MIT Interactive Wall

Video from Touch Creative shows process for project to create a presentation installaton using projection mapping for animation:

An interactive wall of MIT Ideas, inventions and innovators that helped shape our World.

Twenty innovations are imaginatively represented in an interactive mural that comes to life as you approach.

The combination of illustration, projection and sound effects surprise and engage the audience in an original way. Enhancing and celebrating the message that MIT is the place for pioneering development and discovery. 

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NASA is dead set on leaving Low-Earth Orbit to go to the moon, Mars and other farther destinations. That means extending the space station's funding beyond 2024 is out of the question. Now, NASA Deputy Associate Administrator Bill Hill has revealed what the agency wants to do with the ISS once astronauts move out. Instead of deorbiting it and sinking it into the ocean or breaking it apart to sell piece by piece, it apparently wants to hand the spacecraft over to a private corporation.

According to TechCrunch, Hill said during the Journey to Mars event:

"NASA's trying to develop economic development in low-earth orbit. Ultimately, our desire is to hand the space station over to either a commercial entity or some other commercial capability so that research can continue in low-earth orbit."

The agency did say in the past that it plans to leave LEO in the hands of private space corporations, but it originally envisioned them building their own smaller successor to the ISS. Hill didn't explain things in detail -- he also didn't confirm whether NASA's partner agencies share its desire to leave the ISS to the private sector -- but it's going to be tough renting out the station or selling it for how much it's actually worth. The ISS is an international collaboration between NASA, Roscosmos (Russia), JAXA (Japan), ESA (Europe) and CSA (Canada), and they've all been sinking billions into its yearly maintenance and operations.

Source: TechCrunch

A drone in flight during a race in the UK earlier this year. (credit: Dave Stock)

On Wednesday, Wednesday ESPN announced a partnership with the International Drone Racing Association (IDRA) to stream drone races online and use the footage in edited TV segments.

The multiyear contract will kick off with IDRA’s US National Drone Racing Championships in New York City in August. The three-day event will be streamed live on ESPN3, and then footage will be edited down to a one-hour special to air on one of ESPN’s TV networks. In a joint press release, IDRA and the sports network said they would be streaming first-person-view footage from the racing drones, "offering jaw-dropping views of both lower Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty.“

Drone operators in first-person-view drone races wear goggles that show them a stream from a camera on the front of the drone. The drone operator must navigate their drone through the race's course, and the winning drone is the one that completes the course the fastest.

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FlexCase

Proof of concept project from Media Interaction Lab re-invents smartphone flipcase to provide additional interface features:

FlexCase is a novel flip cover for smartphones, which brings flexible input and output capabilities to existing mobile phones. It combines an e-paper display with a pressure- and bend-sensitive input sensor to augment the capabilities of a phone. Due to the form factor, FlexCase can be easily transformed into several different configurations, each with different interaction possibilities. We can use FlexCase to perform a variety of touch, pressure, grip and bend gestures in a natural manner, much like interacting with a sheet of paper. The secondary e-paper display can act as a mechanism for providing user feedback and persisting content from the main display. In this paper, we explore the rich design space of FlexCase and present a number of different interaction techniques. Beyond, we highlight how touch and flex sensing can be combined to support a novel type of gestures, which we call Grip & Bend. We also describe the underlying technology and gesture sensing algorithms. Numerous applications apply the interaction techniques in real-world examples, including enhanced e-paper reading and interaction, a new copy-and-paste metaphor, high degree of freedom 3D and 2D manipulation, and the ability to transfer content and support input between displays in a natural and flexible manner. 

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Vine from Trevor Whatman gives us a short eye-mouth meme contribution:

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(credit: The Strong Museum of Play)

You've gotta step away from the crowd and go do your own thing. You find a ground, cover it, it's brand new, you're on your own—you're an explorer. That's about what it's going to be like. Explore new vistas, new avenues, new ways—not relying on everyone else's way to tell you which way to go, and how to go, and what you should be doing.

—Jerry Lawson, from an interview with Vintage Computing Computer and Gaming in 2009

Though you may not know his name, Jerry Lawson helped lay the groundwork for all modern gaming consoles. As chief hardware engineer for Fairchild Semiconductor’s game division in the 1970s, Lawson was largely responsible for the Fairchild Channel F—the first console to include its own microchip and the first to use cartridges.

Lawson was also black. And as this Black History Month winds down, it’s worth reflecting on his achievements because Lawson succeeded in Silicon Valley at a time when opportunities for black engineers and inventors were severely limited (even more so than today). As The New York Timesonceput it, “He was among only a handful of black engineers in the world of electronics in general and electronic gaming in particular.”

Early days

Jerry Lawson was born on December 1, 1940 and grew up in the Jamaica, Queens area of New York City. His father was a longshoreman who loved to read science books; his mother was passionately committed to ensuring her son received a good public school education. She went so far as to visit schools to interview the principal and teachers. If she didn’t like what she heard, her son was going to a different school.

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