SLAM(Simultaneous localization and mapping) is a major research problem in the robotics community, where a great deal of effort has been devoted to developing new methods to maximize their robustness and reliability. VSLAM (visual SLAM) utilizes camera(s) as the primary source of sensor input to sense the surrounding environment. This can be done either with a single camera, multiple cameras, and with or without an inertial measurement unit (IMU) that measure translational and rotational...

Kroki transforms infrastructure, software systems, workflow models, and architecture diagrams into text-driven, reproducible assets. This makes it invaluable for: Cloud architects DevOps engineers Technical documentation teams Software designers Research & academia By treating diagrams as code, Kroki helps ensure accuracy, consistency, automation, and maintainability across technical documentation pipelines. Kroki is an open-source diagram rendering service that conve...

Georeferencing frames means assigning real-world coordinates (a spatial reference) to image or video frames so each pixel — and each camera pose — is expressed in a common coordinate system. In indoor contexts (where GNSS/GPS is unavailable or weak) georeferencing is done by fusing computer-vision (photogrammetry / Visual SLAM), sensor data (IMU, LiDAR), and control references (targets, surveyed control points or known anchors). This lets you convert raw video or 360° imagery into accurate 2D f...

Imagine writing: “warm lo-fi piano, gentle vinyl crackle, distant saxophone solo, 90 BPM, nostalgic evening” — and getting back a finished, multi-minute, mix-ready track that you can legally use in a podcast, ad, game or as the backing for your next viral short. That future is here. Text-to-music models — sometimes called text-to-audio or text-to-music generators — are rapidly moving from research demos into production tools that are reshaping how music is composed, licensed and integrated ...

The Toyota COMS is a very small, single-seater electric vehicle (EV) developed by Toyota Auto Body (a subsidiary of Toyota Motor Corporation) in Japan. “COMS-X Smart Delivery Vehicle” is essentially a commercial/utility variant of the COMS micro-EV platform, tailored for light-duty delivery and last-mile applications. In other words: a compact EV with a delivery box or container, built for urban logistics rather than private commuter use. Vehicle class & platform Single-seat...

Altium is one of the best-known vendors in electronic design automation (EDA) focused on PCB design and electronics product development. Its flagship desktop product, Altium Designer, together with cloud services such as Altium 365 and collaboration/enterprise offerings, positions the company as a one-stop environment for schematic capture, PCB layout, simulation, mechanical co-design, data management and manufacturing output. Below I’ll explain the platform, key technical details, how teams ty...

Pomelli is a newly announced AI-powered marketing tool developed by Google Labs in partnership with DeepMind. It is positioned as an “experiment” (i.e., early-stage product) aimed at helping small-to-medium sized businesses (SMBs) rapidly generate marketing campaigns that are on-brand, scalable, and streamlined. The core idea: many SMBs don’t have large budgets, dedicated design/creative teams, or deep marketing resources. Pomelli aims to bridge that gap by “understanding” the business brand...

A collaboration between civil engineering and neurosurgery at the University of Pittsburgh could change how spinal fusion surgery is performed and monitored. Associate Professors Amir Alavi, Nitin Agarwal, and D. Kojo Hamilton have received a $352,213 National Institutes of Health (NIH) R21 grant to develop the first self-powered spinal implant capable of transmitting real-time data from inside the body. The transdisciplinary project, “Wireless Metamaterial...

French mobility-startup CIXI (based in Annecy, Haute-Savoie) is developing a novel “active vehicle” called the VIGOZ that seeks to combine elements of cycling and electric vehicle driving into one platform. The slogan: a vehicle you pedal, that still functions on highways, giving you both physical activity plus transport. The Concept & Vision CIXI positions the VIGOZ as part of a shift from passive commuting to active mobility. Founder Pierre Francis describes how everyday commuting (...

