http://phys.org/electronics-news/ en-us Phys.org provides the latest news on electronics, robotics, hardware, electronic gadgets and science technology. Updated daily. Facebook hopes to release its own smartphone by next year, as the newly public social networking giant looks to boost its revenue in the mobile Internet market, the New York Times reported Monday. http://phys.org/news257448153.html Electronics Mon, 28 May 2012 18:22:44 EST news257448153 (Phys.org) -- NHK this week placed on exhibit a shoulder-mount camera, developed in cooperation with Hitachi, capable of shooting what NHK calls super high vision (SHV) video in 7680×4320 resolution. Super Hi-Vision is NHK's preferred name for ultra high definition television (UHDTV). The powerful prototype was part of NHK Scientific & Technology Research Laboratories (STRL) Open House event in Japan earlier this week. The camera is an innovative development, as a compact Ultra High Definition camera using a single-chip color imaging sensor to produce “closest to being there” video. NHK says that the compact head is compatible with commercially-offered still camera lenses. http://phys.org/news257396706.html Electronics Mon, 28 May 2012 05:20:01 EST news257396706 (Phys.org) -- Nvidia’s competitive war paint has a name, Tegra 3. On the heels of Nvidia announcements about lowering costs of its Tegra 3 processors and Nvidia-enabled tablets running Android Ice Cream Sandwich at $199, Nvidia this week made more Tegra 3 strategy headway, this time issuing announcements for smartphones. The company said that 30 smartphones based on its Tegra 3 system on a chip will be out this year. This is double the number of design wins on Tegra 2 last year. http://phys.org/news257316047.html Electronics Sun, 27 May 2012 05:41:12 EST news257316047 (Phys.org) -- Headline after headline talks about vendors’ tablets in the wings as likely number-one contenders for the iPad. Such claims have justifiably been taken with a grain of salt, considering iPad’s continued market success. This week, though, leaked specs on the Dell latitude 10.are convincing many to claims that this may be the one to shake things up in the tablet space. The Dell Latitude 10 will have a 10.1-inch display, HD capacitive and multi-touch screen at 1366 x 768 resolution. As per Neowin, this will be a Dell Latitude 10 Windows 8 tablet. Microsoft is expected to launch its Windows 8 operating system late 2012, and some reports bet on October. http://phys.org/news257274293.html Electronics Sat, 26 May 2012 18:05:08 EST news257274293 (Phys.org) -- For several years, roboticists have been working out ways to get a group of robots to perform synchronized activities as demonstrated most often in dance routines. It’s not just about trying to create humanoid machines that can better entertain us though, it’s about getting them to perform simple small scale synchronized activities so that a means can be found to scale up such activities so that robots of the future can work together to autonomously accomplish certain goals that have been defined by their human masters. To that end, MIT researchers Patrick Bechon and Jean-Jacques Slotine have been studying ways to mimic so called quorum sensing, which some organisms use to figure out how many of their own kind are around, and then to perform actions based on it. The two have applied this principal to small dancing robots, to stunning effect. They have written a paper describing what they have learned and posted it on the preprint server arXiv. http://phys.org/news257155711.html Electronics Fri, 25 May 2012 09:40:01 EST news257155711 (Phys.org) -- OmniVision has announced two high-resolution image sensors for the digital still and digital video camera market (DS/DVC) and higher end smartphones. In end-user language, it is a claim for superior quality visuals for digital video cameras and top of the line mobile phones. The company sees its marketplace comfortably split between those end users who hold on to their cameras and those who turn to smartphones for neat imaging features. The newly announced high-resolution mobile sensors can capture 4K2K video. The 16-megapixel camera sensors are part-number dubbed the OV16820 and OV16825. http://phys.org/news257134301.html Electronics Fri, 25 May 2012 05:20:01 EST news257134301 (Phys.org) -- In March, Nvidia gave some signs that they were working to lower the cost of their Tegra 3 processors and they suggested consumers might see prices for Android tablets as low as $199. Connect the dots? At the company’s annual investors meeting last week, the dots connected and are making this week’s news. For those marking the history of the tablet, remember the date, May 21, 2012. That was this meeting date at Santa Clara, where Nvidia management told its audience what strategies and growth were on tap. Vice President of Investor Relations, Rob Csonger, did the tablet talking. http://phys.org/news257052112.html Electronics Thu, 24 May 2012 05:40:01 EST news257052112 (Phys.org) -- Sooner than you think, we may have robots to tidy up our homes. http://phys.org/news256886510.html Electronics Tue, 22 May 2012 06:22:12 EST news256886510 (Phys.org) -- The Raspberry Pi, a uniquely priced, no casing computer that plugs into your TV and a keyboard., will be given a camera accessory later this year. That may be “oh-so-what” news if this were a mainstream machine but the Raspberry Pi is quite something else. This is a Model-A, Model-B $25 to $35 credit-card