PowerPole Another GoPro Mount

PowerPole is another GoPro mount which includes GoPro action camera for capturing your exciting moments during an adventure. It also allows you to charge it in case of low battery.

Attaching a GoPro action camera on a stick while skateboarding, hiking and skiing etc. has become common these days. A stick-mounted action camera is one among the other easy ways to include or film yourself in a video of yours. The biggest disadvantage of this pole-mounted action camera is its battery life. If your adventure lasts longer than the GoPro’s batteries then?

PowerPole with its amazing features: 

Here PowerPole (pole mounted with a GoPro camera) comes into the picture, the main aim behind the creation of PowerPole is to increase the battery life of the mounted GoPro action camera. It allows you not to carry extra batteries during your adventure. PowerPole is provided with a battery of 5400 mAh which provides extra power to the camera and is almost equal to five GoPro batteries. PowerPole is a durable, sleek and equally extendable stick made up of 100 percent aluminum.

The PowerPole not only holds the GoPro action camera, but also allows you to connect your smartphone to it, through which you can control the action camera using the GoPro app. Another interesting feature of this portable power pole is that it is provided with two USB outputs for charging. Using this amazing feature you can charge two devices at a time.

PowerPole is splash-proof in case you face bad weather or get wet. Being splash-proof doesn’t mean that it is completely waterproof, so be careful or prevent it from dropping into a lake, ocean or a puddle.

PowerPole has surpassed its initial funding goal of $ 25,000 and has increased it to $ 50,000.

GoPro: 

GoPro formerly known as Woodman Labs, Inc. is an American public corporation based in San Mateo, California, USA that manufactures, develops and markets HD (high definition) personal cameras. These cameras are generally used in acute and intense action video photography.

GoPro cameras are popularly known for being lightweight, mountable or wearable, rugged and compact in amazing places. These cameras capture high quality pictures and videos in HD using a wide-angle lens and can be regulated using other devices like smartphones.

Nick Woodman founded this company in 2002 and sold its first camera system that is a 35 mm film version in the year 2004. Slowly the company started developing the camera quality and reached to digital from 35mm.

Today, the company provides the fixed-lens HD video cameras which uses a wide 170-degree angle. You can also create 3D videos by pairing two or more cameras. Garmin, Sony, JVC, etc. is the GoPro competitors in the market.

HERO4, HERO3+, HERO3, HD HERO2, HD HERO, HD HERO 960, Digital HERO 5, Digital HERO 3 and GoPro HERO 35mm (All-season Sports camera) are a few of the latest products released by the company. Based on the shares, views, comments and overall engagement, GoPro company was named as one of the ‘Top 10 Brand Channels on YouTube’ in April 2014.

Spacesuit for Future Astronauts – Safe Pressurized Suit

The spacesuit for the future astronauts, a MIT `second skin’ suit is created from smart material which contracts to hug the skin, with safe pressurized suit which would only support the astronaut, giving them much freedom in moving around during their exploration in space and now for the astronauts the process has become a lot easier wherein instead of getting into a conventional bulky, gas pressurized suit, they can don a lightweight, stretchy suit which has been lined with muscle like coils.

Thereafter they could plug into the spacecraft’s power supply and trigger the coils to contract which would shrink wrap the suit around their body. This skin tight pressurized suit, not only supports the astronaut but also provides much freedom while moving around during their planetary expedition. While taking the suit off, all that the astronaut needs to do is to apply a fair amount of force to return the suit to its looser form.

Comfort of Movement during Space Exploration

MIT researchers are heading closer to engineering an active second skin spacesuit for the astronauts, in bringing about much comfort in movement while in space. A professor of aeronautics, astronautics and engineering systems at MIT, Dava Newman together with her colleagues have created an active compression garment which incorporates small spring like coils that tend to contract due to heat.

The coils which are made from a SMA – shape memory alloy is a type of material that remembers an engineered shape which, when deformed or bent, tends to spring back to the shape when heated. The coils are incorporated in a tourniquet type cuff and applied to a current to generate heat when at a certain temperature; the coils tend to contract to their remembered form, just as a fully coiled spring and tighten the cuff in the process.

While in subsequent test, the group also found that the pressure produced by the coils tallied with that which was required to fully support the astronaut while in space.

Form Fitting & Flexible

According to Newman, who had worked for the past few decades to design a form fitting and flexible spacesuit for the future astronauts, he states that with conventional space suite, one is in a balloon of gas which provides the necessary one-third of an atmosphere to keep them alive in the vacuum of space.

