There are over 1 million new amputees every year, i.e. one every 30 seconds – a truly shocking statistic.
The World Health Organization estimates that between 30 to 100 million people around the world are living with limb loss today. Unfortunately, only 5-15% of this population has access to prosthetic devices.
Although prostheses have been around since ancient times, their successful use has been severely limited for millennia by several factors, with cost being the major one. Although it is possible to get sophisticated bionic arms today, the cost of such devices runs into tens of thousands of dollars. These devices are just not widely available today. What’s more, having these devices interface satisfactorily with the human body has been a massive issue, partly due to the challenges of working with the human nervous system. Such devices generally need to be tailored to work with each individual’s nervous system, a process that often requires expensive surgery.
Is it possible for a new generation of human beings to finally help us break through these long-standing barriers?
Can prosthetic devices learn to adapt to us, as opposed to the other way around?
A Personalized Prosthetic Arm for $100?
In his talk, Joseph informs us about how, using the combination of:
Low-cost off-the-shelf electronics,
3D-printing, and
Cloud AI, for intelligent, learned, personalized behavior,
it is now becoming possible to deliver prosthetic arms at a price point of around $100.
Joseph takes the smartARM as an example of such a breakthrough device. A prototype built by two undergraduate students from Canada who recently won the first prize in Microsoft’s Imagine Cup, the smartARM is 3D-printed, has a camera in the palm of its hand and is connected to the cloud. The magic is in the cloud, where a computer vision service recognizes the objects seen by the camera. Deep learning algorithms then generate the precise finger movements needed to grasp the object near the arm. Essentially, the cloud vision service classifies the object and generates the right grip or action, such as a pincer action to pick up a bunch of keys on a ring, or a palmar action to pick up a wineglass. The grip itself is a learned behavior which can be trained and customized.
The user of the prosthetic arm triggers the grip (or its release) by flexing any muscle of their choice on their body, for instance, their upper arm muscle. A myoelectric sensor located in a band that is strapped over that muscle detects the signal and triggers the grip or its release.
Simple, Adaptable Architecture
The architecture of this grip classification solution is shown below. The input to the raspberry pi on the smartARM comes from camera and the muscle sensor. These inputs are sent to the Azure Custom Vision Service, an API in the cloud which has been trained on grip classifications and is able to output the appropriate grip. This grip is sent back to an Arduino board in the smartARM which can then trigger the servo motors that realize that grip in the physical world, i.e. as soon as the smartARM gets the signal to do so from the muscle sensor.
This is an adaptable architecture. It can be customized to the kinds of movements you want this arm to generate. For instance, the specific individual using this prosthetic can customize the grips for the objects in their daily life which are the ones they care the most about. The muscle sensor -based trigger could be replaced with a speech trigger, if so desired.
Summary
AI is empowering a new generation of developers to explore all sorts of novel ideas and mashups. Through his talk on “Connected Arms”, Joseph shows us how the future of prosthetic devices can be transformed by the power of the cloud and AI. Imagine a world in which all future assistive devices are empowered with AI in this fashion. Devices would adapt to individuals, rather than the other way around. Assistive devices will become more affordable, intelligent, cloud-powered and personalized.
Cloud AI is letting us build unexpected things that we would scarcely have imagined.
By Stephen Silver Tuesday, September 11, 2018, 07:50 pm PT (10:50 pm ET)
Government stops the “shot clock” on the merger’s review period, in order to take a look at modeling.
The Federal Communications Commission sent a letter to Sprint and T-Mobile Tuesday informing the carriers that it’s pausing the current review of their merger.
“Today we are pausing the Commission’s informal 180-day transaction shot clock in this proceeding. Additional time is necessary to allow for thorough staff and third-party review of newly submitted and anticipated modeling relied on by the Applicants,” said the letter, signed by David B. Lawrence, head of the T-Mobile/Sprint Transaction Task Force, and Donald Stockdale Chief of the FCC’s Wireless Telecommunications Bureau.
The new facts requiring review include a revised network engineering model submitted by the parties in early September, the mentioning in a meeting of a T-Mobile business model called “Build 9,” which was not reviewed by the FCC until recently and T-Mobile’s recent disclosure that it “intends to submit additional economic modeling in support of the Applications, beyond that strictly responsive to the various economic analyses in the Petitions to Deny.”
