This Wearable Drone Could Be Your Next Smart Device

Drones – Own Application Platform/Interface Projected

The team at Frog Agency in New York have taken it upon themselves to work out on whether drones could be something we could interact with each single day as Adam Pruden from Frog had told the audience at The Conference in Malmo. Drones have already evolved directly from smartphones which are built on the same technologies, the same microprocessors as well as sensors.

At a hearing earlier in the year, the US Senate had also informed that drones were basically flying smartphones. Pruden had mentioned that what he had found interesting with regards to the comparison was the behavioural similarities instead of the technologies.

Earlier they were used for capturing political conflict in Hong Kong, the same way as smartphones, though drones were capable of capturing the magnitude of events the ways smartphone could not. Pruden states that `drones are taking self-obsession to an entirely new high with growing popularity of dronies.

Besides this, they also have their own application platform together with interfaces projected from a drone on any surface.

Wearable Drones – 15 Concept Designs

In order to set up drones and make it part of daily life in the same way as smartphones, the team realised that they would need to have two unique features.At first they would have to be capable of performing physical task and to move through physical space as well as interact with the physical atmosphere which smartphone are unable to do.

Secondly they would have to be wearable which would be used only when needed and hence they would have to be able to worn on the bodies. The team had come up with 15 concept designs in wearable drones, such as wearable dog collars, a wearable drone which could fix the makeup and hair and chose four to develop further.

The first that came up was the Flare, which was a flying tour guide as well as a navigator wherein the Flare tends to jump off an acrylic band attached to the hand and operates like a flying compass. On the other hand, the Breathe, settles on the shoulder passively measuring air quality till dangerous pollutions levels are identified. At this stage, it tends to leap up in front of the face, providing a filter for the individual to breathe through.

Drones – Integrate Into Society

A gold drone, the Parasol, hangsoff the belt or is worn as a means of jewellery and detects bad weather. It jumps up to protect the person either from UV rays or rain utilising its propellers. The Scout as much as a playmate as it is drone tends to fly above you to project a path on a rock wall to challenge the individual as they climb and doubles as fitness tracker whenever it is docked.

The designs seem to be quite cool and exciting. However there were other issues which the team found as part of the process. Pruden explains that the `key component that were not accounted for was that drones need to integrate into society’.

To integrate into society, drones would have to comprehend distance, how to interact with other drones and with the built world and with its owner’s body as well as the body of others, though also important with the soul.

Could Diesel Made From Air Help Tackle Climate Change?

Small Companies Capturing CO2 for e-Diesel

Making diesel would seem to sound like something from science fiction but small companies in Canada and Germany have come with an amazing way of capturing carbon dioxide in the making of diesel. German company, Sunfire has developed its first batch of the so called e-diesel in April.

Johanna Wanka, Federal Minister of Education and Research had put a few litres in her car by way of a celebration. The Canadian company, Carbon Engineering has built up a pilot plant to suck one to two tonnes of carbon dioxide from the air on daily basis, turning it into 500 litres of diesel.

The requirement of electricity is usedfor the process, though if the start-ups tend to use renewable electricity, it could produce diesel that is carbon neutral which means that burning it in the car would return to the atmosphere the carbon dioxide removed in the first place.

On the other hand, the fossil fuels are carbon positive meaning that the burning of it could add to the total amount of carbon dioxide in the air. Halting growth of carbon dioxide together with the other greenhouse gases is of vital importance, considering the several threats faced by climate changes.

The Fischer-Tropsch Process

Awareness of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere reached 400 parts per million in 2012-2013, which was the highest since the scientific measurements had started while the year July 2014-June 2015seemed to be the warmest on record according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.Chemistry to develop the fuel from carbon dioxide is not particularly difficult.

Water needs to be split into hydrogen and oxygen through electrolysis and hydrogen added to carbon dioxide in order to make carbon monoxide and water and then plug in more hydrogen to build up hydrocarbon chains. The last process is known as the Fischer-Tropsch process which dates back to 1920s. However, the technologies are capturing the carbon dioxide directly from the air which is new and presently becoming cheap to be feasible.

The greatest challenges in technology have been focused on the high temperature furnaces according to chief executive of Carbon Engineering, Adrian Corless. He states that there is yet a month of hard work, to get these to function, as the company would want it.

