stanford

Webcams and video-conferencing software like Skype have really enhanced the way we communicate with friends, family, and colleagues around the world. Even so, talking to a floating head on a computer screen can still feel pretty cold, and it doesn't look like we're going to get a teleportation device any time soon (le sigh). However, researchers at Stanford University are hoping to make that interaction a little more lifelike with a computer that can mimic human motions.

David Sirkin and Wendy Ju from Stanford's Center for Design Research created a motorized flat-screen display that copycats various human motions like shrugging, nodding, and laughing. The team did so by adding motors to the Apple iMac G4 and then linking it to software that reads a person's movements and instructs the G4's moveable arm to perform one of nine motions. … Read more

What does it feel like to chop down a tree? Or walk a narrow plank suspended above a deep pit? Stanford University's Virtual Human Interaction Lab can take you there.

Professor Jeremy Bailenson has created a thoroughly convincing virtual-reality environment at the Stanford lab. But what makes it feel so real? The lab uses technology to provide sensory feedback in a couple of different ways. There are devices called "butt-kickers" under the floor that make it shake, 22 speakers provide audio input, and, lastly, there's the head-mounted display that offers a stereoscopic view of the virtual … Read more

When it launched in 2010, NuCaptcha touted its proprietary technology as being able to "provide the highest level of security available" by using video streams to display those distorted letters you type in to prove you're really a human.

Now, however, the company's claims of providing "the next generation of Captcha security" look a tad optimistic.

A team of Stanford University researchers said today that they discovered a way to break the security of a recent version of NuCaptcha's video Captcha by borrowing concepts from the field of machine vision, which developed techniques … Read more

Stanford researches may have solved the problem of range anxiety by wireless charging technology that could one day create an electric highway.

Wireless recharging already is used by some electric vehicle charging stations to fill up batteries without cords or plugging into an outlet. MIT helped pioneer this technology and spun it off into a wireless charging startup, WiTricity. However, Stanford researchers improved on this concept and devised a way to transmit 10 kilowatts of electric power across a 6.5-foot distance with minimal energy loss. By overcoming transmitting electricity across a significant distance, researchers will make it possible to … Read more

Journalists and engineers could come together to shape the future of news thanks to a new joint Columbia-Stanford media innovation institute funded by Cosmopolitan Editor Helen Gurley Brown.

The David and Helen Gurley Brown Institute for Media Innovation will be an East Coast/West Coast collaboration. Housed at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in New York City and Stanford's Engineering School in Palo Alto, Calif., the institute is thought to be a first of its kind initiative aimed at helping the foster a new era of communication between the editorial and technical sides of news organizations.

The … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Romo, a playful robot that uses a smartphone as its brains, is on a roll.

The startup behind Romo, called Romotive, is just eight months old and investors have been eager to back it.

CEO and co-founder Keller Rinaudo told me that the company just closed its first major round of funding, taking an undisclosed amount from Zappos founder Tony Hsieh, the Stanford University endowment and several angel investors.

Romo uses the power of a smart phone's microprocessor. You dock one device--say, an iPod Touch--onto the base, turning it into the robot. Then, from a second device--say, your … Read more

PALO ALTO--A team of Stanford University researchers has bad news to report about Captchas, those often unreadable, always annoying distorted letters that you're required to type in at many a Web site to prove that you're really a human.

Many Captchas don't work well at all. More precisely, the researchers invented a standard way to decode those irksome letters and numbers found in Captchas on many major Web sites, including Visa's Authorize.net, Blizzard, eBay, and Wikipedia.

Their decoding technique borrows concepts from the field of machine vision, which has developed techniques to control robots by … Read more

New Facebook interaction added to eBay, Siri has some quirky answers, and BlackBerry service is restored, but will there be compensation for down time?

Links from Thursday's episode of Loaded:

Software developed during a summer course at Stanford University could one day radically shift the way the visually impaired use modern tablets, potentially removing the need for a wireless Braille display.

Adam Duran, a senior at New Mexico State University, has developed a stunning way for blind people to type on tablets. Duran created the touch-screen Braille writer software with Adrian Lew, a Stanford assistant professor of mechanical engineering, and Sohan Dharmaraja, a doctoral candidate.

It's all in the fingertips. The eight keys (similar to a standard Braille keyboard) in the software do not have a predefined position, but rather work with the location of the fingers. A user simply presses eight fingers anywhere on the screen, and voila, the keys are automatically oriented to that location.

If there's a problem, users simply lift their fingers and put them down again. As shown in the video below, typing is a breeze. Curiously missing is the mention of haptic feedback (vibration), or voice support, but for a first version this software is very encouraging. … Read more