Miscellaneous

"Claytronics" is an emerging field of engineering concerning reconfigurable nanoscale robots ('claytronic atoms', or catoms) designed to form much larger scale machines or mechanisms. Also known as "programmable matter", the catoms will be sub-millimeter computers that will eventually have the ability to move around, communicate with other computers, change color, and electrostatically connect to other catoms to form different shapes. The forms made up of catoms could morph into nearly any object, even replicas of human beings for virtual meetings.

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Sensor network research project at MERL focused on understanding how people use buildings.

Data from hundreds of sensors all over MERL feed work on better sensor hardware, better perceptual tools, better visualizations, and ultimately a better understanding of how people use buildings and how those buildings can help the people within them. Work completed 2006, video edited 2007. Christopher R. Wren, Yuri A. Ivanov, Darren Leigh, Jonathan Westhues, John Barnwell, Alexander Sorokin, Ishwinder Kaur, and Emmanuel Munguia Tapia.

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What if you could fax someone a real, three-dimensional object? The solution might come in the form of programmable matter - a material that takes on predetermined shapes and can change its configuration on demand. We’re already seeing early prototypes coming from Carnegie Mellon and Intel in the form of “claytronics.” So what’s in store for this technology, and why should we be excited about it?

If you had a vat of claytronic atoms in front of you, what’s the first thing you’d build with it? Let us know in the comments below!

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This new Data-Gram for the Robot News Digest reports on the role of robotics in the Internet of Things. What good are eyes and ears without arms, legs, and a friendly face? Convenience is freedom!

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When we launched this channel, our very first episode was about the Internet of Things, and how this technology might affect our day-to-day lives at home. Now, over 100 episodes later (when did THAT happen?!) we felt it was time to give this topic an update. What happens when the Internet of Things goes global, and what will we need to do for us to reach this vision of the future?

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Jan Hederen of Ericsson presents the clickable world, how everything – including nature, can be part of our connected world and how a simple touch allows you to communicate with anything. Today, we are on the brink of an extraordinary revolution where everything that benefits from a connection will have one. This Networked Society is in real time will place many new requirements on us while opening up opportunities beyond our imagination. Those who have the ability to rethink, reinvent and innovate will be winners in this new value-creating ecosystem. In the presentation "The power of touch - Exploring the real world web" Jan Hederen at Ericsson presented at the IDTechEx Printed Electronics Europe discussing and demonstrating their initial findings in creating a clickable world, exploring the opportunities with partners to use printed electronics to realize this new connected world.

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For years we've seen all sorts of microcontroller-friendly WiFi modules but none of them were really Adafruit-worthy. Either they were too slow, or too difficult to use, or required signing an NDA, or had limited functionality, or too expensive, or too large. So we shied away from carrying any general purpose microcontroller-friendly WiFi boards.

NO LONGER!

The CC3000 hits that sweet spot of usability, price and capability. It uses SPI for communication (not UART!) so you can push data as fast as you want or as slow as you want. It has a proper interrupt system with IRQ pin so you can have asynchronous connections. It supports 802.11b/g, open/WEP/WPA/WPA2 security, TKIP & AES. A built in TCP/IP stack with a "BSD socket" interface. TCP and UDP in both client and server mode, up to 4 concurrent sockets. It does not support "AP" mode, it can connect to an access point but it cannot be an access point.

We wrapped this little silver modules in a tidy breakout board. It has an onboard 3.3V regulator that can handle the 350mA peak current, and a level shifter to allow 3 or 5V logic level. The antenna layout is identical to TI's suggested layout and we're using the same components, trace arrangement, and antenna so the board maintains its FCC emitter compliance (you'll still need to perform FCC validation for a finished product, but the WiFi part is taken care of). Even though it's got an onboard antenna we were pretty surprised at the range, as good as a smartphone's.

Each order comes with one fully assembled and tested breakout and a small stick of header you can use to solder in and plug into a breadboard. We don't have a detailed tutorial yet but to get you started, we've got a fully working Arduino library that is based off of TI's codebase but adapted for use with the AVR. We also have example code showing how to scan the SSID's, connect to your access point and run DHCP, do a DNS lookup to IP address, ping a site and connect to a remote TCP socket such as a website and print out the page.

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Everyone's talking about the "Internet of Things," but what exactly does that mean for our future? In this thoughtful talk, economist Marco Annunziata looks at how technology is transforming the industrial sector, creating machines that can see, feel, sense and react -- so they can be operated far more efficiently. Think: airplane parts that send an alert when they need to be serviced, or wind turbines that communicate with one another to generate more electricity. It's a future with exciting implications for us all.

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The Internet of Things is creating countless new connections at the 2014 International CES. Check out the latest connected devices across the show floor.

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Event Description:
Just imagine, every sensor, and every machine has its own IP address. This opens formidable opportunities, for instance, in manufacturing, building technologies, energy management and healthcare. In order to realize this vision: machines have to speak the same language. This talk will introduce a machine-centric interpretation of the Internet of Things: in a Web of Systems sensor nodes and machines will decide themselves where to process and who to share data with. The "Web of Systems" is just about to move from the lab into pilot projects. This talk will present some of the recent outcomes of the Siemens' lab in Berkeley in collaboration with UC Berkeley.

Biography:
Florian Michahelles is the head of research group at Siemens Web of Things.

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Because of the Internet of Things, more electronic devices are being connected to the Internet, and they're talking to each other behind your back. Welcome to WatchMojo's Top 5 Facts. Today, we’re taking a look at the Internet of Things and how it's becoming a major part of our lives, in ways you probably didn't know.

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The next generation of architecture won't just be smarter by design, it'll actually BE smart. Cognitive buildings are structures that utilize the internet of things to anticipate our needs. Not only that, they greatly reduce our carbon footprints by autonomously reducing energy consumption in spaces that aren't in use. No need to turn off the lights or air conditioning before you leave a room! Beyond that, cognitive buildings can keep us healthier and safer by strategically controlling air flow and air pressure around those who might be carrying contagious pathogens, and can alert us to maintenance needs before they become expensive or even deadly system failures.

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Using two types of hydrogels, researchers created programmable shape-shifting materials that can transform without an external stimulus. The method could be used for designing autonomous actuators, drug-release systems and active implants.

Credit:
Programming temporal shapeshifting
Xiaobo Hu, Jing Zhou, Mohammad Vatankhah-Varnosfaderani, William F.M. Daniel, Qiaoxi Li, Aleksandr P. Zhushma, Andrey V. Dobrynin & Sergei S. Sheiko
Nature Communications DOI: 10.1038/ncomms12919

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Ray Kurzweil is an inventor, thinker, and futurist famous for forecasting the pace of technology and predicting the world of tomorrow.

In this video, Kurzweil predicts when he thinks we’ll get programmable matter—or the ability to manipulate everyday objects at the atomic level—and what that means not just for the things around you, but for you as a person.

According to Kurzweil, beginning with virtual reality in the digital realm and moving into the physical with programmable matter, people will make themselves into avatars of other people, or even each other.

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