Cars Running on Fuel Made From Thin Air

However, he commented that it has also been the company’s main innovation, precipitating captured carbon dioxide into solid calcium carbonate pellets which can be washed and dried with ease.Thereafter, the pellets are heated to 800-900 C, wherein they release a pure carbon dioxide stream. As a filtrate, they tend to leave calcium oxide which can be fed back to the first air capture stage.

There are also other alternatives for selling carbon dioxide, besides fuel. Climeworks, a Swiss company which rolled off from a local university is now gearing for its first commercial scale plant in selling captured carbon dioxide to a nearby greenhouse. The Swiss company foresees a long term market in the supply of fizzy drinks bottlers in Africa, Japan and difficult to reach island by putting up locally and overcoming the transport expenses.

Expenses of compressing, liquefying and shipping carbon CO2 seems to be ten times more in these places, stated the firm’s chief operating officer, Dominique Kroneberg. Climbeworks and Carbon Engineering state that their modular technology would make it easy to scale up to larger projects.

 In the meanwhile, the US Naval Research Laboratory has informed its interest in using e-diesel to fuel it ships and one could marvel on having their car running on fuel made from thin air very soon.

Google Docs Voice Typing Blocks Swear Words

Google is set to energize its Docs, which is a free Office software available to all the users across the globe completely free of cost. It has unveiled a whole set of new features and functions in the Docs which includes much needed and widely discussed voice dictation technology.

The power of dictation with wise censorship

Google had brought the voice-typing feature at the disposal of all the people by integrating this feature in its Google Docs. Before the advent of this free and very powerful voice typing user had to rely on the third party software and had to shell out thousands of dollars.

Google is revolutionizing the voice typing with its incredible and it is thankfully backed by an inbuilt censorship. This censorship simply states what can and can’t be dictated by using its Google latest software. Swearing words are completely barred from being picked up by the voice-typing feature, which will ensure the respect and essence of the messages and other written materials.

Swearing papers with first letter followed by asterisks

The voice typing technology carefully and intelligently understands the swearing words and simply replaces it with asterisks.

Therefore when a user uses the common swear words then it get replaced by asterisks in this manner, “s***’ and “f***”. Some swear words are spelled in full like “b**ch” and “w***ker” but in order to avoid any chances of offending someone then middle letters had been blanked out with asterisks.

The objection to the swearing words in the Google Docs by first noticed by a blogger who goes by the name of Grethen McCulloch.

Google aims at bringing a formality and ethics in the voice typing

Google had miffed the users and was heavily criticised by the same for censoring the swear words in its Google translate and Android based voce-to-text feature.

This time Google had brought a more refined and much better voice typing technology, which can assist in the wide range of function on its popular Google Docs. Goggles aims at bringing formality and high level of productivity to its users by bringing an advanced new set of tools in Google Docs.

Apart from the much talked voice typing feature Google brought some new research features in the Docs which can help in saving facts, images and quotes along with an explore functions in the Sheets. Google also brought some new interesting templates for the Forms, Sheets, Slides and Docs.

New set of features gets praised and increases productivity

Voice typing has the ability to support over more than 40 languages. A user is just required to click on a microphone button and press on go to activate the voice dictation feature. It will be an added advantage to the users while using the Google Docs, as the Microsoft’s popular Office software doesn’t have the speech recognition.

 Google’s Docs has been gained praise earlier for making it easier for the team members to collaborate and work simultaneously on the documents. The new set of tools and features are expected to make working on documents more fun filled and productive.

Google Unveils New Logo at Turning Point in Company's History

Google Introduced Redesign with Animation

Google is known to be a progressive company and many are aware that it has been tweaking its algorithms on improving its search engine or bring new services to the users. Google has unveiled its new logo and since 1999, has recently introduced the new sans-serif and slightly toned down four colour logo in the biggest redesign. The tech giant states that the new design would be seen all across its products a month after a major restricting of the company gave rise to the company, Alphabet.

Google’s homepage had introduced the redesign with an animation which had wiped the old logo and had drawn the new design. The company had mentioned in a blog post that it had changed a lot over the past 17 years from the range of products to the evolution of their look and fee and today are changing things up once again’.

