Episode 179 – May The Merch Be With You

BB-9E augmented reality In honor of Force Friday part deux, Michael and Michael geek out on all the awesomeness that is Star Wars merchandise now available for sale. You could use have a Lenovo-enabled lightsaber battle. You could build your own R2-D2 with a littleBits kit. You could own your very own Corellian freighter of your very own, putting together over 7,500 pieces in the new, and most awesome Millennium Falcon model from Lego. Switching gears, the team discusses the interaction among & between conversational artificial intelligences, and how they could do a platform of platform strategy play to talk … Continue reading

Episode 178 – L33T Learning Siri

  Just say no to enabling autonomous bots & drones with the ability to apply lethal force.  Following on last week’s episode 177, Michael & Michael start off with a continuation of the discussion on the Pandora’s Box of armed robots. Moving on to a happier topic, while still staying on the machine learning concept, the pair talks about how Siri and other voice interactive systems have been improved with deep learning.  Not just recorded scripts, but actual intelligence, and more natural interaction is apparent when you listen to how far things have come since the earliest days of Siri … Continue reading

Episode 177 – What could possibly go wrong?

This episode has it all — from virtual reality, to augmented reality to mixed reality to real reality. Starting off with UPS’s VR driver training for their truck fleet, journeying to the Apollo astronaut training efforts with the Zeiss Model VI Planetarium Projector and the excitement of Apple’s recent World Wide Developer’s Conference, Michael and Michael discuss the exciting developments caused Tim Cook to say that he’s so excited about it, “I just want to yell out and scream.” Michael and Michael reminisce about the early days of the US Army’s use of there.com to provide a “real” virtual reality … Continue reading

Episode 176 – I Got Slimed!

Who you gonna call?  Three friends, we hope, to rush over to Madam Tussaud’s Ghostbusters Experience to check out the Void’s “Hyper-Reality” take on your becoming a Ghostbuster, and immersing yourselves in a full body simulation, where you can walk around wherever you wish within the bounds of the simulation.  This is different from the classic VR experiences where you are tethered to a small location by the wire on your Oculus Rift or HTC Vive.  From the YouTube video, this mixed reality experience overlays the special effects of the Ghostbusters world over real world objects, wearing a proton accelerator … Continue reading