Tag Archives: XLab

Alphabet is using salt and antifreeze to store power from wind farms

Posted on by
The latest from Alphabet's experimental X division? A storage solution for renewable energy. Code named "Malta," the system uses tanks of salt and antifreeze (or another hydrocarbon liquid) to create and store energy.

California Governor Brown signs bill clearing use of driverless cars on public roads (video)

Posted on by

California Governor Brown signs bill clearing use of driverless cars on public roads video

Google just chalked up one of the more important victories for driverless cars. California Governor Jerry Brown has signed bill SB1298 into law, formalizing the legal permissions and safety standards needed to let automated vehicles cruise on state-owned roads. While the bill lets anyone move forward with their plans, it's clear from the ceremony that local technology darling Google is the primary impetus for the measure: Brown visited Google's Mountain View headquarters to put ink to paper, and Google co-founder Sergey Brin oversaw the signing with his Google Glass eyewear on full display. If you're dying to see driverless vehicles become mainstays of the Golden State, the official act making that possible is already available to watch after the break.

Continue reading California Governor Brown signs bill clearing use of driverless cars on public roads (video)

Filed under: ,

California Governor Brown signs bill clearing use of driverless cars on public roads (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 25 Sep 2012 16:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceGoogle (Google+)  | Email this | Comments

Google simulates the human brain with 1000 machines, 16000 cores and a love of cats

Posted on by

Google simulates the human brain with 1000 machines, 16000 cores and a love of cats

Don't tell Google, but its latest X lab project is something performed by the great internet public every day. For free. Mountain View's secret lab stitched together 1,000 computers totaling 16,000 cores to form a neural network with over 1 billion connections, and sent it to YouTube looking for cats. Unlike the popular human time-sink, this was all in the name of science: specifically, simulating the human brain. The neural machine was presented with 10 million images taken from random videos, and went about teaching itself what our feline friends look like. Unlike similar experiments, where some manual guidance and supervision is involved, Google's pseudo-brain was given no such assistance.

It wasn't just about cats, of course -- the broader aim was to see whether computers can learn face detection without labeled images. After studying the large set of image-data, the cluster revealed that indeed it could, in addition to being able to develop concepts for human body parts and -- of course -- cats. Overall, there was 15.8 percent accuracy in recognizing 20,000 object categories, which the researchers claim is a 70 percent jump over previous studies. Full details of the hows and whys will be presented at a forthcoming conference in Edinburgh.

Google simulates the human brain with 1000 machines, 16000 cores and a love of cats originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 26 Jun 2012 07:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink SMH.com.au  |  sourceCornell University, New York Times, Official Google Blog  | Email this | Comments

Google’s Project Glass trackpad gets swaddled in patent protection

Posted on by

Image

Remember when Sergey Brin was on The Gavin Newsom Show showing off Project Glass' right-sided physical trackpad? Today, that element of the tech was given the official thumbs-up by the US patent and trademark office. Legally-trained minds in the audience concerned about the appearance forming prior art, take it easy -- the patent was filed five days before the Google chief took to basic cable to demonstrate his pet project to the current Lt. Governor of California.

Google's Project Glass trackpad gets swaddled in patent protection originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 19 Jun 2012 08:47:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceUSPTO  | Email this | Comments

Project Glass revealed to have physical trackpad along right arm (video)

Posted on by

Image

Sergey Brin has appeared on The Gavin Newsom Show on Current TV to drop a few more enticing hints about Project Glass. While showing the presenter a picture he'd taken with the AR glasses, he revealed that the prototype is controlled with a trackpad running down the right* arm. He also talked about the device's genesis in Goggle's X Lab, which he described as an "advanced skunkworks" where "far-out projects" are developed -- it's also the department that occupies most of his time. While the units he and his colleagues have been wearing are very rough prototypes, the Google co-founder shared his private hope that the tech will make its way to general release next year. You can catch the extract in full in the video after the break.

*Right for the wearer, left for the observer. It depends entirely on your perspective.

Continue reading Project Glass revealed to have physical trackpad along right arm (video)

Project Glass revealed to have physical trackpad along right arm (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 30 May 2012 05:16:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Ubergizmo  |  sourceCurrent TV  | Email this | Comments