Computers learn to predict high-fives and hugs

Deep learning systems can already detect objects in a given scene, including people, but they can’t always make sense of what people are doing in that scene. Are they about to get friendly? MIT CSAIL’s researchers might help. They’ve developed a machine learning algorithm that can predict when two people will high-five, hug, kiss or shake hands. The trick is to have multiple neural networks predict different visual representations of people a scene and merge those guesses into a broader consensus. If the majority foresees a high-five based on arm motions, for example, that’s the final call.

The algorithm is also useful for determining when objects are likely to appear. If a character reaches into a microwave, for instance, it may decide that a coffee cup is likely to come out.

The technology isn’t ready for prime time. The algorithm was only right about 43 percent of the time when predicting affection (versus 71 percent for humans), and it’s only really effective based on what it sees a few seconds ahead of time. People can frequently tell what will happen further in advance based on subtler cues like dialogue and facial expressions.

If CSAIL can refine its technique, though, there are wide-ranging implications for robotics and other AI-guided tasks. You could make automatons that know how to respond to human interactions, such as drawing the connections between friends or catching someone who’s about to fall. Security cameras could deliver alerts based on the actions they see, too, such warning a company that you might need an ambulance. In short: AI is about to get better at understanding the implications of what it sees, not just the immediate conditions.

Source: MIT News, (PDF)

ICYMI: 3D-printed, autonomous bus starts shuttling people

Today on In Case You Missed It: Local Motors is testing a self-driving, electric mini-bus that lets passengers communicate with the bus about the weather and where they’re located as they are shuttled from one part of town to another. The bus was conceived just a few months ago but is already running in Maryland. The company plans to bring more buses to other cities, like Copenhagen and Las Vegas, soon.

Meanwhile bone conduction headphones are being reimagined to be more wearable, with both a sunglasses option and helmet version up for grabs online. We also wanted to show you video of the robot badminton player because it’s pretty amazing. As always, please share any interesting tech or science videos you find by using the #ICYMI hashtag on Twitter for @mskerryd.

Supreme Court Ruling Supports Apple’s Long-Running Fight Against Patent Trolls

The Supreme Court yesterday made it a few steps easier for technology companies like Apple to challenge lawsuits from “patent assertion businesses,” or patent trolls. The decision implemented part of a 2011 law that created “quicker and cheaper” avenues into contesting patents with the Patent Office, instead of having to delve into a lengthy court battle or face a federal judge (via The Wall Street Journal).

This way, companies like Apple — who face patent trolls frequently — could easily argue against unseemly patent lawsuits in far less time, and without spending as much money.

Speaking for the court system, Justice Stephen Breyer said that the new ruling in favor of the Patent Office approach will help “to protect the public” since it’ll prevent potential patent trolls from claiming overly broad patents that “might discourage the use of the invention by a member of the public.”

The 2011 law created quicker and cheaper procedures for contesting patents in front of the Patent Office instead of in front of a federal judge. But some argued the procedures overcompensated and made patents too vulnerable. That is because the Patent Office adopted challenger-friendly legal standards that were different than those used in courts.

The Supreme Court acknowledged the Patent Office rules depart from those used in court, but said the agency had taken a reasonable approach.

So far, cases emerging from the Patent Office are said to rule largely in favor of the individual or company contesting the patent. According to recent government data, a reported 80 percent of the trials completed so far through the Patent Office board have seen the cancellation of the patent in question.

Apple is nearly constantly in the news surrounding various lawsuits and litigation updates, a large sum of which are usually centered around companies that claim they are “absolutely not” a patent troll. The new ruling should help alleviate the headache and streamline the contesting process for some of these cases made against the company.

Tag: patent trials
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Misfit and Speedo Announce New ‘Speedo Shine 2’ Swimming Activity Tracker

Misfit and Speedo have teamed up for a second-generation Speedo Shine, which is launching today. Like the first Speedo Shine, the Speedo Shine 2 is an activity, swim, and sleep tracker, but the updated version includes many features adopted from Misfit’s Shine 2 activity tracker.

The Speedo Shine 2 includes a new vibration motor along with multicolor lights for better user feedback. Lap progress and time can be tracked through the different colored lights, and there are also Misfit Move activity reminders.