The 180-day clock, the FCC letter said, “will remain stopped until the Applicants have completed the record on which they intend to rely and a reasonable period of time has passed for.staff and third-party review. The Commission will decide whether to extend the deadline for reply comments after receiving the remainder of the Applicants’ modeling submissions.”
Diablo. It’s one of the most popular, successful, and beloved gaming franchises in the world. The very first entry came out in 1996 and it and its two successors defined the huge hack-and-slash action-RPG genre that exists today. The franchise is known for its story-driven campaign, fast-paced combat, diverse class options, and deep skill trees. Diablo III is the very model of a comprehensive gear system that allows for some serious min-maxing along with ample end-game content for gamers who don’t mind the grind.
There’s no version of Diablo on Android or iOS, though Diablo III may be headed to the Switch. Close, but no cigar. There are, however, a number of mobile titles that capture parts of what makes Diablo great that fans of the series should definitely check out.
Developer: Kimmo Lahtinen Platform:iOS Universal Price: $8.99
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2018 has seen the release of a couple games that have earned a place on this list and Barbearian is foremost among them. Barbearian features frenetic fights against death-defying odds, a combat style that is very reminiscent of Diablo III. You charge into and through huge hordes of enemies and send their lifeless bodies flying in every direction. These fast-paced battles are about where the similarities end. The game follows a story but is driven by its action and does not have the quest lines associated with standard RPGs. Nevertheless, it’s a heck-of-a-lot-of fun and I got over fifteen hours of entertainment out of completing all of the content. I gave it five stars in my review and recommend you check it out for a lot more on why Barbearian is great.
Also new this year, Battleheart 2 picks up where the original Battleheart game left off seven years ago. It features real-time combat where you control up to four characters, chosen from a variety of options, in a series of battles to gain loot and experience. As you level up you unlock new skills and talents to enhance those skills. There’s also a variety of gear and four different slots in which to equip it. This creates some opportunity for Diablo-like min-maxing. Battleheart 2, unlike its predecessor, offers a co-operative mode for up to four players along with an Arena mode where you face down wave after wave of enemies to see how far you can get. This is simplified version of Diablo III‘s rift system. An unintentional game mode has also arisen: AFK (away from keyboard) Arena. Astute min-maxers have realized that Cyrus, the necromancer, raises skeletons from the dead that automatically lock onto and attack the nearest enemy without any player intervention. An optimized Cyrus can go deep into the Arena without any help from the player. If that doesn’t speak to the spirit of Diablo III, I’m not sure what does.
Developer: Butterscotch Shenanigans Platform:iOS Universal and Android Price: $6.99
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Crashlands is a survive/craft/explore game where you play as an intergalactic UPS driver who crashed on an alien world. You must figure out how to survive and get yourself, and your precious packages, off the planet and on your way. What does Crashlands have to do with Diablo? It’s the combat and gear. Pretty much everything you come across is looking to kill you and it is best to wheel around and shake and bake, all the while attacking with your homemade arsenal of weaponry. Even more similar is the game’s surprisingly expansive gear system. Flux, the game’s main character, rocks a primary weapon, four secondary devices (bombs, flamethrowers, freeze rays, that kind of thing), four trinkets that provide various bonuses, and four armor pieces. All of this equipment provides bonuses to damage, critical hits, move speed and more along with providing special abilities like life drain, stunning your target, and a whole lot more. She also has the power of Juicemancy at her disposal, which allows you to optimize your gear by upgrading it and rerolling stats until you get the stats you want. Crashlands is a fantastic game and merges the exploration and crafting of Minecraft with the combat and gear optimization of Diablo III.
For those looking for the traditional RPG quests and storyline, Titan Quest is the most Diablo-like you can get on a tablet. It started on the PC as an attempt to replicate the success of Diablo II and was later ported to iOS and Android. Set in the ancient, pre-Roman world it also has solid loot acquisition—there are over 1200 items which can be enhanced with runes. There are also diverse skill trees, called masteries, from which you pick two. The masteries essentially decide your class and provide some great variation, customizability, and high replay value to the game. The mobile version of the game has had plenty of issues—including frame rate and saved game issues—but it is still one of the better Diablo-like titles.
