Laser Weapon System (LaWS)

120804-N-ZZ999-001 SAN DIEGO, Calif. (Jul. 30, 2012) The Laser Weapon System (LaWS) temporarily installed aboard the guided-missile destroyer USS Dewey (DDG 105) in San Diego, Calif., is a technology demonstrator built by the Naval Sea Systems Command from commercial fiber solid state lasers, utilizing combination methods developed at the Naval Research Laboratory. LaWS can be directed onto targets from the radar track obtained from a MK 15 Phalanx Close-In Weapon system or other targeting source. The Office of Naval Research’s Solid State Laser (SSL) portfolio includes LaWS development and upgrades providing a quick reaction capability for the fleet with an affordable SSL weapon prototype. This capability provides Navy ships a method for Sailors to easily defeat small boat threats and aerial targets without using bullets. (U.S. Navy video by Office of Naval Research/ Released)

Windenergy convertor EWICON

How does a “windmill” without mechanically moving parts work? TU Delft researchers Johan Smit and Dhiradj Djairam developed the EWICON (Electrostatic Windenergy CONvertor), a windenergy convertor that transforms windenergy into electricity without mechanical moving parts. This animation shows how it works and can be deployed.

ViralSearch: Identifying and Visualizing Viral Content

What does it mean for online content to “go viral”? An analysis of almost a billion information cascades on Twitter news, videos, and photos has produced the first quantitative notion of whether something has indeed gone viral, thereby enabling further research into topic experts, trending topics, and viral-incident metrics.

More info at http://research.microsoft.com/apps/video/default.aspx?id=185452

SketchInsight: automatically completing sketches

SketchInsight is an interactive whiteboard system for storytelling with data by using real-time sketching. Creating personalized, expressive data charts becomes quick and easy. The presenter simply sketches an example, and SketchInsight automatically completes the chart by synthesizing from example sketches.

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/groups/cue/sketchinsight/index.html

BLINK for Windows Phone 8

With BLINK for Windows Phone 8, you’ll never miss the best shot. BLINK captures a burst of images beginning even before you press the shutter and continuing beyond. No problem if you push the shutter a few moments too early or too late. With BLINK, a simple finger swipe lets you find the perfect shot. You can even return to BLINK to find a second and third shot from a single capture. Advanced image stabilization technology from Microsoft Research removes camera shake and lets you focus on the important parts of the scene.

This tutorial video for BLINK showcases the different usage scenarios of the app.

Get the app for free:
http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/sto…

More information: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/blink/

BLINK forums: http://social.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/BLINK

Try F# website updated

Check out the new Try F# website and give it a go at http://www.tryfsharp.org/ !

Leave a comment if you have already started using F# and explain why (or why not).

IllumiRoom projects images beyond your TV for an immersive gaming experience

IllumiRoom is a proof-of-concept Microsoft Research project designed to push the boundary of living room immersive entertainment by blending our virtual and physical worlds with projected visualizations. The effects in the video are rendered in real time and are captured live — not special effects added in post processing.

IllumiRoom project was designed by:
Brett Jones, Hrvoje Benko, Eyal Ofek and Andy Wilson

More info: http://research.microsoft.com/projects/illumiroom/

 

LiquiGlide

 

Speech recognition breakthrough for the spoken, translated word

Chief Research Officer Rick Rashid demonstrates a speech recognition breakthrough via machine translation that converts his spoken English words into computer-generated Chinese language. The breakthrough is patterned after deep neural networks and significantly reduces errors in spoken as well as written translation.

Watch it completely. At the end there is also something cool

Kinect Fusion Coming to Kinect for Windows

Kinect Fusion was first developed as a research project at the Microsoft Research lab in Cambridge, U.K.  As soon as the Kinect for Windows community saw it, they began asking us to include it in our SDK. Now, I’m happy to report that the Kinect for Windows team is, indeed, working on incorporating it and will have it available in a future release.

Yeah!

More info: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/kinectforwindows/archive/2012/11/05/kinect-fusion-coming-to-kinect-for-windows.aspx