Iris

MENLO PARK, Calif.--If you've seen the Oscar-winning film "The Hurt Locker," you know how dangerous bomb dismantling can be. But researchers have developed a system that they say can allow military and police to disarm explosives without risking anyone's life.

The system, developed by scientists at SRI International, is known as Taurus, and it is a miniature robot that can allow a trained dismantler to remotely do the work that used to require getting up close and personal, often too close for comfort, to a bomb.

According to Tom Low, SRI's director of medical systems and telerobotics, Taurus will be in field trials this summer and is expected to be commercially available by early 2012. While he would not say specifically what the 14-inch wide robot would cost, SRI's goal is to sell it for "less than the price of a squad car," meaning that many police departments, as well as military agencies, could conceivably buy it.

I got a presentation on Taurus from Low yesterday during a visit to SRI as part of my Road Trip at Home series. I've been to SRI before and seen things like wall-climbing robots, but seeing the way that Taurus could potentially help save lives was a much starker reminder of the ways that robots can make a real difference.

Taurus is a cousin of some of SRI's previous efforts into remote-controlled telemanipulation robotics. For years, the institution has worked on systems designed to allow remote surgical procedures, such as a military doctor being able to operate from afar on a wounded soldier. Low explained that this work began in the mid-to-late 1980s, and was intended to allow highly-trained surgeons to work on such soldiers within minutes of them sustaining injuries.

Over the years, this technology led to the creation of more general-purpose robots, such as the M7 system, which could allow security personnel to remotely explore, say, an abandoned bag at an airport. Low explained that it was crucial that the system be easy to use and quick to learn. … Read more

One day, you might be able to turn your watch into a tablet--by stretching it.

At the CeBit tech fair in Hannover, Germany, Asus is showing off IRIS (Inspirational Research for Immersive Space), its vaporware concept for the next generation of personal computing devices.

IRIS can be whatever you want it to be, such as an alarm clock, watch, cell phone, e-reader, tablet, or gaming device. You simply slide the edge of the flexible display outward or inward. My favorite thing about this futuristic adaptive device, aside from its incredible style, is that it aims to eliminate the need to carry multiple gadgets. As smartphones, tablets, and other devices evolve, it seems more obvious that they will eventually converge while somehow maintaining portability. Zach Morris would so have this in "Saved by the Bell: 2040." … Read more

Cooliris has just released a new version of its add-on that lets users run multiple instances of its media browsing wall in different tabs of the same browser. Previously, the only way to get it to run like this was to open it in different browsers. This way you can have one tab open to search YouTube videos, another that's browsing online photos, and a third that's playing a TV show off of Cooliris' Hulu.com interface.

Users are only limited in the number of Cooliris tabs they can have by what their computer is capable of. I … Read more

CoolIris for iPhone has just received a hot update...and we do mean hot. New on the list of features is the capability to turn Google's SafeSearch on or off, which according to the company was one of the most requested features. The app remembers your preferences between sessions, giving you a wider gamut of results that can be, well, NSFW.

Why is this so important? If you're familiar with Apple's app store reviews process and guidelines you'll know the company has been rather stringent. So much so, it won't even let you view the … Read more

Photo and video enhancer Cooliris (download) has launched an updated version of its browser add-on that brings new features including support for viewing local media, file specific metadata, and a Facebook photo viewer that shows user name tags. It's also available--for the first time, to Linux users.

A few weeks ago I met with Shashi Seth, Cooliris' chief revenue officer, and Austin Shoemaker who is the company's CTO to talk about the release, which they say has addressed some of the top requests from their users. The biggest being the capability to view local photos and videos from their computer's hard drive inside of Cooliris' 3D media wall, which users on all three platforms can now do.

This basically turns your browser into an ad-hoc media center, something Shoemaker says has been created to be a unified experience across multiple platforms. For instance, if you're on a Mac, it links up with iPhoto, and if you're on a PC, it organizes your "my pictures" folder by album. Either way, you see your stuff without telling the service where to go to find it.

But what about Web content you ask? It's also been given a boost--literally. The new version has a visual effects engine that take better advantage of users' graphics hardware. For Mac users the tool is using OpenGL, and on Windows it's Direct 3D. Seth says it runs lean enough that most hardware from the last five years or so should have no problems with it. In my brief testing I ran it on a 3- year-old PC with barely a hiccup, however it's noticeably smoother on my other machine with a beefier graphics card.

Additionally, the tool now displays a much broader selection of metadata from selected sites. When viewing photos from Picasa Web Albums and Google Image search, or videos from YouTube, it now shows things like view count, user ratings, exposure, aperture, and resolution. This unfortunately… Read more

Here's a fairly new, fairly stealth specimen for all you mobile browser buffs. The Iris Browser is a beta-only offering produced by Torch Mobile, a start-up that presented at last week's Under the Radar conference.

While the beta for Windows Mobile phones 5+ is publicly available, consumers won't likely be able to download it themselves in its full incarnation. The company will convert beta testers' feedback into a more robust product to sell to manufacturers, who will brand the browser as their own.

I've been trying out the Iris Browser nonetheless--it's got a full enough … Read more

For years, biometric finger scanners have been used in ATMs and at the cash register. But there are problems with finger scanners. Researchers have demonstrated how a flat photograph or molded fingertip can easily fool these devices into giving a false approval. And while face recognition is improving, especially 3D facial mapping, these devices aren't yet in wide use today.

Fujitsu PalmSecure is another option. Already in use in hospitals and government offices, the device reads the hand's vein pattern using near-infrared light. On this week's Security Bites podcast, I spoke with Joel Hagberg, vice president of … Read more

PicLens, which we've covered before, is a browser plug-in that replaces the typical photo viewer you use on sites like Flickr. It's recently been updated, and if you haven't checked it out lately, now's the time. It's stunning.

The plug-in, which works in Internet Explorer, Firefox, Flock, and Safari (where it's a bit limited), lets you create a moving wall of images where you'd otherwise just see your Web app's more static display of pictures. Launching the viewer is just a matter of clicking a new "play" icon that appears … Read more

Let's be honest here. If you're a Sprint or Verizon Wireless customer, you must feel a slight twinge of envy as companies steadily churn out cool GSM-only smart phones like the HTC Cavalier S630 and Nokia N95, while leaving the CDMA network in the cold. But there, there, don't fret; the smart phone manufacturers haven't forgotten about you. In fact, the FCC has just approved a device called the HTC Iris S640, a Windows Mobile 6 smart phone with integrated Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and EV-DO support. It's also said that the candy bar-style handset will have … Read more