Researchers Build Flying Robot

Researchers say they have assembled a flying robot. It’s not designed to fly like a bird or an insect, but was built to simulate the movements of a swimming jellyfish.

Scientists at New York University say they built the small, flying vehicle to move like the boneless, pulsating, water-dwelling jellyfish.

Leif Ristroph, a post-doctoral student at NYU and a lead researcher on the project, explained that previous flying robots were based on the flight of birds or insects, such as flies.

Last spring, for example, Harvard University researchers announced that they had built an insect-like robot that flies by flapping its wings. The flying robot is so small it has about 1/30th the weight of a U.S. penny.

Before the Harvard work was announced, researchers at the University of Sheffield and the University of Sussex in England worked together to study thebrains of honey bees in an attempt to build an autonomous flying robot.

By creating models of the systems in a bee’s brain that control vision and sense of smell, scientists hope to build a robot that would be able to sense and act as autonomously as a bee.

The problem with those designs, though, is that the flapping wing of a fly is inherently unstable, Ristroph noted.

“To stay in flight and to maneuver, a fly must constantly monitor its environment to sense every gust of wind or approaching predator, adjusting its flying motion to respond within fractions of a second,” Ristroph said. “To recreate that sort of complex control in a mechanical device — and to squeeze it into a small robotic frame — is extremely difficult.”

To get beyond those challenges, Ristroph built a prototype robot that is 8 centimeters wide and weighs two grams. The robot flies by flapping four wings arranged like petals on a flower that pulsate up and down, resembling the flying motion of a moth.

The machine, according to NYU, can hover and fly in a particular direction.

There is more work still to be done. Ristroph reported that his prototype doesn’t have a battery but is attached to an external power source. It also can’t steer, either autonomously or via remote control.

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Can Robots Run On (NH2)2CO?

Scientists have discovered a way to power future robots using an unusual source — urine.

Researchers at the University of the West of England, Bristol and the University of Bristol collaborated to build a system that will enable robots to function without batteries or being plugged into an electrical outlet.

Based on the functioning of the human heart, the system is designed to pump urine into the robot’s “engine room,” converting the waste into electricity and enabling the robot to function completely on its own.

Scientists are hoping the system, which can hold 24.5 ml of urine, could be used to power future generations of robots, or what they’re calling EcoBots.

“In the city environment, they could re-charge using urine from urinals in public lavatories,” said Peter Walters, a researcher with the University of the West of England. “In rural environments, liquid waste effluent could be collected from farms.”

In the past 10 years, researchers have built four generations of EcoBots, each able to use microorganisms to digest the waste material and generate electricity from it, the university said.

Along with using human and animal urine, the robotic system also can create power by using rotten fruit and vegetables, dead flies, waste water and sludge.

Ioannis Ieropoulos, a scientist with the Bristol Robotics Laboratory, explained that the microorganisms work inside microbial fuel cells where they metabolize the organics, converting them into carbon dioxide and electricity.

Like the human heart, the robotic system works by using artificial muscles that compress a soft area in the center of the device, forcing fluid to be expelled through an outlet and delivered to the fuel cells. The artificial muscles then relax and go through the process again for the next cycle.

“The artificial heartbeat is mechanically simpler than a conventional electric motor-driven pump by virtue of the fact that it employs artificial muscle fibers to create the pumping action, rather than an electric motor, which is by comparison a more complex mechanical assembly,” Walter said.

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King.com Has IPO In The Works

King.com Ltd, the British mobile gaming firm best known for its popular puzzle game ‘Candy Crush Saga’, has filed confidentially for an initial public offering (IPO) in the United States, a person familiar with the matter said on Sunday.

Online technology companies are rushing to the stock market on the backs of Twitter Inc’s announcement earlier this month that it plans to go public in the most eagerly anticipated IPO since last year’s flotation ofFacebook Inc.

