Kestrell

How can we begin to address the problem of accessible transportation for people with disabilities?

2019-06-19T13:37:16Z

Recently, some of us were talking about the shortcomings of transit programs for people with disabilities, and one person asked why para-transit programs everywhere were such a mess. I thought that was a great question, so I went looking for a book that addressed it.

This looks like the best book on the general subject of the difficulties involved in planning for public transit and methods for solving some of those problems, so I'm posting the title and links to online excerpts here. Note: this book doesn't address para-transit psecifically, and I haven't read it yet, so can't speak for how useful it actually turns out to be, but I will review it once I read it.
This book is available on Bookshare.org.

Human Transit: How Clearer Thinking about Public Transit Can Enrich Our Communities (2012)
by Jarett Walker
The table of contents is online here
https://humantransit.org/book/table-of-contents
and the complete introduction to the book is here
https://humantransit.org/book

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Liber Mundi: A world contained in Neal Stephenson's new book

2019-06-10T13:14:43Z

I'm still only about one-third of the way through Neal Stephenson's new book, _The Fall, or, Dodge in Hell, but, as mentioned in a previous post, am in love with this book, and am even willing to go so far as to say it may be his best book since _Snowcrash_, with which it shares some characteristics. Different readers are going to find different themes in this book, not only because it is that vast, but because what you take away from it is going to be shaped by your own preferred narrative fetishes, and whatever you have read before. Which is part of the point, because Stephenson proposes that, just as our own preferred tropes and filers influences how we interpret what we read, those same favorite tropes and filters shape our experiences and interpretations of technology. Books are, after all, as one of my favorite books, _The Name of the Rose_ reminds us, a technology, shaped in turn by factors such as politics and economics.

Ultimately, however, as in the case of _Snowcrash_ and _The Diamond Age_ (another of my favorite books), personal experience shapes technology, what inspires us to create it and how we use it and, despite what the technology alarmists love to preach, technology can be used to enhance human relationships, to enable people toward attaining agency and self-realization, and to remind us of what makes us human.

Also, this book has some of the best advice regarding how to create and word a thesis: undergrads, take note.

Here is a brief review of _The Fall_ which gives its own interpretation of what _The Fall_ is about.
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/blog/sci-fi-fantasy/fall-or-dodge-in-hell-is-neal-stephensons-technological-take-on-the-mythic-epic/

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3D robot navigation system may one day be used by blind people

2012-02-29T12:17:51Z

from
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2012/simultaneous-localization-mapping-kinect-0216.html

Robots could one day navigate through constantly changing surroundings with virtually no input from humans, thanks to a system that allows them to build and continuously update a three-dimensional map of their environment using a low-cost camera such as Microsoft’s Kinect.

The system, being developed by researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), could also allow blind people to make their way unaided through crowded buildings such as hospitals and shopping malls.

To explore unknown environments, robots need to be able to map them as they move around — estimating the distance between themselves and nearby walls, for example — and to plan a route around any obstacles, says Maurice Fallon, a research scientist at CSAIL who is developing these systems alongside John J. Leonard, professor of mechanical and ocean engineering, and graduate student Hordur Johannsson.

But while a large amount of research has been devoted to developing one-off maps that robots can use to navigate around an area, these systems cannot adjust to changes in the surroundings over time, Fallon says: “If you see objects that were not there previously, it is difficult for a robot to incorporate that into its map.”

The new approach, based on a technique called Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM), will allow robots to constantly update a map as they learn new information over time, he says. The team has previously tested the approach on robots equipped with expensive laser-scanners, but in a paper to be presented this May at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation in St. Paul, Minn., they have now shown how a robot can locate itself in such a map with just a low-cost Kinect-like camera.

As the robot travels through an unexplored area, the Kinect sensor’s visible-light video camera and infrared depth sensor scan the surroundings, building up a 3-D model of the walls of the room and the objects within it. Then, when the robot passes through the same area again, the system compares the features of the new image it has created — including details such as the edges of walls, for example — with all the previous images it has taken until it finds a match.

