Tech Posters

My new technology presented to the course was the current result of the DARPA funded Cybernetic Insect research. The following video provides a good overview of the technology.



The most important aspects of this technology to me are the principles behind it. Rather than attempting to mimic animal flight, an extremely difficult, time consuming and expensive task, engineers are attempting to take advantage of natural selection designs with millions of years of evolution to do the task. Instead of training things to do tasks they can simply stimulate the brain to do them. Stimulation of only basic major functions and needs resulted in the insect's other neurons taking care of the rest.

It was also very interesting that they were able to intercept the signals from the insect's own sensors. They hooked a machine up to a moth and had the machine move in the direction that the moth wanted to go. The research is approaching things from both ways - having machines control the insects and the insects controlling the machines. Many things in nature have sensors much more sensitive than current technology such as moth's sensitivity to sex phermones or shark's sensitivity to blood. These have great potential to be tailored to specific tasks, but there will likely be severe hurdles with organizations such as PETA.

Proof of concept technologies such as these are also essential to securing funding and interest in the field so that it can continue to advance towards more complex tasks such as helping spinal cord injury victims. Understanding how to stimulate main nerves to control secondary ones and connecting neural pathways with circuits are essential components to viability of human cyborgs.


While presenting to others, the goal was for the poster to quickly grab their attention with highly visible and unique graphics to provide the opportunity to hold a conversation about the technology with them. I wasn't very pleased with the quality of the poster itself but lacked the budget for it to be printed in high quality. Video demonstrations would have helped greatly. In some cases people were quickly grossed out by the insects and moved on. I didn't see many people checking twitter very often. Most seemed to wander around the room until something caught their eyes. I attended the AUVSI Unmanned Systems International conference in Washington, DC earlier this year and the conference had provided everyone with badges that had scannable barcodes for contact information as well as the scanners. Much of the hype for different products came from the demonstration day and all of the supplemental discussions occurred at the networking lunches. Such a large scale conference with thousands of displays might benefit from a live feed like the one used in class.


I found many of the topics presented by the class to be very interesting and I will actually be using many of them in the future. Some such as google wave and voice I've previewed their BETA versions. With so many posters and a limited amount of time, those who received the most attention were the ones with eye-catching graphics large enough to be discernible at a distance. When walking by, those with displays, large and colorful subject lines, and eager presenters stood out the most. I especially enjoyed the artificial leg, silicon nanotubes, genetic tester, and iphone credit card scanner. When more than 4 feet away from many of the posters(which was often the case due to others already standing next to it) it was difficult to even read the subject line. There weren't many people who took time to research competition to their current technology and the ones that did were much more convincing.

Boingboing fundraising attempt

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/12/11/dr-peter-watts-canad.html


A Canadian science fiction writer was allegedly beaten at the US Border by the U.S. Dept of Homeland security and boingboing.net is attempting to help him raise funds to fight the case. This would be a good study on how well social media groups can raise awareness and their effectiveness in securing contributions to their cause.

Raisin Bran Ad

This is a new ad in appearing in Britain that has already made it to top weblink sites sugh as boingboing.net. It catches people's attention and the dialogue makes sure that people actually remember the product and not just the ad.

Intellectual Property

The class discussed copyright and intellectual property issues, and this could be a landmark case that could bring about sweeping change to the current rules.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/will-the-supreme-court-roil-the-software-industry-2009-11-09


In summary, someone applied for a patent for a method and was denied because there wasn't a physical device or transformation. This ruling in a federal appeals court could set a precedent which invalidates software patents since all software is just a method. Overly broad patents such as the use of training videos for people as well can stifle innovation, however no patents for an entire industry could cause serious issues. The majority of work done in fields such as dynamics and control is modeling complex motions and writing algorithms(methods) to control a system. Some of these algorithms take years of developement and refinement by teams with Ph.D's in the field and the lack of patent availability would cut into the funding for such research.

Ideo's Human Centered Design Toolkit

I thought this could be useful to ppl in the COM 435 course.

Cyborg Insects!

Here is a video showing some of the research results for the topic I presented on Monday.



It's interesting to note that not only are they working to use electrical impulses to stimulate the brains of the insects, but they are adopting the insects way of navigating through obstacles for robots as well.

Indianapolis courts threatening fines

http://www.carformance.com/indianapolis-threaten-2500-fine-for-challenging-traffic-tickets-12102517/


I thought this might be of concern to the many students who live in and visit Indianapolis. It appears that many of the traffic court judges have adopted the policy of fining those who appeal tickets and lose, regardless of the reasons for the appeal. This is a bit disturbing, though there is a lawyer challenging this policy, Paul K. Ogden.