Emerging growth companies such as King can use a secretive IPO registration process in the U.S. thanks to the Jumpstart Our BusinessStartups (JOBS) Act, which loosened a number of federal securities regulations in hopes of boosting capital raising and thereby increasing job growth.

King has hired Bank of America Merrill Lynch Corp, Credit Suisse Group AG and JPMorgan Chase & Co to lead the offering, said the person, confirming an earlier report by the Daily Telegraph and asking not to be identified because the information is confidential.

Representatives for King and the banks either declined to comment or did not respond to requests for comment.

King offers 150 games in 14 languages through mobile phones, Facebook and its website. It boasts more than 1 billion gameplays per day from its users.

The company’s games appeal to a growing trend for players to play puzzles with their friends in short bursts, especially as games are increasingly played on the move on phones or tablets to kill spare minutes.

Rival Zynga Inc went public two years ago in a high-profile IPO that raised $1 billion. Since then, Zynga has suffered from sagging morale during several quarters of worsening performance and repeated waves of layoffs.

Founded in 2003, King has been profitable since 2005 and has not had a funding round since September of that year, when it raised 34 million euros ($46.04 million) from investment firms Apax Partners and Index Ventures.

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MS Surface Pro Headed To Europe

Microsoft’s Surface Pro tablet will be offered for sale Europe in the second quarter priced approximately at $1,170, while a local telco is now reselling the latest editions of its Office 365 hosted productivity suite, the company announced ahead of the Cebit trade show on Monday.

Microsoft Germany’s CEO Christian Illek didn’t give the Surface Pro’s exact price in euros, but the number will be around the same as the U.S. price in dollars, he said in a news conference at the company’s booth on the show floor in Hanover.

While an $1170 price tag appears significantly higher that the Surface Pro’s U.S. price of $899, a 30% mark-up is not unusual for electronics devices in Europe, where prices are typically displayed inclusive of value-added tax at around 20%. U.S. prices typically exclude local sales taxes. When setting international prices, vendors also tend to allow an additional margin in case exchange rates shift unfavorably.

In addition to Germany, Surface Pro will also go on sale in Australia, China, France, Hong Kong, New Zealand and the U.K. in the coming months, Microsoft said.

Illek also announced a new sales channel for two recent editions of Office 365: Deutsche Telekom.

Office 365 Small Business Premium and Office 365 Midsize Business are now on sale through Deutsche Telekom’s Business Marketplace online app store, said the German telecommunications operator’s head of marketing, Michael Hagspihl.

The Small Business Premium edition, with 25GB of storage, shared calendars, Office Web Apps, Office Professional Plus Desktop Version and support from Deutsche Telekom will sell for $14.90 per user per month for up to 25 users.

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Nokia And Ford Team Up

Ford has teamed up with Nokia to equip its cloud-connected vehicles with the Finnish phone maker’s Location Platform.

The Nokia Location Platform consists of a suite of client and server-side programming interfaces that allow developers to build interactive applications with maps and map-related services.

The possible integration of the service into Ford vehicles in the future could help Ford learn driver behaviour and control, improve and personalize vehicle performance.

“Another area of Ford’s research is designed to optimise hybrid powertrain efficiency,” Nokia said in a press release. “The Nokia Location Platform could automatically regulate a car’s powertrain as it travels through established or driver-specified ‘Green Zones’.”

Christof Hellmis, VP of the Map Platform in Nokia’s Location and Commerce business unit said the integration of Nokia’s Location Platform is not scheduled for production and has so far only been seen in the Ford Evos concept car.

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Is Twitter Selling Your Tweets?

Twitter users are about to become major marketing meat, as two research companies prepare to release information to clients who will pay for the rights to mine that data.

Boulder, Colorado-based Gnip Inc and DataSift Inc, based in the U.K. and San Francisco, are licensed by Twitter to analyze archived tweets and basic information about users, like geographic location. DataSift announced this week that it will release Twitter data in packages that will encompass the last two years of activity for its customers to mine, while Gnip can go back only 30 days.