sized PC that grew out of The Raspberry Pi project, a UK based foundation. When the computer was made available in March, the device’s first batch sold out in hours after sites distributing the product witnessed unprecedented traffic. http://phys.org/news256880057.html Electronics Tue, 22 May 2012 05:20:01 EST news256880057 (Phys.org) -- As any gathering of scientists working with robots will suggest, attempts toward perfecting techniques and outcomes of grasping and maneuvering are key issues for researchers working on climbing robots. At this week’s IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation in Saint Paul, Minnesota, the robotics community got to see what a Chinese team has achieved in its presentation of Clothbot. This is a climbing robot that easily climbs up your pants or shirt. The Clothbot is small and lightweight, which did not deter from bloggers’ reactions that the device was “creepy.” System and Design of Clothbot: a Robot for Flexible Clothes Climbing, by Yuanyuan Liu, Xinyu Wu, Huihuan Qian, Duan Zheng, Jianquan Sun and Yangsheng Xu from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese University of Hong Kong, was presented Tuesday at the IEEE event. http://phys.org/news256622333.html Electronics Sat, 19 May 2012 05:50:01 EST news256622333 (Phys.org) -- NLT Technologies has announced its development of an autostereoscopic multiview display based on the success of its HxDP technology. HxDP stands for Horizontally x times Density Pixels. The company reports impressive end results as improvements in 3-D and 2-D viewing. NLT Technologies together with its sales and marketing channels in the Americas and Europe, Renesas Electronics America and Renesas Electronics Europe GmbH, announced the autostereoscopic multi-view high resolution display earlier this week. http://phys.org/news256533021.html Electronics Fri, 18 May 2012 04:40:01 EST news256533021 (Phys.org) -- "Can you hear me? You’re dying? Oh, you're drying. Are you talking into your phone?" While smartphones continue with noisy attempts to deliver stunning visuals and entertaining apps, the fundamental problem of hearing a phone caller properly remains a less strident but universal pain. Kyocera, for one, is a company that wants to be a hero in commercializing smartphones with improved sound quality. This week, Kyocera is introducing smartphones in Japan that carry its special bone conduction system technology. http://phys.org/news256451170.html Electronics Thu, 17 May 2012 05:26:24 EST news256451170 Apple has begun preparing to launch an iPhone with a larger screen than its previous models, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. http://phys.org/news256399944.html Electronics Wed, 16 May 2012 15:13:03 EST news256399944 Japanese technology titan NEC has unveiled a gadget that allows users to control their TV, mobile phone or tablet computer using a virtual input device. http://phys.org/news256363885.html Electronics Wed, 16 May 2012 05:15:14 EST news256363885 (Phys.org) -- AMD has announced Trinity, its second-generation A-Series accelerated processing units (APUs), which are out to rival Intel’s Ivy Bridge processors. AMD’s Trinity is an update to its Llano, which attempted to challenge Intel’s Sandy Bridge. Trinity includes up to four CPU cores ad single GPU, with features especially suited for supporting laptops and ultra thin notebooks. The Trinity chips will appear on HP’s Sleekbook machines when the Sleekbook debuts next month. With Trinity, AMD is promoting its two appealing strong suits that sit well with manufacturers and consumers, in the name of graphics performance and power consumption. http://phys.org/news256309109.html Electronics Tue, 15 May 2012 13:59:05 EST news256309109 (Phys.org) -- Japan-based storage experts, Buffalo, has introduced a new line of solid state drives (SSDs) that use MRAM cache (instead of standard SDRAM). The company’s new line of solid state drives went on show this month in the form of a 4-Gbyte SSD equipped with an 8-Mbyte MRAM cache memory at the Embedded Systems Expo in Japan, which ran from May 9 to May 11. The show is an important gathering of the latest technologies, systems integration platforms and development platforms serving embedded systems. Buffalo’s initial targeted end users for its MRAM line are to be corporate customers in industrial settings requiring high reliability. http://phys.org/news256275552.html Electronics Tue, 15 May 2012 05:40:01 EST news256275552 (Phys.org) -- So what's a hot new Galaxy S3 smartphone doing with a PenTile AMOLED display like this? That is a question that surprised developers and smartphone blog sites earlier this month when Samsung announced in London its new Galaxy S3 with a 4.8-inch 720p resolution display that uses a PenTile subpixel layout. Expectations were that the Galaxy S3 would carry another type of upgraded display The PenTile design had drawn disappointed reviews when it had earlier appeared on the Galaxy Nexus phone. This week, however, a Samsung spokesperson stepped forward to explain why PenTile was still chosen: Samsung wants the S3 phone displays to last longer. http://phys.org/news256227814.html Electronics Mon, 14 May 2012 16:00:06 EST news256227814 Asus' new Transformer Pad TF300 is among the first of a new class of convertible devices that are heading toward store shelves. http://phys.org/news255954509.html Electronics Fri, 11 May 2012 11:28:44 EST news255954509 South Korea's Samsung Electronics