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For more technology stories, visit newscientist.com/technology 8 June 2013 | NewScientist | 21 Let me guess… it’s a chair, right? Talk about déjà vu ALWAYS seeing the world with fresh eyes can make it hard to find your way around. Giving computers the ability to recognise objects as they scan a new environment will let them navigate much more quickly and understand what they are seeing. Renato Salas-Moreno at Imperial College London and colleagues have added object recognition to a computer vision technique called simultaneous location and mapping (SLAM). A SLAM-enabled computer has a camera to orient itself in new surroundings as it maps them. SLAM builds up a picture of the world out of points and lines and contours. In an office, say, chairs and desks would emerge from the room like hills and valleys in a landscape. “The world is meaningless since every point in the map is the same,” says Salas- Moreno. “It doesn’t know if it is looking at a television or the wall.” But in the new system, called SLAM++, the computer constantly tries to match the points and lines it sees to objects in its database. As soon as it finds a shape it can identify – often after seeing only a part of it – that area of the map can be filled in. Currently, the database is prepared by hand, but the next version will allow the system to add new objects itself as it encounters them. “It’s similar to how a child learns about the world,” says Salas-Moreno. The database also lists the properties of the stored objects. So when the computer recognises a chair, it will know what they are used for, how much they typically weigh, and which way up they go. This knowledge will help digital avatars interact with the real world in augmented reality applications, for example. The work will be presented at the Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition conference in Portland, Oregon, this month. Stefan Hinterstoisser at the Technical University in Munich, Germany, is impressed. “It’s a very significant improvement over the state of the art,” he says. He thinks it could have a big impact not only on robotics, but also on games and films – CGI characters would be able to interact with the world more naturally, for example. Douglas Heaven n –Work the room one step at a time– ONE PER CENT ROBERY STOLARIK/NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX/EYEVINE Bump! There’s a pothole… Cars and trucks could one day be used to help scout for potholes, say engineers at the M. S. Ramaiah Institute of Technology in Bangalore, India. Their design calls for vehicle shock absorbers to be fitted with wireless pressure sensors that can beam data on pothole size to a central server and to other vehicles nearby. Councils will then be able to prioritise repairs and satnavs could plot routes to avoid potholes. “It’s a cross between a Concorde, a railgun and an air hockey table” Elon Musk's enigmatic answer at the All Things Digital conference in California last week when asked about his high-speed Hyperloop transport system, which might one day ferry people between Los Angeles and San Francisco Ancient Protestant network unearthed The same analysis used to understand digital social networks has unearthed a secret from the 16th century. Ruth Ahnert of Queen Mary, University of London, analysed letters written by Protestant martyrs in England persecuted under the Catholic reign of Mary I – aka “Bloody Mary”. By connecting senders and recipients, as well as places, people and events mentioned in the letters, Ahnert found a hidden network of Protestants who “provided monetary, moral and logistical support to the martyrs”, but never made it into the pages of history. She will present the work next week at a network science conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. Apple’s cool battery patent Graphene could soon be helping Apple’s iPhones and iPads pack more power. The company has filed a US patent application (2013/0136966) to use the one-atom thick sheets of carbon to disperse heat from the lithium batteries in its mobile devices. Replacing existing 30-micrometre- thick graphite heat sinks with graphene could open up space for a bigger, longer-lasting battery, says inventor Ramesh Bhardwaj of Fremont, California. “Computers that recognise and add new objects to their database learn in a similar way to a child”