“Harvesting what someone said a year or more ago is game-changing,” said Paul Stephens, director of policy and advocacy for the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse in San Diego. As details emerge on the kind of information being mined, he and other privacy rights experts are concerned about the implications of user information being released to businesses waiting to pore through it with a fine-tooth comb.

“As we see Twitter grow and social media evolve, this will become a bigger and bigger issue,” said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for British-based Internet security company Sophos Ltd. “Online companies know which websites we click on, which adverts catch our eye, and what we buy … increasingly, they’re also learning what we’re thinking. And that’s quite a spooky thought.”

Twitter opted not to comment on the sale and deferred questions to DataSift. In 2010, Twitter agreed to share all of its tweets with the U.S. Library of Congress. Details of how that information will be shared publicly are still in development, but there are some stated restrictions, including a six-month delay and a prohibition against using the information for commercial purposes.

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Nokia Sold 1 Million Lumina Smartphones

Nokia reported a one billion year over year loss for the quarter ended 30 December 2011, only slightly offset by its launch of Lumia Windows Phone smartphones.

The firm shipped 113.5 million mobile phones during the quarter, down eight per cent from the same period in 2010. However, the figures were up from the 106.6 million units shipped in the third quarter of 2011, as the company benefited from its launch of the Lumia 800 smartphone in October, its first Windows Phone handset since it announced its deal with Microsoft.

Nokia shipped 19.6 million smartphones during the final quarter of 2011, down from the 28.6 million it shipped a year earlier, but up 17 percent from the 16.8 million sold in the third quarter of 2011.

The company reported net sales of $10 billion for the quarter, 20 percent down from the same quarter a year earlier. Full year sales were $38.7 billion, a nine percent decline from 2010.

Nokia reported that it sold one million of its Lumia smartphones since they went on sale in October. The firm said it is accelerating investment in its Lumia range of devices running Microsoft Windows Phone, claiming it has sold “well over one million Lumia devices to date”.

Nokia CEO Stephen Elop said, “Just six months after signing an agreement with Microsoft, we introduced our first two devices based on the Windows Phones platform – the Nokia Lumia 800 and the Nokia Lumia 710. We brought the new devices to market ahead of schedule, demonstrating that we are changing the clock speed of Nokia. To date, we have introduced Lumia to consumers in Europe, Hong Kong, India, Russia, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan.

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Nokia’s Lumina 800 Receives An Update

Nokia has started rolling out a software update to its Lumia 800 smartphone starting today.

The company has kept the promise it gave last month to upgrade the Lumia 800 to fix power efficiency problems. There is more than one patch in the update, which will also bring new features on top of the power fix.

Nokia said, “Starting today and rolling out over the next few weeks we will be releasing software updates to deliver exciting new features and performance enhancements including charging improvements to the award winning Lumia 800.”

“With the fastest growing app store and the highest positive user feedback, the Windows Phone experience on the Lumia 800 is setting the pace in the mobile community. Additional updates will come in early 2012.”

We’ve updated our Lumia 800 today but the notification mentioned only fixes for email and voicemail issues. We haven’t experienced any power problems with our particular handset since we’ve had it.

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Google Launches Online Magazine

Google has decided to launch its own quarterly online magazine, Think Quarterly, out of its centers in the U.K. and Ireland, saying that “in a world of accelerating change, we all need to take time to reflect.”

The first issue of Think Quarterly is already freely available online and is focuses on data, including data obesity, data impotence, data overload and open data.

“Think Quarterly is a unique communications tool that brings together some of the world’s leading minds to discuss the big issues facing businesses today,” the magazine says on its Twitter bio.

The magazine’s Twitter feed says it launched on March 21, though there is no mention of the magazine on Google’s blog, Twitter feed, Facebook page or newsroom.

In a note on the magazine’s website, the managing director of Google’s U.K. & Ireland Operations, Matt Brittin, said, “Think Quarterly is a breathing space in a busy world. It’s a place to take time out and consider what’s happening and why it matters.”

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