A new countdown swim timer is included to allow users to pick a length of time for a swim, with the Speedo Shine 2 offering vibration alerts when a workout is complete, and there’s a silent vibrating alarm and alerts for incoming texts and phone calls.

The Speedo Shine 2 also features Misfit Link compatibility, enabling the device to be used as a music remote, selfie trigger, and remote for controlling connected home products, and more. Hardware wise, Speedo Shine 2 includes improved touch responsiveness, faster syncing, a better Bluetooth range, and a thinner body. The included multicolor lights are bright enough to be seen in direct sunlight and can be set to more than 16 million colors.

“Whether you’re training competitively or swimming for fitness, you want your focus to be on speed and form – not tracking laps. With the Speedo Shine 2, you can concentrate on your efforts in the pool without distractions,” said Team Speedo USA athlete and four-time Olympic medalist Cullen Jones. “Speedo Shine 2 is an ideal aid for athletes and fitness enthusiasts to maximize their time in the water while keeping track of their overall fitness and sleep.”

Misfit is also introducing a $9.99 in-app purchase that will enable Speedo Shine-style swimming tracking and lap counting in the Misfit Ray and Misfit Shine 2.

The Speedo Shine 2 can be purchased from the Misfit website or the Speedo website for $119.99.

Tags: Misfit, Speedo
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Adobe Launches Creative Cloud Update With New Features for Photoshop CC, Premiere Pro CC, and More

Adobe today announced the launch of its latest Creative Cloud updates, bringing new tools and more “Adobe Magic” to a range of apps including Photoshop CC, After Effects CC, Premiere Pro CC, Illustrator CC, and more.

There are several new features available in Photoshop CC, including Content-Aware Crop, Face-Aware Liquify, and Match Font, plus a new workspace for selections and masking. Content-Aware Crop intelligently fills in the open areas when a canvas is expanded or rotated beyond the original image size, allowing for more options when editing an image to get the perfect crop or angle.

Face-Aware Liquify automatically recognizes the different elements of a face when using the liquify tool, giving users direct control over facial features like eyes, nose, and mouth for making quick artistic changes. Match Font, the final major new feature in Photoshop CC, analyzes an image to determine what font was used, bringing it up in Photoshop if it’s already installed and locating it in TypeKit if it isn’t previously owned.

Adobe Premiere CC includes new workflows for editing immersive VR and 360 video experiences with a “field of view” mode for working with spherical stitched video. It offers options for dynamically switching between monoscopic, stereoscopic, and anaglyph frame layouts, and there’s a new workflow for editing while video and audio are still importing in the background.

After Effects CC features a new audio and video preview engine for smoother playback for cached frames plus new GPU-accelerated Gaussian Blur and Lumetri Color effects for faster rendering, while Animate CC includes enhanced brushes and improved web publishing and Illustrator CC features fast export of assets and artboards.

Adobe Stock is now able to integrate with Creative Cloud applications through a new One-Click Workflow that allows users to choose an image or video from the Adobe Stock website and open it in an app with a single click. There’s also a one-click licensing feature to purchase images directly within Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign.

Adobe is debuting a Premium Collection for Adobe Stock, featuring close to 100,000 high-quality images from artists and photographers, and beginning in July, Creative Cloud customers will be able to upload their own images to Adobe Stock.

Across all of Adobe’s Creative Cloud, there are new read-only libraries so Creative Cloud Libraries can be shared with team members for viewing purposes without giving all users the option of changing or deleting content, and all nearly apps have gained dozens of minor tweaks, bug fixes, and feature improvements.

“We have two key goals with this release: saving our customers time and helping them jumpstart their creative engines,” said Bryan Lamkin, executive vice president and general manager, Digital Media at Adobe. “Every creative project starts with a blank page and ends with a vision coming to life. Today’s release of Creative Cloud will help make that journey as fast and productive as possible. From deeper integration of Adobe Stock into the CC experience, to amazing new features like Content-Aware Crop in Adobe Photoshop, this release will expedite the creative process for millions of our customers.”

Some of these features were previously announced by Adobe on the Adobe blog and at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) show, but they’re launching as part of today’s Creative Cloud update and should be available shortly.

Adobe offers full Creative Cloud subscriptions for $49.99 per month, and those who have not subscribed can sign up for a 30-day free trial. Adobe also offers a $9.99 photography plan with access to Lightroom and Photoshop.