At the same time, the system constantly estimates the robot’s motion, using on-board sensors that measure the distance its wheels have rotated. By combining the visual information with this motion data, it can determine where within the building the robot is positioned. Combining the two sources of information allows the system to eliminate errors that might creep in if it relied on the robot’s on-board sensors alone, Fallon says.

Once the system is certain of its location, any new features that have appeared since the previous picture was taken can be incorporated into the map by combining the old and new images of the scene, Fallon says.

The team tested the system on a robotic wheelchair, a PR2 robot developed by Willow Garage in Menlo Park, Calif., and in a portable sensor suit worn by a human volunteer. They found it could locate itself within a 3-D map of its surroundings while traveling at up to 1.5 meters per second.

Ultimately, the algorithm could allow robots to travel around office or hospital buildings, planning their own routes with little or no input from humans, Fallon says.

It could also be used as a wearable visual aid for blind people, allowing them to move around even large and crowded buildings independently, says Seth Teller, head of the Robotics, Vision and Sensor Networks group at CSAIL and principal investigator of the human-portable mapping project. “There are also a lot of military applications, like mapping a bunker or cave network to enable a quick exit or re-entry when needed,” he says. “Or a HazMat team could
enter a biological or chemical weapons site and quickly map it on foot, while marking any hazardous spots or objects for handling by a remediation team coming later. These teams wear so much equipment that time is of the essence, making efficient mapping and navigation critical.”

While a great deal of research is focused on developing algorithms to allow robots to create maps of places they have visited, the work of Fallon and his colleagues takes these efforts to a new level, says Radu Rusu, a research scientist at Willow Garage who was not involved in this project. That is because the team is using the Microsoft Kinect sensor to map the entire 3-D space, not just viewing everything in two dimensions.

“This opens up exciting new possibilities in robot research and engineering, as the old-school ‘flatland’ assumption that the scientific community has been using for many years is fundamentally flawed,” he says. “Robots that fly or navigate in environments with stairs, ramps and all sorts of other indoor architectural elements are getting one step closer to actually doing something useful. And it all starts with being able to navigate.”

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Power felt fabric to power smart phones

2012-02-28T13:50:20Z

Kes: I'm wondering if people will be able to purchase this fabric as lengths of material, since that would allow people to make some crazy stuff from it--a silly hat which also powers your phone or hand puppet-phone chargers would be pretty awesome.
http://www.dailybits.com/power-felt-fabric-to-charge-your-smartphone/

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Tacit: a sonor glove for blind people

2011-08-21T15:02:47Z

Kes: I really wanted to title this "Evil hand for the blind" but thought that would be too misleading. Now I wan to find a geek who will help me build one of these--I already have the Polycaprolactone plastic.
http://grathio.com/2011/08/meet-the-tacit-project-its-sonar-for-the-blind/

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Interview with author of Spacesuit

2011-05-02T17:28:56Z

Alexx sent me this link
http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/spacesuit-interview-with-nicholas-de.html
to an interview with Nicholas de Monchaux, the author of _Spacesuit: Fashioning Apollo_, who manages to bring together ideas about cyborgs, fashion, and the built environment.

block quote start
de Monchaux: One of the things I find most fascinating about the idea of the spacesuit is that space is actually a very complex and subtle idea. On the
one hand, there is space as an environment outside of the earthly realm, which is inherently hostile to human occupation—and it was actually John Milton
who first coined the term space in that context.

On the other hand, you have the space of the architect—and the space of outer space is actually the opposite of the space of the architect, because it
is a space that humans cannot actually encounter without dying, and so must enter exclusively through a dependence on technological mediation.

Whether it’s the early French balloonists bringing capsules of breathable air with them or it’s the Mongolfier brothers trying to burn sheep dung to keep
their vital airs alive in the early days of ballooning, up to the present day, space is actually defined as an environment to which we cannot be suited—that
is to say, fit. Just like a business suit suits you to have a business meeting with a banker, a spacesuit suits you to enter this environment that is otherwise
inhospitable to human occupation.

