of an emergency.

The robots are equipped with infrared and red-green-blue (RGB) cameras, which they use to record temperatures, detect volatile gases and check for structural integrity - all while also searching for victims.

Using on-board software systems, the bots turn the information they gather into 3D maps, which can be viewed by firefighters in real time.

The robots' Segway-like structure, which includes an actuated center leg, even lets them climb stairs and overcome large obstacles. When working collaboratively, the bots can provide firefighters with a highly detailed map of an entire structure.

"These robot scouts will be small, inexpensive, agile and autonomous," said Thomas Bewley, professor of mechanical engineering at the Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San Diego.

Firefighters arriving at the scene of a fire have a thousand things to do. To be useful, the robotic scouts need to work like well-trained hunting dogs, dispatching quickly and working together to achieve complex goals while making all necessary low-level decisions themselves along the way to get the job done."

And this pack of robots isn't the only machine helping first responders. A research team at the University of Sheffield in the U.K. recently developed a "tactile helmet" that lets firefighters sense what's going on around them, even in total darkness.

OCULUS RIFT

Get in the game. That’s not just an order barked from the sidelines any more. The folks behind Oculus Rift are hoping it’s the future of video gaming.

Rift is a head-mounted, virtual-reality device designed specifically with gaming in mind. The idea behind the goggles-and-headphones style contraption is to immerse players in a 3D world that’s as close as possible to the real one.

So, yes, Rift could be a real-world step toward the “Star Trek” Holodeck – a chamber which could simulate any environment -- so many of us have dreamed about for decades.

Rift was designed by Palmer Luckey, a 20-year-old engineer at the University of Southern California’s Institute for Creative Technologies.

Luckey started out as a teenager looking for cool virtual-reality tech he could use to play games. When he didn’t find it, he started trying to make it himself, scouring the Web and buying up outdated VR technology, sometimes for only a fraction of what the pieces originally cost.

When he felt he’d learned enough, he launched a Kickstarter project, hoping to raise enough money to make maybe a few hundred headsets for diehard enthusiasts.

The campaign set out to raise $250,000. It hit that goal in four hours and, by September, it had raised nearly $2.5 million.

Of course, it didn’t hurt that one of its early advocates was gaming legend John Carmack, the lead programmer of groundbreaking games like “Doom,” “Quake,” “Rage” and “Wolfenstein 3D.” Carmack, who demoed an early version of “Doom 3” at the 2012 Electronic Entertainment Expo, is now chief technology officer for Oculus.

Developer versions of the headsets have been rolling out to Kickstarter backers and others, for $300, since this spring. A consumer version, which will be compatible with PCs and Android devices, is expected sometime next year.

There are other virtual-reality headsets out there. But the people behind Oculus Rift promise their wide field of view, high-resolution display and other features will let people step inside their favorite game like never before.

Google Glass

For some, the wearable computer is the next step up from the smartphone. It’s a real-time GPS, a videocamera, an Internet browser – and it does it all while perched on the bridge of your nose like eyeglasses. Just say “OK, Glass” or gesture with your hands, and Google Glass responds instantly, showing the results in a small display that floats just above your right eye.

It’s been a source of amusement for people like author Gary Shteyngart, one of the first people in New York to try Glass, who wrote a humorous essayabout reactions as he wore it around the city. It’s also been a source of concern: Authorities consider it a driving distraction and even people who are impressed by the technology wonder if it’s just Big Brother in colorful frames.

So far, Google has offered Glass only through its Explorer program, which requires a compelling reason and $1,500 for a tester model. But a mass-produced version is expected to hit the market in 2014.

Its capabilities are immense: integration with medical technology, on-the-spot journalism, “augmented reality,” hands-free photography, even exchanging virtual lives. (But no sex, please – at least not unless you want to get Google mad.)

Google hasn’t given a specific date Glass will go on sale. In fact, it hasn’t acknowledged if Glass will sell widely at all. But there’s a boat floating in San Francisco Bay that may offer some clues to the future. According to speculation, it’s soon to be a Glass showroom.

Want to see Glass? Your ship may come in very soon.

ATLAS HUMANOID ROBOT

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency 's Virtual Robotics Challenge (VRC) is over and the agency has announced the winning teams that are receiving not just a cash prize, but a real, life-size, humanoid robot to compete in the challenge's next round.

DARPA announced the winners today (June 27). They are:

• Team IHMC, Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, Pensacola, Fla. (52 points)
• WPI Robotics Engineering C Squad (WRECS), Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, Mass. (39 points)
• MIT, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass. (34 points)
• Team TRACLabs, TRACLabs Inc., Webster, Texas (30 points)
• JPL / UCSB / Caltech, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. (29 points)
• TORC, TORC / TU Darmstadt / Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Va. (27 points)
• Team K, Japan (25 points)
• TROOPER, Lockheed Martin, Cherry Hill, N.J. (24 points)
• Case Western University, Cleveland, Ohio (23 points)

The purpose of the VRC is to advance the frontier of robots so that they can replace humans in disaster situations, or as DARPA program manager Gill Pratt said at a news conference before the contest, "To make our society — and that means society around the world — more resilient to both natural and manmade disasters.

Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to LiveScience's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

Google recently acquired eight high profile start-up robotics companies, providing strong evidence of a strategy to create breakthrough applications for robotics over the next decade. This strategy is most likely to concentrate on manufacturing and logistics.

Bringing these companies together, Google will need to find synergies between diverse organisations and personalities. This mission will be headed by Andy Rubin, who previously managed the successful Android operating system for mobile devices.