Nintendo has been proclaiming that the Switch is its fastest-selling console ever since the system launched, but now it has numbers to back that up. Based on NPD reports, it says the Switch sold 906,000 units in the US in March. What’s surprising, however, is that The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is not just its fastest-selling launch title of all time, its Switch version actually outsold the console, moving 925,000 copies (add 460,000 for the Wii U and you have 1.3 million total).
According to Nintendo, reaching an attach rate of over 100 percent could be attributed to people buying limited editions of the game to collect plus a second copy to play. Whatever it is, the game, and system, both sold well and it sounds like things are well on their way to meeting or beating Nintendo’s scaled-back projections. We should find out more about its worldwide sales performance when Nintendo issues its quarterly earnings report on April 27th.
As robots take on greater roles in society, one simple question remains without a satisfying answer: How are they going to move around?
Researchers have devised robots that run, walk, roll, hop and slither, but each method of locomotion comes with advantages and inherent drawbacks. Wheeled robots are great indoors, but get stuck when faced with even a single step. Legged robots are good at navigating rough terrain, but have difficulty moving quickly and efficiently. There won’t be one sol
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The team’s prototype, called DxtER (pronounced Dexter) works with an iPad and is designed to walk a patient through self-diagnosing 34 medical conditions, the Washington Post reports. The team beat out 312 other teams, including some backed financially by governments and corporate sponsors.
The team was led by Dr. Basil Harris, an emergency medicine doctor from Pennsylvania who founded Final Frontier Medical Devices with friends and three of his siblings to come up with device. They will now move their beta version on to the next stages of development and, potentially, FDA-testing.
Despite being based on the idea of a tricorder—a handy unit that magically scans a person and reveals medical information—DxtER is a bit more clunky. It’s a shoe-box-sized kit that contains individual diagnostic devices and sensors that patients can use.
The DxtER
The DxtER in action
Basil Harris holding a prop tricorder
Final Frontier Medical Devices taking the win.
The X Prize competition, which began in 2012, challenged participants to come up with a kit weighing five pounds or less that could continuously monitor health metrics and diagnose 13 health conditions. Those conditions were: anemia, urinary tract infection, diabetes, atrial fibrillation, stroke, sleep apnea, tuberculosis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, pneumonia, otitis, leukocytosis, and hepatitis. Throughout the competition, Harris and his team added to that list.
But the devices had to do a little more than the fictional tricorder, which seemed to just serve up medical information and stats to Dr. McCoy. These X Prize tricorders had to be able to come up with a diagnosis on their own, too. This led Harris and his team to develop an iPad-based app that walks patients through questions, then algorithms based on a bank of patient data interpret the answers and diagnostic data.
Harris is hopeful that future, fully-developed versions will improve care, giving patients a way to monitor their health on their own, and provide needed diagnostics to under-served communities.
The second-place prize went to Dynamical Biomarkers Group, a team of 50 doctors, scientists, and programmers led by Harvard doctor, C.K. Peng. The project was financially backed by cellphone company HTC and the Taiwanese government. Their team received a $1 million prize.
MindMaze’s Mask device includes a foam face pad embedded with electrodes that can capture facial muscle movements.
Tej Tadi is really excited about the foam face pad that sits inside a virtual-reality headset on a desk in his office.
It’s the kind of mundane piece of cushioning normally found on many kinds of head-mounted displays, but the one his startup, MindMaze, has is different. It’s embedded with electrodes so it can pick up the electrical signals associated with your facial muscle movements, and it’s connected to a computer where software analyzes these signals to reproduce your facial expressions on an on-screen avatar.
Called Mask, Tadi sees it as a way to bring natural-looking grimaces, smiles, and eyebrow raises to virtual characters without adding much bulk to headsets. Making it easier for users to express emotions—and interact with each other—in virtual reality could encourage more people to try it out, he thinks, and make it more effective.
“The only way to do it is to bring emotions back into the game,†he says. “That makes us human, right? The non-verbal cues.â€
For now, virtual and augmented reality headsets are still a tough sell to most consumers for many reasons: they’re annoying to wear, don’t yet have many clear practical applications, and can feel isolating, to name just a few.
Switzerland-based MindMaze, which has raised $100 million, already offers virtual-reality hardware that combines features like games, motion tracking, and brain-signal monitoring to help rehabilitate stroke victims; it’s currently used in several dozen hospitals in Europe.
Mask builds on the company’s existing work, Tadi says, and can currently recognize 10 different expressions, including winking, smiling, smirking, grimacing, and eyebrow-raising. And with a microphone attached to it, it can mimic the wearer’s mouth while they’re speaking, too.
Tadi expects such a gadget will be available to consumers later this year, either as a product from MindMaze itself or from a headset maker.
As I watched a member of the MindMaze team try out a prototype of the device, it seemed to work quite well: with an OSVR virtual-reality headset outfitted with MindMaze’s technology, he made a variety of expressions that a cartoony male character also made on a desktop display. The speaking mimicry didn’t seem much better than basic “talking†motions I’ve seen on virtual characters’ mouths, however.
There was no need to calibrate the headset for me to try it, but it had issues recognizing some of my facial expressions. Tadi and his team explained that this may have been due to stray hairs getting in the way of one of the electrodes. Â
And it’s still unwieldy and messy: the electrode-laden foam insert was connected to some wires and electronics as well as to a computer, and a gel-swabbed electrode was connected to each of my earlobes to serve as a reference.
Tadi says the ear electrodes could be replaced by dry ones that are embedded in headphones connected to the headset, and that the electronics could be whittled down. But the fact remains that the feature would be adding even more baggage to headsets that are already criticized for their size—it remains to be seen whether the addition of emotional expression can outweigh that issue.
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After years of ignoring streaming services, Cannes is finally recognizing both Netflix and Amazon’s original work. With several Amazon funded-movies debuting at last year’s event, Cannes’ 2017 programme reveals that Netflix original movies will also finally be joining the festival. Netflix will be premiering The Meyerowitz Stories at the festival, starring Adam Sandler and Ben Stiller. It will also be debuting Okja for the first time, Netflix’s new Korean-directed monster movie featuring Tilda Swinton and Jake Gyllenhaal. Amazon movies will be featured for a second year, with Wonderstuck andYou Were Never Really Here getting first screenings.
Screening movies funded by streaming sites isn’t the only notable change for Cannes’ 17. This year’s festival also steps away from cinema for the first time in its history, choosing to also recognize television. Alongside the big names in cinema, Cannes will also debut the first two episodes of Twin Peaks‘ long-awaited new season. All six hours of Jane Campion’s Top of the Lake season 2 will also be screened at the event for the first time.
This will be the first time the international film festival has recognized streaming services, showing a marked shift in how the world consumes cinema. Whether this is simply because of the caliber of directors Amazon and Netflix attract rather than the services remains to be seen, but with more and more Hollywood talent flocking to streaming services – they’re becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.
According to Telsa CEO Elon Musk, the automotive arm of his company will unveil a semi truck this coming September. Musk dropped the news via a tweet. The company is currently gearing up to start full production of the Model 3, set to start being delivered at the end of 2017. But now it looks like Musk is getting ready to dive into into long-haul trucking.
Tesla Semi truck unveil set for September. Team has done an amazing job. Seriously next level.
Musk talked about the semi truck and a minibus last year during an earnings call. It’s actually not too surprising that Tesla would get into the semi-truck market. Mercedes and Otto (which was acquired by Uber) both demonstrated the need for autonomous and electric trucks. Tesla making its own model is the next logical step for the company.