From that—the idea of suiting—you also get to the idea of fashion. Of course, this notion of the suited astronaut is an iconic and heroic figure, but there
is actually some irony in that.

For instance, the word cyborg originated in the Apollo program, in a proposal by a psycho-pharmacologist and a cybernetic mathematician who conceived of
this notion that the body itself could be, in their words, reengineered for space. They regarded the prospect of taking an earthly atmosphere with you
into space, inside a capsule or a spacesuit, as very cumbersome and not befitting what they called the evolutionary progress of our triumphal entry into
the inhospitable realm of outer space. The idea of the cyborg, then, is the apotheosis of certain utopian and dystopian ideas about the body and its transformation
by technology, and it has its origins very much in the Apollo program.

But then the actual spacesuit—this 21-layered messy assemblage made by a bra company, using hand-stitched couture techniques—is kind of an anti-hero. It’s
much more embarrassing, of course—it’s made by people who make women’s underwear—but, then, it’s also much more urbane. It’s a complex, multilayered assemblage
that actually recapitulates the messy logic of our own bodies, rather than present us with the singular ideal of a cyborg or the hard, one-piece, military-industrial
suits against which the Playtex suit was always competing.
block quote end

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Motorized hammock

2011-05-02T13:05:10Z

Kes: I like the fact that this uses a PS2 controller and a wheelchair chassis, bu part of me thinks that going anywhere is contradictory to hammock-zen.
http://www.dailybits.com/motorized-hammock-the-ultimate-lazy-guys-mode-of-transpo/

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Science fiction is all around you

2011-02-25T13:48:37Z

Various real science projects which I have run across in the news this week.

Roombots
http://www.dailybits.com/roombots-the-furniture-of-the-future/

Flourescent tattoos to offer medical monitoring
These tiny rods seem like a nice alternative for medical monitoring--at least if the person is sighted--but I really wish the inventor hadn't taken to calling these implants "microworms"--I prefer to think of them as metabolic mood rings
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/update-microworms-0217.html?tr=y&auid=7819293

here is information about a "cloaking device"
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/invisibility-cloak-0125.html?tr=y&auid=7819294

holographic TV using off-the-shelf hardware
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/video-holography-0124.html?tr=y&auid=7819292

a mathematical model for visual cognition
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/vision-coding-0128.html

and finally,
a device which can "sniff" old books
http://news.discovery.com/history/old-books-paper-chemical-test.html
and then give an analysis of the book or document's age and the fragility of the paper (a field titled "Material Degradomics")
http://pubs.acs.org/stoken/presspac/presspac/full/10.1021/ac9016049#references
--although I thought there was a specific gas which is released by decaying paper? No luck finding the name of such a gas, though.

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IE8 access issues with a friend's web site+iPhone ouija app

2009-08-25T13:48:57Z

1. I have a friend who writes pagan-related articles at
http://www.examiner.com/x-11871-Boston-Pagan-Examiner.
which I have no access issues with because I use Firefox. However, it turns out that there is an issue when I try to go to this page in IE8. However, if I'm in IE8 and use the search feature, the link to the page seems to work fine.

Am I missing something or is there some weird IE8 glitch I should know about?

2. I've been conversing with a fellow named Cory who developed a Ouiji app for the iPhone and is looking for people to try it and offer feedback. Developing the app is part of his thesis work, which is exploring the ways people have used technology as a means for contacting spirits (Jeffrey Sconce did a fascinating book on this topic titled _Haunted Media_, for which I have a scanned etext).

( codes to download Planchet for free below cut )

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It was thrity years ago this week

2009-08-14T20:43:23Z

that the Walkman came out, but it's taken only a handful of years for it to become seriously antiquated--check out this
article written by an iPod kid who used a Walkman for a week
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8117619.stm
My favorite bit is when he mentions that it took him a week to realize that tapes had two sides to them.

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