The company has said that the redesign was meant to reflect the way people interacted with Google products on the various platforms, app as well as devices. Moreover, it not only tells you that one is using Google but also portrays how Google tends to work for you. For instance, latest elements such as a colourful Google mic enables in identifying as well as interacting with Google irrespective of whether one is talking, tapping or typing.

New Logo – A Colourful Typographic Six Letters

In the meanwhile, they are eliminating the little blue `g’ icon with a four colour `G’ which tends to match the logo. The logo is said to have gone through several small changes in its history and the colours have changed. The new logo is still a colourful typographic which tends to feature six simple letters on a plain white page and “Google” has been written in a brand new font.

The 3D letters seemed to have been flattened with an exclamation point that came and went in 1999. The move came up after a month of the major restricting of the company had been unveiled. Google is presently owned by Alphabet, a holding company that was developed by founders – Sergey Brin and Larry Page in order to separate their money making search engine company from the unprofitable `moon shot’ projects such as robot cars, medical research as well as the internet delivering balloons.

Reactions – Positive & Negative

The company had also mentioned in its blog post that this was not the first time that they had changed their look and would probably not be the last though they presume that the latest update would be a great reflection of all the ways Google works across Search, Maps, Gmail, Chrome and several others functions.

Earlier, the company had said that it would restructure its business as a collection of companies under its newly created parent company, Alphabet and the largest subsidiary under the new firm name would be the core Google search as well as advertising business that would continue to house, Android, Maps and YouTube.

The new logo of Google is said to be rather differentiating. Some consider it to be beautiful in its simplicity, is san-serif unlike the old one and is completely two dimensional instead of the drawn to look three dimensional. Others state that it too basic and off-putting.

The Verge states that the reactions to the logo tend to go from positive to negative quickly and so far, reactions have been all over varying from joy to disgust mostly from the same person within a short span of time.

Tipster Talks About Google's Project Soli Kit Invites

Google’s Future of Radar Based Technology For Hand Gestures - Wearable

Google has its focus on future of radar based technology for hand gestures with wearable and the future, where one could interact with wearable technology without the need of physical control like buttons and the fingers could act as buttons.

Project Soli had been announced as an interaction sensor in making use of radar technology, earlier this year. Regarding Soli, a Google Advanced Technology and Projects division – ATAP video had been posted in May giving information about the same. The technical program lead at ATAP started off by, introducing himself as Ivan Poupyrev, adding that capturing the possibilities of the human hand had been one of his passions and how could it be applied with the capabilities to the virtual world.

He informed that they use radars and there is nothing to break, no lenses, no moving parts. He said in the video that radar has been utilised for several things, like tracking cars, big objects, satellites as well as planes. It is being used to track micro motions, twitches of human hand and use it to interact with wearable and other computing devices.

Project Soli – Tiny Chips with Radar like Potentials

According to M Dee Dubroff, from InventorSpot.com `Project Soli focuses on the fact that the ability to function is not always the job of the device but the movements of the user especially hands and fingers. She informs that the project depends on tiny chip with radar like potentials and can pick up the smallest of movements.

Details of the ATAP presentation earlier this year had been provided by Alex Davies in Tom’s Hardware, when Poupyrev showed hand gestures and how they could be related for interactions. He informed about rubbing thumb and index finger together in order to simulate turning a dial, changing time on a simulated watch face and use distance in controlling if the hours or minutes were adjusted, based on how far a hand was from the sensor.

Radar tends to have some unique properties such as very high positional accuracy according to the video where the smallest movement can be traced.

Radar Hardware into Gesture Sensor

Lead research engineer, Project Soli, Jaime Lien said that the focus of the team was in taking radar hardware and turn it into a gesture sensor. Latest information is that Google has been notifying developers of a forthcoming Project Soli Alpha DevKit. Liam Spradlin had written in Android Police that Google had sent application for a small group of Project Soli dev kits.

He informed that according to an adviser Google had begun notifying interested groups of an upcoming `Soli Alpha DevKit’, asking those notified to fill out application for the chance to receive the same.Spradlin further added that the email stated that those selected to receive it would get a development board and SDK together with the opportunity of participating in a Soli Alpha developer workshop somewhere in the future.

Potential developers in return were asked to participate in the private user group, to accept software updates and make something really cool. Special note had been made by Poupyrev in the video which was done earlier this year and he is looking forward in releasing this enterprise to the development group