Information Technology

Drawing on the expertise of the blind, a University of Toronto professor is “teaching” electronic devices how to navigate using surrounding sounds.

“The goal was to build a system that mimics the acoustic navigation abilities of blind people,” says Professor Parham Aarabi of the Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He has developed a method by which a device fitted with as few as two microphones can combine the information from sounds around it to locate

Knowing your precise position anytime via the internet is now possible thanks to the Signal in Space through Internet (SisNet) technology developed by the European Space Agency.

This technology combines the powerful capabilities of satellite navigation and the internet. As a result, the highly accurate navigation information that comes from the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS) Signal-in-Space (SIS) is now available in real time over the internet.

EGNO

A research team, led by Dr Stuart Walker from Essex University, claims to have developed a data transmission method which can achieve world record telecommunications data rates, of over a terabit (one trillion binary digits) per second, on optical fibres which already exist in the majority of in-building communications networks throughout the world. These optical fibres are known as multimode fibres.

Dr Stuart Walker is presenting the world record transmission concept on Thursday 5 Septembe

Hands free sets for mobile phones may be on the verge of a big comeback thanks to new research by the University of Warwick. Many people used hands free sets in an attempt to avoid what they perceived as a microwave radiation risk from holding a mobile phone close to one`s head. However when it was pointed out that the standard wire based hands free kit actually itself acted as an aerial amplifying any signal to the users head the kit fell out of favour with this type of user. Now

Eyeglasses with built-in computer monitors could soon be a reasonable alternative to reading text from a traditional computer screen, according to new research from Ohio State University.

Participants in a recent study rated the comfort and performance of these so-called near-eye displays as comparable to that of traditional computer monitors. Near-eye displays are like eyeglasses with a monitor built into the lenses.

“The problems with near-eye devices range from motion sickness t

Equipment used at home, as well as at offices, is more and more powerful and although their interfaces are also more comprehensive, they are more complicated to understand.

One of the causes of that problem may be that the common interfaces based on windows, icons, menus, etc. do not have enough control of all the present technological aspects.

A possible solution could be to provide the system with an assistant function equipped with a universal, efficient and easy to use interfac