A robotics news blog covering research robots, depth cameras, tactile sensing, and tracking systems like Valve's Lighthouse.
HN links it for robotics and sensor coverage, notably Valve's Lighthouse tracking and depth cameras, and one commenter calls Valve's solution very elegant.
> You are not going to have room size experience with any of those headsets at home at least it's not feasible you are tethered with so much crap that you need a man servant walking after you ensuring that you don't hang yourself on that tether.
Depends on the size of your play area obviously, but looks pretty good from this[0], and this "crap" you're talking about doesn't seem very bothersome.
> If you want a room size experience just hook up 2 OR cameras it will work the same way (but better) as the lighthouse approach that HTC took, and you can hook upto 50 of those cameras currently to track I believe up-to a 100 players.
Better how? I haven't seen a good comparison of them yet. I'm curious tho, how do you intend to scale up to 100 players using USB3 connections? That would be a MASSIVE amount of data flowing through the computer powering all of this(, the reason it requires USB3 is because it needs 60Hz high resolution image to have good tracking). The Vive takes a completly different approach by having the headset (and controllers) catch and interpret the (infrared) light emitted by the (dumb) lighthouses.[1]
> you can't currently track more than 5 people at the time
Do you have a source for this? I can't seem to find anything about this. Is it a limitation of the hardware or the software?
> Vive only supports 2 trackers per space it's also going to have issues with commercial applications that aren't a single open room.
I'd be very surprised if this was true.…
Great advice. I think your first point is spot-on: Don't Blog... It’s really, really hard to do well in a consistent fashion.
But that should be followed by: "Guest Blog" (or something similar). Your energy and creativity can still be appreciated by a captive audience in someone else's venue. You can get many of the benefits of blogging without the need for (daily / weekly / whatever) commitments... and make friends or build reputation in the process.
As an example, I run a popular robotics blog myself [1]. Yet, I've also contributed guest articles for IEEE Spectrum [2], which can have some cool side benefits... like op-ed style pieces in academic publications [3].
[1] http://www.hizook.com/
[2] http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/robotics-hardware/robotics-trends-for-2012
[3] http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/articleDetails.jsp?arnumber=6174340
But there is a crisis of innovation. The hyperloop is not a good example of it, because all the reasons abalone mentions.
Two examples:
1.Talk to people in the medical device community. There are plenty of good ideas , but they are hard to build and it's hard to raise money.[2]
2.Robotics: VC investments totaled in only $190 million in 2012[1] for a technology that is quite highly developed.
[1]http://www.hizook.com/blog/2013/06/10/venture-capital-vc-funding-robotics-2012
[2]This is partly due to the difficulty of writing software in this highly regulated environment. Seems like some pre approved platform should help here.
>No tactile feedback
That might be partially solved soonish, actually. http://www.hizook.com/blog/2010/08/11/electrotactile-arrays-texture-and-pressure-feedback-during-robotic-teleoperation
>Instead, what all magazine publishers produced (Condé Nast included) was a bloated, multitouch-enabled version of the exact same "new media" experience that used to ship on a CD-ROM under the name "multimedia."
Not surprised about this in the least. The vast majority will always do what never worked previously - we need people to make a few revolutionary improvements, then we'll see better tablet content across the board.
>Huh? You can buy line-following robot kits on Amazon for $30, and there are even cheaper ones out there.
There is the hexbug spider which makes a nice, hackable beginner platform
(http://www.amazon.com/HEXBUG-Hexbug-Spider-colors-vary/dp/B004HL0A12) with the addition of an arduino nano.
The kilobots are also cool
(http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/ssr/projects/progSA/kilobot.html), and an even smaller, cheaper robot (http://www.hizook.com/blog/2011/09/08/infrared-remote-controlled-rc-steerable-vibrobot-created-naghi-sotoudeh) using the same principle of locomotion.
The inventor of the Segway first invented a far superior stair-climbing wheelchair, the iBOT, way back in 2003, but it was regulated out of existence.
http://www.hizook.com/blog/2009/02/11/ibot-discontinued-unfortunate-disabled-perhaps-budding-robotics-opportunity
However, the FDA recently reclassified it so it may be put back into production within a couple of years.
http://www.fda.gov/downloads/AdvisoryCommittees/CommitteesMeetingMaterials/MedicalDevices/MedicalDevicesAdvisoryCommittee/OrthopaedicandRehabilitationDevicesPanel/UCM378315.pdf