INNOVATION UNDER TIME PRESSURE IS HIGH QUALITY INNOVATION
What is Project Ara?
Project Ara is a development effort to create a modular hardware ecosystem--rivaling mobile apps in the pace and level of innovation--around smartphones, with the goal of delivering the mobile internet to the next 5 billion people. Put another way, Project Ara aims to enable users to create a modular smartphone that is precisely tailored to their functional and aesthetic preferences. It all starts with an endoskeleton, or “endo,” the structural frame and data backbone of the device. The user can populate the endo with “modules,” the building blocks that make up the vast majority of the phone’s functionality and features. The modules can be easily and safely inserted and removed at any time, even while the device is powered on. The modules also have user-replaceable covers or “shells,” which provide a creative canvas for users to make their phone look exactly as they wish. Ultimately, customers will be able to buy a complete Ara phone, configure one from scratch, or buy additional modules through the Ara Module Marketplace. Project Ara lives in Google’s Advanced Technology and Projects (ATAP) group. For more about ATAP and Project Ara, check out these recent articles from Fortune, TIME, and The Verge.
A new open-hardware computing platform, flexible and powerful, designed for use as a desktop, laptop, or standalone board.
Novena is a 1.2GHz, Freescale quad-core ARM architecture computer closely coupled with a Xilinx FPGA.
It's designed for users who care about open source, and/or want to
modify and extend their hardware: all the documentation for the PCBs is open and free to download, the entire OS is buildable from source, and it comes with a variety of features that facilitate rapid prototyping.
Recently, to be more precisely this morning at around 15h00 UTC [ref], I have heard the last podcast of Outriders [mp3] where I found various interesting ideas. Of these one which use Inertial Measurements Sensors so as to create a smart environment in which there is a immediate impact on music while dancers are performing [ref]. Dr. Steve Holland, a professor at Iowa State University in the Department of Aerospace Engineering, is the developer of such flabbergasted interface, however at his personal web-page no information is provided but other Open source projects [web page]. In similar fashion, NeuroKnitting [knitic.com], a Open Source Project by which use arduino and processing and a non-invasive EEG headset, plotted the brainwave acitity into a knnitted pattern in a scarf. I yearning for having my own scarf with some brainwaves plotted not by hearing Goldberg Variations by Bach, instead for my personal taste, I would rather listen something which is a combination of dissonance and contrapuntal complexity such as: Beethoven Grose Fuge [video] [wiki].
Computer AI researchers hit the headlines earlier this year when a Go program, Zen19, won a game with a 4-stone handicap against Takemiya Masaki 9p (ninth dan professional). Zen’s positional awareness is good; it’s the least bot-like AI to watch. There are many proprietary Go programs, but much cutting- edge AI research can be found in open source Go programs – and there’s an opportunity to get involved at many levels.
What is Go?
Go is a board game developed in China, where it is called Wei Qi, 2,500 years ago. It combines the simplest of rules with incredibly complex strategy. Two players alternately place black and white stones on a grid of 19×19 lines (smaller boards are used by beginners, and often by Go programs), starting with black. The weaker player may have several stones’ head start (handicap), in which case these black stones are placed on special strategic points.
An information-rich view of GNU Go through Emacs
The game is won by controlling territory. Adjacent stones of the same colour form strings, expanding or joining until they surround empty areas. If the four cardinal points around a stone are surrounded by the other side, the stone is removed from the board. Otherwise the stones stay on the board until the end, when surrounded territory is counted up.
The vast majority of the world’s 40 million Go players are in East Asia, but Go features regularly at Mind Sports Olympiads, and Go clubs can be found across the UK and elsewhere. However, for many people in Europe and America, regular games can only be played thanks to Go servers running on the internet – where as well as other people of all levels, examples of all the current AIs can be found playing.
Geto GOing
Get started with Go on Linux
UNIX users are used to modular programs plugging together. In Go the AI and board are usually separate. The board often works with human and AI players and internet Go servers.
Ubuntu users can open a terminal and type:
sudo apt-get install gnugo cgoban
Alternatively, the Fuego tarball is on SourceForge, along with the GoGUI board.
All modern Go programs can communicate via the Go Text Protocol, and as well as playing against an AI, you can pit two AIs against each other. This can be done either through the GoGUI or the KGS Go Server.
If you want to play against human beings, and not just over the internet, the British Go Association has a list of UK clubs – most big cities and towns have one.
Strategic thinking
While the rules may be simple, the strategy is extremely difficult to quantify. Indeed, it’s not really possible for a computer to reliably assess whether a given position is a winning one or not – although stones may have been removed from the board, this is not as important as the points- based tally in chess.
The challenge is to approach the human ability in pattern-matching. Go is a game of balance. Libraries of blocks enable AIs to make local judgement, but the influence of many nearby weak groups on a string involves matching and discarding too many possible moves.
To put this in perspective, there are 361 points on a Go board – 361 different places where the first stone may be placed; by the fourth move in, there are 16 billion possible board positions, which makes brute force – perfectly suited to chess’s limited board positions – an inadequate tool even with today’s supercomputers. In fact, a 1000 teraflop computer would require more than five days to assess all possible combinations of the next eight moves in order to make a single play [see the ‘Number Crunching’ on Reference link below for more details].
The OpenPositioningSystem project is an approach of building an open navigation system run by people like you.
At the moment, we are bound to the americans military GPS and network companies. As we are using digital maps empowered with GPS, which are curated
and therefore have impact on our navigation and experience of our
environment, we also have to think about the given technology. The technology is closed at the moment and can be curated or shut down at any time. This navigation system is open. Which means it is not run by
companies nor control. The goal is to gather interested people on the
web platform openps.org to develop the necessary software, hardware and
testing processes. Anybody who is interested, from beginner to
professionals can participate and contribute their knowledge to the
community and this system.
To use given things in cities and reuse them for the projects needs is one aim of this project. The idea is to use seismic frequencies, produced by generators in
power plants, turbines in pumping stations or other large machines
running in factories.
These generators, machines etc. are producing seismic activity, distributed over the ground.
The sensor prototype can detect seismic waves on the ground, walls or anything with enough contact to the ground. At the current stage of this project the sensor can detect and collect different frequencies.
To calculate the noise in a city out of the received signals from the
ground, the sensor has to be tuned into a specific frequency. To get a
specific frequency from one machine, turbine etc. the sensor has to be
as close as possible to the seismic source to receive a clean and strong
signal at least once.
When at least three signals and their positions on a map are known, one can calculate the position within these three signals.
In this early stage, the project will still rely on GPS and maps. With
the process of expanding the new network of seismic sources, it can be
possible to build an own positioning system.