on Thursday unveiled its new-generation premium television as global manufacturers seek to drive slowing sales with lucrative models. http://phys.org/news255872013.html Electronics Thu, 10 May 2012 12:33:41 EST news255872013 (Phys.org) -- When Cornell engineers developed a new type of robot hand that could pick up oddly shaped objects it presented a challenge: It was easy for a human operator to choose the best place to take hold of an object, but an autonomous robot, like the ones we may someday have helping around the home or office, would need a new kind of programming. So they have developed a procedure -- an algorithm -- that allows a robot to learn grasping skills from experience and apply them in new situations. http://phys.org/news255753770.html Electronics Wed, 09 May 2012 03:43:22 EST news255753770 Microsoft began testing whether a pricing strategy that has been a hit with smartphones will invigorate sales of its Xbox 360 videogame consoles. http://phys.org/news255669591.html Electronics Tue, 08 May 2012 04:40:01 EST news255669591 Apple's iPad outmuscled its Android-powered tablet computer rivals in early 2012, in a global market suffering from post-holiday hangover, a survey showed Thursday. http://phys.org/news255274288.html Electronics Thu, 03 May 2012 17:40:01 EST news255274288 (Phys.org) -- One of the big disappointments of the computer age is the distinct lack of robots in our everyday lives. For years we’ve all been teased by the possibilities of robots in SciFi movies and television shows, and still, the only robots in our lives are those little Roomba vacuum cleaners. http://phys.org/news255251620.html Electronics Thu, 03 May 2012 08:13:57 EST news255251620 (Phys.org) -- When car accidents happen, typically road closures soon follow. This is because police need to study the scene to try to determine what happened, who was at fault, etc. Part of that investigation involves measuring things such as length of skid marks, distance between vehicles, or even how much a car compressed during impact; all of which takes a considerable amount of time while still leaving room for errors. Now, a new way of recording accident scenes is being used by police in Essex England. It’s the RIEGL VZ-400 - part camera, part scanner that is able to faithfully record an accident scene in a 360° panorama. http://phys.org/news255245750.html Electronics Thu, 03 May 2012 06:36:19 EST news255245750 (Phys.org) -- Among the many challenges of designing flying robots is getting them to land gracefully. By taking a cue from birds, a team of engineers has developed a flapping-wing flying robot that can land by perching on a human hand. http://phys.org/news255231161.html Electronics Thu, 03 May 2012 05:40:01 EST news255231161 Robots that decompose once they have reached the end of their mission could soon be deployed in the environment, thanks to a Research Project Grant of over £200,000 from the Leverhulme Trust. http://phys.org/news255149195.html Electronics Wed, 02 May 2012 03:46:43 EST news255149195 Research In Motion (RIM) on Tuesday unveiled a revamped BlackBerry platform that discards the smartphone's trademark keyboard to embrace apps, touchscreens and other trendy features. http://phys.org/news255102321.html Electronics Tue, 01 May 2012 14:45:35 EST news255102321 (Phys.org) -- Japanese robot designer Hiroshi Ishiguro is fast becoming a sort of roboticist for the people, in Japan anyway. Instead of terminator style robots meant to do a lot of serious work or to serve on the battlefield, his robots are soft and cushy, cute and perhaps a little smooshy. He’s also created a robot in his own image. Now he’s introducing something he calls the Hugvie, a robot that looks sort of like a generic mono-legged human baby, or perhaps a doll with no eyes, fingers or toes. It serves as the medium through which people converse in a new way using a smartphone. While holding, or pressing the Hugvie against the face, it vibrates slightly at the same frequency as the voice on the other end, adding another degree of intimacy to the conversation. At least that’s the idea. http://phys.org/news255079095.html Electronics Tue, 01 May 2012 09:10:01 EST news255079095 (Phys.org) -- The Mediated Matter Group from the MIT Media Lab is working on a robot that might one day spin its own webs. Project team members are training a robot to weave a web-like architecture, similar to the way a silkworm creates cocoons. The team seeks to train its robot to mimic nature—namely to weave a cocoon like structure. The robot is getting some programming help but eventually the researchers want to see it weaving autonomously, spinning its own web. Latest reports reveal a robot arm deploying yarn-like thread on prearranged hooks. http://phys.org/news254894948.html Electronics Sun, 29 Apr 2012 07:10:01 EST news254894948 When industrial robots were first introduced in the early 1960s — initially on automobile assembly lines — computers were still in their infancy, so the robots were designed to perform only the most rigidly predetermined set of repetitive movements. Despite a half-century of exponential growth in computational power, that’s pretty much still the state of industrial robotics. But according to Rodney Brooks, who last year left a tenured position as MIT’s Panasonic Professor of Robotics to focus on his latest company, that may not be true for much longer. http://phys.org/news254551325.html Electronics Wed, 25 Apr 2012 06:20:02 EST news254551325