All posts in the “video” category
Quadrocopter Ball Juggling
In the ETH Flying Machine Arena, these “quadrocopters” flit around almost effortlessly, constantly self-adjusting to try and keep the ball in the air. Theres something strangely hypnotic about it.
For more information see http://www.flyingmachinearena.org
The Joy of Statistics
Hans Rosling’s famous lectures combine enormous quantities of public data with a sport’s commentator’s style to reveal the story of the world’s past, present and future development. Now he explores stats in a way he has never done before – using augmented reality animation. In this spectacular section of ‘The Joy of Stats’ he tells the story of the world in 200 countries over 200 years using 120,000 numbers – in just four minutes. Plotting life expectancy against income for every country since 1810, Hans shows how the world we live in is radically different from the world most of us imagine.
Its a joy to match someone talk about their area of expertise with such enthusiasm and vigour. More information about this programme after the jump: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00wgq0l
R.A. Mashelkar on “Ghandian” Design
Amazing TED talk about ultra-low cost product design by by R.A. Mashelkar. Especially liked the concept of disruptive innovation. via ted.com.
The PEN Story
Mesmerising Stop-motion video made with 1800 photos of 9,600 separate prints.
The latest version of the LittleDog Robot
This is the more advanced version of this robot, created by the University of Southern California. The robot is completely autonomous and trained by machine learning algorithms. The video is real-time, i.e., not sped up.
Nicholas Christakis: The hidden influence of social networks
We’re all embedded in vast social networks of friends, family, co-workers and more. Nicholas Christakis tracks how a wide variety of traits — from happiness to obesity — can spread from person to person, showing how your location in the network might impact your life in ways you don’t even know.
Great talk about the intrinsic value of the social networks within which we all reside. If you can get past the first few minutes when he’s almost shouting and you keep reminding yourself its not an elaborate new advert for T-Mobile, it’s very interesting. It also partly explains why everyone who works with us is slim and in a perpetual state of happiness.
Towel Folding Robot
This video of a towel-folding robot somehow manages to be fascinating and humourous at the same time. On judgement day they’ll remember all the times we made them fold our towels.
There is so much here. The “previously-unseen towel” part of the title, the slightly-femmy movements of the robot, the way the 50X speed-up makes it look like a Svankmajer film, the diligent care with which it smooths out each towel when it’s done, and the palpable shock when it returns to the towel table and there aren’t any left to fold.
did you know 3.0
some highlights…
By 2013, a supercomputer will be built that exceeds the computational capabilities of the human brain
Predictions are that by 2049, a $1000 computer will exceed the computational capabilities of the entire human species
What an exciting and terrifying time to be alive
