Crave

At first glance, QB1 appears to be a simple screen mounted onto a black arm and box. But it comes to life through human interaction, for now in the form of a sort of personal DJ service.

(Credit: OZWE)

SAN FRANCISCO--When Swiss developers designed the QB1 robot, they weren't going for human-like looks or cute puppydog mannerisms.

Instead, they're hoping QB1 will hook people in on a more meaningful level--by providing a handy music-suggestion service--and thus giving the robot continuous exposure to data stemming from real human interaction.

Artificial intelligence "systems need to learn in the real world, from real people. You cannot program them with knowledge from the real world," said Frederic Kaplan, CEO and co-founder of QB1 developer OZWE.

The QB1 was showcased to the public last weekend at Swissnex, an annex of the Consulate General of Switzerland here that's dedicated to bridging knowledge in science, education, art, and innovation between Switzerland and North America.

QB1 is what Kaplan calls a "robotic object"; people interact with it through gestures. In its first application, QB1 is loaded with a kind of disc jockey feature because that invites people to spend time with it.

Kaplan got this idea out of his experience working for 10 years with Sony's world famous dog-like AI robot, Aibo.

"What was frustrating was that nobody was interacting with it long-term. There are so many objects in your house, so why interact with an object that is only for pleasure?" he said. And as Aibo needed time with humans to learn, this was a fundamental problem.

"The limit for AI is not computing power, it's getting experience," Kaplan said. So QB1 tries to steal your time doing something useful, playing your music. The AI system incorporated into QB1 has about five different strategies to intelligently predict what music you want to listen to at the moment.

Some of today's DVD and Blu-ray soundtracks are so densely mixed that dialogue can be hard to understand.

When actors' lines are obscured by onscreen mayhem, you may miss important plot details. The dialogue intelligibility problem is even worse for people who are hard of hearing.

Here's a simple fix to improve intelligibility that also works like a charm for quiet, late-night movie watching.

Onkyo's TX-SR805's remote offers direct access to center channel volume.

(Credit: Steve Guttenberg)

Turn up the center channel volume level. Please understand, that's not the same thing as cranking up your receiver's volume control. Raising the center channel volume relative to the left/right and surround channels makes dialogue louder than the music and sound effects, so it's easier to understand what the actors are saying.

The easiest way to make the adjustment is with your receiver or home theater-in-a-box system's remote control. Check and see if your remote has a button marked "Channel Select." My Onkyo TX-SR805 receiver's remote has such a control, marked "CH SEL". It toggles through left, right, center, etc., and once I got to the center I used the "Level -" and "Level +" buttons to adjust the center channel volume.

Experiment to figure out how much louder you want the center channel speaker to be, but start with turning it up by three decibels. That might be enough, but don't hesitate to turn it up higher if that's what you need.

Of course, you can also use the CH SEL feature to boost subwoofer volume to taste whenever you switch movies or CDs. Or adjust the surround channels volume.

Grilling can be a messy thing. We all know that. Just using charcoal and lighter fluid is sloppy enough, but when you consider the myriad of sauces, glazes, and marinades, it really becomes clear just how much of an ordeal it can be. Many opt for propane as a means to cook, thereby limiting at least some of the standard requisite mess.

(Credit: Hammacher Schlemmer)

Personally, for me, it is almost always worth it to suffer through a little mess for delicious grilled meats and vegetables. Messy or not, a good barbecue provides a unique way of cooking that's ingrained in all of our DNA.

However, no longer are charcoal or propane the only games in town. For those who want the easiest possible grilling experience (short of take out), there is the Intelligent Grill from Hammacher Schlemmer.

The grill is programmable and cooks food to your specifics. Just enter your cut of meat, thickness, and desired level of doneness via the keypad and LED screen. All of this means one very important factor: yes, it is an electric grill.

The grill uses two levels of heating elements to approximate the grilling experience. One produces direct heat, capable of searing grill marks, with the other designed to produce radiant heat. The 216-square-inch cooking surface, along with the stainless steel construction and storage shelves, certainly make it look like a grill, but something inside of me still yearns for flame-scorched food--no matter how messy it can be.

Either the Predator's hands get pretty chilly at night or this is an infrared pic of the thermals in the glove in action.

(Credit: Aevex)

If you're reading this while rubbing your hands together and blowing hot breath into them (remember, the wider your mouth when you blow, the warmer the heat), well you should probably turn on the radiator or put on some gloves. If you already have gloves on and are still rubbing your hands together, keep reading.

Aevex announced on Monday that its Intelligent Heat technology can now be found in winter gloves from Mountain Hardwear and Outdoor Research. Not to be confused with the Cooling Glove (not sure why you would be, but I just wanted to get that link in there), both the PrimoVolta ($259) and the Red Savina ($300) gloves are available in stores this week.

The way it works: without forcing you to carry around a battery pack, heating functions have been integrated into a single panel that is sewn into the apparel like an extra layer of fabric.

According to Aevex, these panels are light, ultrathin, and flexible, so supposedly they virtually disappear inside the gloves. The technology works with your body to automatically adjust to its needs, delivering more heat to your cold parts and less to your warm parts.

When a part of your body begins to get cold, so does a unique polymer layer inside the Aevex panel. This polymer automatically increases the heart at that cold spot. As this spot warms to a comfortable temperature, Aevex then turns the heat down, redirecting power to other cold spots. Supposedly this kind of temperature regulates usage, and maintains an even, comfortably toasty temperature.

The technology makes sense, but how well does it really work?

(Credit: Aevex)

When the batteries are spent (Aevex claims the gloves last through 800 recharges) and you're done with the gloves, Aevex will recycle them along with the lithium polymer batteries at no charge. Just send them back to Aevex and, according to the company, Aevex will take care of the rest. Check out the Aevex Web site for more info.