He further added that they wanted to achieve the same pressurization but through mechanical counter pressure, by applying the pressure directly to the skin, to avoid the gas pressure with the combination of passive elastic with active materials with the advantage of mobility as well as a very lightweight suit for planetary exploration. Bradley Holschuh conceived the coil design, a postdoc in Newman’s lab.

Tourniquet System on Battlefield

An array of coils to an elastic cuff, were rigged by the researcher, attached by each coil to a small thread that was linked to the cuff. Thereafter, they attached leads to the coils opposite ends, applying a voltage, generating heat and between 60 and 160 C the coils got contracted pulling the attached thread thus tightening the cuff. T

hese according to Holschuh were basically self-closing buckles. Once the suit was worn, the current can run through and the suit then shrink wraps up and get closed. Holschuh also added that this could be used as a tourniquet system when someone tends to be bleeding out on the battlefield and if the suit has sensors, it could tourniquet the person in the event of injury without the person having to worry about it.

Google Taking Control of OS through Android One

Through Android one Google will be able to control their OS just like rival Apple Inc. and a lot of excitement and expectation has been linked with this launch. Currently, hardware partners of Google are not keen into launching any high-end devices for Android One.

If you are among the people looking for great hardware then you will be definitely disappointed. Spice, Micromax and Karbon phones, all have the similar specs and software. These devices will be getting all the Android updates at the same time as that of Nexus smartphones, which are some other hero devices. After a very long time an Android launch is not pertaining to the specifications. Android One is all about Google taking over full control of the OS from both software and hardware viewpoint.

In terms of hardware, all the partners of Android One will have menu of sorts to select the components they want to make the smartphones with and all these components will be selected by Google. In order to get a stock Android, the manufacturers will only have to pick and chose components.

Apart from the three partners which were announced by Google, the other partner includes Alcatel, ASUS, Acer, HTC, Lava, Lenovo, Xolo, Panasonic and Intex. Chipmaker Qualcomm are already onboard with Google on this programme. So this is great push for Android One.

Google is not rattled by the Android forks as far as software is concerned and they can’t have a considerable impact on the revenue of the company. The biggest issue that can be faced is about the vendors choosing the option to ship phones with applications which can replace the current apps of the Google as well. In Indian branded phones, the users have multiple browser options hence they tend to confuse people. With Android One the user will not have any such problem.

Google has been reportedly discouraging the use of alternative application stores. The company was also in discussion with Samsung as some of the apps which are available on Samsung line will allow the users to purchase content from Google Play. This will eat the revenue of Google as any apps purchased through a third party will not let the company any money.

Even though many people might not be impressed with the first wave of Android One device, it will certainly signify a change in the approach of Google. During the early stages of Android development, the aim was to ensure app development to be an easy process; a new feature was expected to be released with every new version released for Android.

This clearly indicates that the Android hardware needs to be upgraded with new OS versions; Google is already focusing on fine-tuning the ecosystem.

According to the reports, Google is working on standardization of hardware and software of the Android devices to a level which has not been seen before. Google is working on customizing their problem with positive approach.

MIT Cheetah Robot Gets Enables through New Algorithm to Run and Jump

Cheetah is known for its speed and agility. With the accelerated speed of up to 60 mph in few seconds it is known to be the fastest land predator on earth. It has the ability to pump its legs in tandem when in top speed, bounding until it is able to reach a full gallop.

At the moment the researchers from MIT have worked and developed an algorithm for bounding, which they have been able to successfully able to implement it inside a robotic cheetah. This robotic cheetah is a sleek, which is a four legged assembly of gears, batteries and electric motor that weighs almost similar to the feline counterpart.

The research team was able to take the robot for a test run on the Killian Court of MIT, where the robotic cheetah was able to across the grass with a stable clip. When the experiment was conducted indoors, the cheetah was able to sprint to 10 mph and still continued running after clearing the hurdle. According to the researcher, the current version of this robot is estimated to reach to a speed of 30 mph.

Bounding Key: 

The key to the algorithm was to program each leg to exert a specific force in split second at time of hitting the ground and to maintain speed. In general faster the speed the more force is required for propelling the robot faster.

According to Sangbae Kim, an associate professor at MIT mechanical engineering department, force-control approach applied to the robot is the same as that of sprinters race. As per him due to this approach the robotic cheetah is able to handle the rougher terrain which includes jumping across a grassy field.