Screenbox is an open-source, LibVLC-based media player built specifically for Windows (UWP/WinUI) that aims to combine VLC-level codec support with a modern, Fluent-style Windows UI, picture-in-picture, media-library browsing, network playback and Xbox compatibility. It’s actively developed on GitHub, distributed through the Microsoft Store (and winget), licensed under GPL-3.0, and has become a popular “VLC alternative” for users who prefer a sleeker Windows-native experience. Modern Fluent ...

machine learning and real-time audio tools now help pick tracks, beatmatch, isolate stems (vocals/drums/bass), create seamless transitions, and even speak or respond like a radio DJ. Some tools are aimed at casual listeners (auto-mixing your playlists), others add AI as creative assist to working DJs and producers (real-time stem separation, automated transitions, tempo/key matching), and a few are hybrid systems that let you perform or run background mixes with minimal effort. Better real-t...

A tiny wireless subretinal implant called PRIMA—a photovoltaic microchip placed beneath the retina and used with a camera-equipped pair of glasses and a pocket processor—has been shown in a multicenter clinical trial to partially restore functional central vision in patients with geographic atrophy (advanced “dry” AMD). At 12 months many trial participants could read letters, numbers and words using the system; mean gains on a standard ETDRS chart were large and clinically meaningful. A reti...

Determining where a photo was taken from pixels alone — image geolocation — is one of the most exciting and practical computer-vision tasks. It’s useful for OSINT/GEOINT, content moderation, user-photo enrichment, heritage/archaeology, wildlife tracking, and fraud detection. Historically this field used huge databases or heavy models; in recent years researchers and engineers have shown that small, efficient models — or small pipelines combining lightweight models with clever retrieval — can de...

Imagine you’re chatting with ChatGPT: you say “I’d like a durable hiking backpack for weekend trips, under $150” or perhaps “surprise me with a thoughtful birthday gift for my aunt who loves gardening and reading”. Instead of just listing links, ChatGPT presents tailored product recommendations, helping you compare features, read summaries of reviews, evaluate price-versus-value, and then (here’s the kicker) lets you go from conversation → click to buy without ever leaving the chat. That’s the ...

Helps design, control, and scale AI workflows (prompts, APIs, usage) with governance built in. Promptetus Routing of prompts, integration of APIs, monitoring of usage.Why it stands out: Focused on the workflow/orchestration side (rather than just infra). Good if you need to coordinate multiple models, tools, and agents.Potential trade-offs: May be less focused on low-level infrastructure (e.g., GPU scheduling) and more on the orchestration above that.Use-case fit: If you are building multipl...

AI-native commerce lock-screen platform turns passive device surfaces (phone lock screens, idle TV screens) into proactive, inspiration-first shopping experiences by combining generative visual models, personalization engines, visual search, and commerce orchestration. Companies such as Glance have productized this idea by embedding generative, shoppable visuals directly onto millions of devices via OEM partnerships. AI-native commerce and lock-screen platform use generative visual models, p...

Monitoring stress from the surface of the body Researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign are exploring how wearables and surface sensors can provide insight into human stress — mental, emotional, physiological — by measuring signals from the body surface. The work is part of the Carle Illinois College of Medicine’s Department of Biomedical and Translational Sciences, with interdisciplinary collaboration spanning bioengineering, health & kinesiology, neuroscience, and beh...

Nature-inspired robots from DGIST students — what they built and what they can do Students and researchers at the Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science & Technology (DGIST) in South Korea have produced a string of small, clever biomimetic robots — from snake-like crawlers to a slow, motor-driven tortoise — as part of hands-on student projects and research lab work. These systems are usually built as research and teaching platforms to explore locomotion, perception, and real-world use case...

The Ultra Mobile Vehicle (UMV) is a research robot from the Robotics and AI (RAI) Institute that looks at mobility in a new way: combine the efficiency and speed of wheels with the jumping and obstacle-clearing abilities usually reserved for legged robots. The result is a two-wheeled, self-balancing “robot bike” that drives, hops, flips, holds sustained wheelies, and performs dramatic precision balance moves like a track-stand — and it learns most of those behaviors through reinforcement learni...

littleBits was founded in September 2011 in New York City by Ayah Bdeir, with the mission of making electronics and invention accessible to everyone — of democratizing hardware the same way software and 3D printing have become accessible. The idea was to create modular, snap-together electronic building blocks (called “Bits”) that don’t require soldering, wiring, or deep electronics experience. The goal: let novices, designers, educators, and tinkerers invent and prototype without getting bo...

