Roombas do Pac-Man

clipped from www.engadget.com Autonomous Roombas do Pac-Man right (video) clipped from pacman.elstonj.com home hardware photos software videos clipped from store.irobot.com iRobot Create® Programmable Robot The mobile robot platform for educators and developers. clipped from pacman.elstonj.com This is a video of Roomba Pac-Man in action. A few clarifications: The red tape on the floor is simply so the user can visualize the map in the real world. The robots are unaware of the tape, and are rather constrained by a virtual boundary embedded in their programming. The "dots" on the floor are pieces of paper the the Pac-Man Roomba must vacuum up to complete the map. The ghosts actually autonomously search for Pac-Man, and when they get close enough to "sense" Pac-Man, chase him according to a set of probabalistic rules. The human controller cannot force the Pac-Man to cross any boundaries, it will only allow inputs in valid directions. This video demonstrates the capability of the onboard controllers to follow a operator specified waypoint plan. clipped from pacman.elstonj.com Hardware

Airbag Defense

clipped from www.youtube.com SCI Air Bag Armor Developed by Survival Consultants International, this new armor system uses lightweight airbags that depoy when the flash of a roadside bomb blast reaches the vehicle. The system absrobs the cuncussion and some shrapnel. clipped from www.popsci.com Armored Airbags to Protect Vehicles from RPGs and Roadside Bombs Airbags could prevent RPGs from exploding and neutralize the blast of improvised explosives clipped from defensetech.org Airbag Defense The key to Dave’s airbag pro­tec­tion that dif­fers from Textron’s is that it detects the IED blast light, which arrives at the vehi­cle well before the blast does and gives the sys­tem time to deploy the airbags before the blast reaches the vehi­cle. I know that Israeli and some US so-​​called “active pro­tec­tion” sys­tems use radar to detect the object com­ing towards it, but with Dave’s sys­tem, the detec­tion is pro­jec­tile agnos­tic since it detects the light of det­o­na­tion (or launch?) and deploys at the speed of light (with fiber optics).

Babies cry in their mother tongue

clipped from www.timesonline.co.uk Study shows unborn babies cry in their mother tongue Now research carried out in Germany suggests that babies develop a capacity for language much earlier than was previously thought. “Our study shows the importance of crying for seeding language development,” said Professor Kathleen Wermke, who led the research at the University of Würzburg. clipped from www.livescience.com Prenatal exposure Prenatal exposure to language was known to influence newborns. For instance, past research showed they preferred their mother's voice over those of others. Imitating Mom The way babies imitate melody patterns relies just on a command over their voiceboxes they had before birth, instead of the more advanced control of their vocal tracts they need for vowel sounds. As such, they can begin mimicking their mothers "at that early age," said researcher Kathleen Wermke, a medical anthropologist at the University of Würzburg in Germany. clipped from scienceblogs.com clipped from www.cell.com Newborns' Cry Melody Is Shaped by Their Native Language