He also stated that since most of the robots are heavily built they are unable to handle and control the force in high speed scenarios. This is what makes the MIT cheetah extraordinary as the force can be easily controllable. The cheetah is dynamic because of the electric motor which has been designed by Jeffrey Lang who is Vitesse Professor of Electrical Engineering and the custom design. These motors have been designed to be controlled by amplifier which was designed by David Otten who research engineer in MIT's Research Laboratory of Electronics.

Towards the main gait: 

The act of running has been parsed into various bio mechanically different gaits. The first model chosen by the researcher involves the actions similar to that of rabbits. In this the bounding has been categorized in terms of the front legs hitting the ground together which is followed by the movement of the hind legs.

According to Kim, bounding is the entry gait and galloping is the main gait. Once bounding has been reached, one can split the legs to get galloping.

In general when an animal bound, their legs will touch the ground before they start the cycling process within second’s gap. In bio mechanics, the percentage of time the legs is on the ground rather than the air is known as duty cycle. The speed of the animal determines the duty cycle.

According to Kim, their robotic cheetah can be silent as well as be efficient like an animal. The only thing one can hear is the legs hitting the ground. This should be expected from any legged robot in future.

Google Chrome 38 Browser and It’s Profile Management

Google has released a new beta version of Chrome namely Chrome 38. Let us have a look and feel the changes in it and check whether it is up to the user satisfaction or else for beyond it. With new Chrome 38 Google has integrated a new menu for managing more profiles of different users. The developers are hardly trying to give a tough fight to the Mozilla in the integration of the first WebRTC service in Firefox 33, Google is working on Chrome 38 on a unified control for user profiles, enabled the new guest mode and promises else a lot of new stuff in every nook and edges as much as possible on their own style and way.

The most novel and striking feature of Chrome 38 is their user profile management system. In this new Chrome 38 the user can switch between different profiles very easily and swiftly. This integration is useful when multiple users share a single system. Even though handling of multiple profiles of the users is not new in Chrome and however it is inducted already but those functions and options were hidden in depths of the settings and most of the users hardly notice such options.

To create a new profile, you must call the settings dialog to do so. Besides the possibility to change the profile, the new menu also offers the option to switch to guest mode of the browser. Even though, this option is available since from the version 36 of the chrome, but it was not given much importance and hardly noticed.

But now the guests can use Chrome browser more effectively and on closing of the browser they won’t leave any traces of their foot print in the system. But unlike the incognito mode, a guest mode also serves to protect your privacy, as the guest also could not get your personal data’s like history book marks etc.

Even though it is limited this is possible because every user profile is password protected and also you have an option for switch to one profile from others. The guest user can open Chrome window in visitor mode by clicking in the bottom left of the Chrome. The Windows users of 64- bit version user can download the Chrome 38 or upgrade to Chrome 38 from Chrome 37 without any hindrance where as the users of the Apple's OS X operating system wait some more time for a 64-bit version.

For the Windows users, the browser will do the choice between a 32 and 64-bit version automatically. The latest Chrome 38 beta is flawless and the performance remains at the high level of its predecessor, its V8 benchmark gains more points when compared with its predecessor Chrome 37.

 Most innovations deliver Chrome 38 under the hood. Images can be flexibly installed in responsive web pages, which is mainly when browsing with smart phones and tablets of advantage. Developers get for the same the right tools at hand to make it easier to build the WebPages. In addition, the Chrome developer made JavaScript support of your browser with the help of maps and sets as well as new mathematical functions on vigorously.

Interesting for the Android version of the browser is the introduction of the Screen Orientation API and the API NetInfo. Using the former recognize apps when the device orientation changes and prevent, if necessary, the automatic screen rotation. With the second interface asking Apps from the nature of the current network connection to the system and restart it to the strong Wi fi available, if the user is downloading large files then clear when Wi-Fi is available.

With Chrome 38 for Android Google fits the browser continues to material design, the new design language of future Android version. In addition, Chrome is now able to read out the charge state of the Smartphone and, where appropriate, adapt its behavior. Chrome 38 offers equipped with Android L on a Nexus device, have the option to integrate the individual tabs from Chrome in the App Overview of Android.

Open the advanced settings of the browser (and Enable Context search field, can be converted into a web search after restarting the app marked items easy. With Chrome 38 Google Product Care operates in the broadest sense. Even though the new version does have to offer some interesting new features, but the big highlights are still missing.

Thus, the Profile Management is the only special feature in the new design and the protection of the inn mode fall without a password protection from straightforward. Under the hood, though dormant, it primarily benefits the most web developers.