Generative UI is an emerging design and engineering paradigm where user interfaces are not fixed layouts but are dynamically generated by AI models based on context, user intent, device form factor, and application state. Instead of manually crafting every screen and state, developers define higher-level rules, design tokens, and interaction patterns; the system then generates UI elements on demand. This approach is being pioneered in research, by big tech companies (Microsoft, Google, OpenA...

Moflin is a robotic companion pet with soft fur, minimal visible features, and “emotional” behavior. The idea is not to mimic a full, animate animal like a dog or cat, but to provide a comforting presence, reacting to human interaction in ways meant to feel tender and companionship-oriented. It is marketed toward people wanting some emotional support or companionship without the responsibilities of owning a live pet. It learns over time: its behavior, responses, personality traits change...

Tilly Norwood is an AI-generated actress created by Eline Van der Velden and her company, Xicoia, sparking significant debate in Hollywood regarding the future of acting and AI's role in the industry. Tilly Norwood is a synthetic, AI-generated performer introduced in 2025 by Xicoia (the AI/talent arm of Particle6). Marketed like a rising screen star — with an Instagram, publicity shots, a satirical sketch called AI Commissioner, and a Zurich Film Festival debut. Particle6/Xicoia have ...

Scripps Research is pioneering a new model for nonprofit research institutes to address the significant health challenges facing humanity in the 21st century, from pandemic threats to the aging of the global population. Founded 100 years ago, Scripps Research is renowned in the life sciences and chemistry for scientific excellence and for training the scientific leaders of tomorrow. Building on this solid foundation, we have established a unique model that seamlessly combines world-class fun...

Embrace2 was a wrist-worn medical device developed by Empatica for people living with epilepsy. It is FDA-cleared (for ages 6 and up) to monitor and alert for generalized tonic-clonic seizures (GTCS), also known as convulsive seizures. It uses sensors on the wrist to detect certain physiological signals and motion patterns, triggering alerts to caregivers when a seizure is detected. EpiMonitor is the next generation epilepsy monitoring system Empatica is promoting, intended to replace/upgrad...

Withings is a health-tech company that produces a suite of smart health devices designed to monitor various physiological metrics, integrate with mobile apps, and help users track or improve well-being. Withings is known for combining elegant design with clinically validated sensors. Their goal is to bring medical-grade or medically inspired tracking into everyday life. The devices usually sync to the Withings Health / Health Mate app, which aggregates data, shows trends, offers insights, an...

Gamma.app (often referred to simply as “Gamma”) is a modern AI-powered content creation platform focused on enabling users to rapidly generate presentations, documents, and web-style “cards” from simple inputs — without needing design or coding expertise. Gamma positions itself as a “design partner” that handles the heavy lifting of layout, formatting, and visual polish so the user can focus on ideas and content rather than slide mechanics. Key Features of Gamma App AI-Powered Cont...

The Institute of Solid State Physics (ISSP) at the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science — one of the major research institutes within the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) — develops advanced materials, photonics, and functional devices that bridge fundamental solid-state science and practical applications. A recent high-profile outcome from ISSP is the work led by Professor Jiang Changlong and his research team: a wearable fluorescent eye-patch sensor that noninvasively detects lysozyme in hum...

Oshkosh Corporation (noted for building heavy vehicles, emergency equipment, etc.) unveiled a prototype robot named HARR-E (short for Hail-able Autonomous Refuse Robot – Electric). It’s an electric, autonomous robot designed to collect refuse and recycling on demand—think of it like “Uber for your trash.” HARR-E was developed by Oshkosh’s Pratt Miller unit. The goal is to complement traditional waste collection services—especially in planned communities, business parks, or campuses—by offeri...