Tags: Adobe, Adobe Creative Cloud
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Dozens of Former Apple Employees Team Up to Launch ‘RearVision’ Vehicle Camera

A group of three former Apple engineers, along with around 50 various designers and workers also formerly employed by Apple, have created a new startup in the vehicle accessory market, called Pearl, and today announced pre-orders on their product “RearVision.” The $500 device is an attachable license plate accessory that connects via Bluetooth to an iOS or Android smartphone, displaying a 180-degree rear-view field of vision when backing up your car (via The Verge).

The RearVision unit comes with a dongle that connects with a vehicle’s on-board diagnostic port to help communicate and determine the car’s speed, and battery power isn’t a concern since the device charges using an integrated solar panel. Bryan Gardner, one of the co-founders of the company, said that one full day of sun equates to an entire week of charge for the device, and the RearVision can store one month of battery in its reserves.

Otherwise, the device functions like many integrated rear-view cameras: when backing up, the device’s dual-camera system automatically sends video to the connected smartphone in optional portrait view (with two levels of zoom) or landscape view. Two alternate alerts emit from the smartphone when the RearVision camera wants the user to slow down for a passerby or another car, and a more insistent sound when a collision might be imminent and the driver should stop the car completely.

Once the car is in forward motion above 10 mph, RearVision shuts off the rear-view camera and moves into a “Home Screen” section of the app. Here, users can choose their favorite and most used driving apps — Google Maps, Apple Maps, Spotify, Apple Music, etc — and place them in the Home Screen of RearVision’s app, which is generally a launching shortcut to quickly access the designated apps while on the move.

Gardner hopes that the company’s angle to support an install base of users (who have older cars without pre-installed rear-view cameras) will help promote safety in the automotive industry. The National Highway Safety Administration recently put into motion a ruling that will make all new cars launching in 2018 and beyond come with such technology ready for the user, but that still leaves a large swath of used and pre-owned vehicles without the ease-of-mind rear-view cameras can provide.

While the government can insist new cars get safer, they can’t do anything about older vehicles. That is both a crisis and an opportunity. “There’s about 7 percent of new car inventory that comes in the market every year. That leaves more than 90 percent of the cars are not new every year,” says Bryson Gardner, Pearl’s co-founder and CEO.

“We saw the entire industry focused on new cars. So we figured let’s focus on the existing install base. ” Gardner confirmed that the company already has other products in mind, but was coy about exactly what would come next. “If you were to go buy a Mercedes and there’s a driver awareness package, all of the things in there is the most important to get into the car in the short term.”

Those interested can pre-order the RearVision today for $499.99, with Pearl promising its knowledge of the Apple supply chain will help greatly in eliminating “any of the manufacturing pitfalls that have become common among small hardware startups.” The company also says that set-up is simple and doesn’t require anything besides a screwdriver and your smartphone. As of writing, the predicted shipping date for Pearl’s RearVision camera is sometime in September.

Tags: Pearl, RearVision
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Best PS4 games at E3 2016: God of War, Days Gone, Spider-Man, Horizon: Zero Dawn and more

With the E3 gaming expo 2016 done and dusted, the front runners in the gaming world unveiled their biggest and best titles. None more so than Sony, its PlayStation 4 looks set to go from strength to strength in 2016 and beyond.

With some top-drawer exclusive titles unveiled, some favourites from previous years finally slated with a released date, and PS VR – the company’s £349 virtual reality hardware – also set for a 13 October release date, there’s plenty to look forward to.

Some were surprises, such as the revamped, refreshed God of War — a PS4 exclusive title that reimagines the smash-em-up franchise with a new story and greater heart.

Sony also snagged Hideo Kojima, of Metal Gear Solid fame, to bring his next title, Death Stranding, to PS4 and bypass Xbox One in the process.

READ: E3 2016: All the launches, games and consoles at the show

However, there was no new PS4 console hardware to show off at the show, unlike Microsoft, which unveiled its Xbox One S and forthcoming “most powerful console in the world” Project Scorpio. We know there’s a PlayStation “4K” in the works, codenamed Neo, but that’s as much as the company has said about it thus far.

Even so, with a bevy of first- and third-party titles on the horizon, the future looks like a serious one for gamers, whatever genre you favour. Here’s our rundown of the best PS4 games from E3 2016.