(Credit: Volkswagen)

One of the bugbears for greenhorns taking their driving test is the grind of parking. Fail this, and you can kiss your license goodbye. Until the next test, that is.

The bad news is you still have to pass your parking to score a license. The good news is, once you do, you may never have to worry about parking again. You can get your own chauffeur--or Volkswagen is bringing its Tiguan to Singapore roads, joining the rarified car marques here like Toyota Estima Aeras in offering an intelligent parking system.

Volkswagen's 2-liter SUV will launch in early September in the Republic with its nifty auto-parking feature. But like the Toyota, this is extended as an option. So if you desire this functionality, factor in an additional amount (price to be revealed later) to the car's $74,425 sticker (with COE, for 150bhp turbo engine; $88,600 for the 200bhp version).

There's another catch: this only parallel parks and it isn't quite fully automatic. Volkswagen only recently showcased its second-gen auto-parking system that will do vertical lots and doesn't even require a warm body in the car while parking.

Heart Robot peeks out of a box.

(Credit: Heart Robot )

Is "emotional robot" an oxymoron? Not necessarily, say the creators of the Heart Robot.

This robot/puppet, which is made of soft, flexible plastic, appears to breathe, blink, flinch, and clench its fists in response to human encounters. Experts in the diverse fields of robotics, animatronics, street theater, puppetry, and Web design converged to design the bot, which is meant to evoke emotion in those who meet it.

Swathed in white Egyptian cotton, it looks like a slightly forlorn cousin of ET. Its nervous system is made up of five small computers that work together to produce reactions. Motors move its eyelids and hands and make its little red, rubber heart beat--more slowly if you cuddle it, and faster if you shake it, yell at it, or otherwise stress the poor little guy out.

David McGoran

(Credit: UWE)

Sensors allow the bot to detect other objects. Two air pumps in its legs drive its breathing system, which, like the heart, responds to the robot's level of "worry" or "relaxation" by speeding up or slowing down accordingly.

The bot's creators want people to understand that robots don't have to be metallic, distant, or controlling, but can actually evoke real feelings. (Just consider the popularity and emotional punch of this summer's Pixar flick Wall-E, with its winsome title character and Wall-E's robo-love interest, Eva.) The team expects robots of the future to increasingly use the language of emotion to communicate and want to know how that will impact human behavior.

Heart "has large deep soulful eyes, delicate ears, hands, and feet and is warm to touch," said David McGoran, a project coordinator at the University of the West of England, which oversaw the construction of the robot. "We are hoping that people will feel an emotion in response to the robot and that this will inspire them to find out more about robotics." McGoran is also is the puppeteer who brings Heart Robot to life in public.

Heart Robot gets a lift.

(Credit: Heart Robot)

Heart Robot, which has been created in versions ranging from about 2 feet tall to about 3 feet tall, has made its way out of the lab, appearing at street festivals and science fairs around England over the last few months. Currently, it's starring in the interactive Emotibots event at London's Science Museum, which runs through Thursday. If you happen to be in the London area, you might want to stop by and give it some love.

(Credit: Intelligent Forms Design)

A fair amount of attention has been paid to the idea of solar-powered laptops as a perennial source of energy on the go, but there's no reason that the concept shouldn't be applied to desktops too as the greening of homes continues worldwide. Canada's Intelligent Forms Design addresses this need and--much to our liking--does so from the patio at the same time.

Its weatherproof "SOlo Lounge Table" (not a typo) not only charges the computer with built-in solar panels, according to Boing Boing, but it can also keep you updated on its status through Bluetooth signals sent indoors. The charging will continue even if the table is partly shaded, albeit in a diminished capacity, because other parts of the solar array will keep working.

None of this comes cheap, of course--$14,000, to be exact. But if you plan on expanding your solar ensemble, there's a natural matching lounge chair in the "Power Cube 600."

(Credit: Norm Thompson)

Technology may be making everyday objects smarter all the time, but one of the least likely examples has come in form of something that practically defines low tech: the camping lantern.

The "Intelligent Lantern" would come in handy for emergencies as well as outdoors recreation because it includes a digital clock, built-in speakers, and an AM/FM radio with local NOAA weatherband, as well as a hookup for an MP3 player. And unlike other combo devices we've seen, it doesn't abandon its primary mission: Its lights can be seen as far as a mile away and has "dual articulating lanterns" that can be positioned as needed. If it only had a color LCD, we'd be sold.

(Credit: DigitalGlobe)

A global leader in commercial satellite imagery and geospatial information has just doubled up.

DigitalGlobe has released photos captured by its WorldView-1 remote sensing satellite launched in September that have twice the resolution of previous images, allowing viewers to see things on the ground as small as 20 inches in diameter. The black and white shots captured with equipment developed by ITT's Space Systems Division are part of a program sponsored by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency to provide imagery for military, intelligence, foreign policy, homeland security, and civil use.

They include shots of Houston, Texas, Yokohama, Japan, and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. To date, the company's library contains more than 300 million square kilometers of satellite and aerial imagery. The unit is capable of collecting 290,000 square miles of images every day, according to the company, which promises to produce the "most advanced imagery ever seen."

(Credit: DigitalGlobe)

The new gear is four times more power-efficient, six times lighter, and costs a third as much as previous models, according to ITT. The system captures "panchromatic" imagery, multispectral imagery across a wide swath, the end product is a 11x11 kilometer snapshot.

If you hold out until 2008, the company promises to deliver "lifelike true color" with an ITT eight-band, multispectral system from aboard the WorldView-2. And speaking of the NGA, it offers a Baghdad reference map, plus tons of other cool stuff available to the public here.