Bastion
Developer: Supergiant Games Platform:iOS Universal Price: $4.99
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Action RPGs are frequently known less for story and ambiance than, well, the action. Bastion, the debut title from Supergiant Games, is different. Bastion’s story—set after the Calamity, a devastating event that shattered the city of Caelondia—is amazing. You play as the Kid; a survivor skilled in the ways of the new, violent world. The Kid meets a man named Rucks who directs efforts to collect the cores that once fuelled Caelondia and rebuild a bit of what was lost. Rucks also serves as the game’s outstanding narrator, who gives both play-by-play and color commentary on the Kid’s every action and every mistake. Bastion’s soundtrack is perfect, and its graphics are still impressive after all these years. The action is fast-paced and chaotic very much like the Diablo games. There are various weapons from which to choose, though gear plays a smaller role in Bastion. This is definitely the game for you if you value the action and production values of Diablo over its loot and min/maxability.
If you’re looking for dungeon-delving action and gear optimization of Diablo III without the real-time pressure, Rogue Wizards is the perfect game for you. It features a great deal of variation in gear and slots in which to equip it, a town with upgradeable shops from which to buy and sell, and even a Treasure Goblin. Rogue Wizards feature a strong storyline, but the turn-based combat is king. Once you’ve completed the quests, there’s still plenty to do in the game’s Gauntlet mode, a high-score chasing dungeon where you see just how far you can go. The game is free-to-play and the monetization is easy to ignore if so desired, though I recommend the “Gem Drops x 2” IAP which brings progression in line with the premium Steam version. I’ve already written quite a bit about the Rogue Wizards, and its monetization, and you can check out my five-star review and game guide for more.
Eternium
Developer: Making Fun, Inc. Platform:iOS Universal and Android Price: Free (with IAP)
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One of the closest games to Diablo III on mobile is Eternium. You play as an adventurer—a mage, warrior, or bounty hunter—on a quest to stop Ragadam, an ancient evil, from bringing an apocalyptic plan to fruition. The adventure hops between multiple planets in the universe and you’ll face dragons, aliens and more deadly creatures. You collect companions as you go to help you face the increasingly dangerous foes in your path. Both you and your companions will gain new and varied powers as you level, which you cast by drawing symbols on the battlefield.
Gear is a huge consideration in Eternium, and there is a ton of it. As in Diablo, you can equip something on nearly every major body part and each piece of gear has several attributes that enhance your abilities. The game also features gems, which can be combined into even better gems and slotted into items for bonuses. Eternium even duplicates Diablo’s features that allow you to add sockets to equipment that doesn’t have it, collect sets of gear, and reroll an attribute for an item.
Eternium is a free-to-play game and uses gems as its primary currency. The game is well balanced, you don’t need to buy gems in order to play but can do so to unlock certain quality-of-life options faster. I spent $5 to get an additional companion slot earlier and more character storage space, for example. You can watch optional ads for more gems and there is a setting to turn them off entirely for those who want to avoid the temptation.
The campaign is extensive and Eternium also includes a series of special “trials”, think rifts from Diablo. Gameplay is good but nowhere near as great as Blizzard’s series. That’s a high bar to clear, however, and Eternium will definitely scratch the itch on your mobile device.
What would your list of favourite Diablo-like games look like? Let us know in the comments!
Left Alive Delayed, New Release Date Announced For Japan
Left Alive, the third-person shooter set in the Front Mission universe, has been given a new release date. The title was originally set to launch in 2018, but during the pre-Tokyo Game Show PlayStation Lineup Tour event a new February 28, 2019 release date was confirmed. This date, however, is just for the Japanese release and a western date has not been revealed yet.
A trailer shown at the event provided some new details on the game. It is set in the fictional city of Novo Slava and takes place in December 2127. Novo Slava looks to have been ravaged by an unexpected attack, and people are just trying to survive amidst the chaos. At one point in the video, a condemned criminal designated D105U is mentioned.
"Humanity has learned nothing from its mistakes," reads a bit of text. As previously mentioned, survival is a key part of the game, as is saving citizens, and a voice over stresses this while scenes of giant mechs tearing through the city play. The game will focus on multiple characters, all who have their own perspectives on the events of the game.
"In this struggle for survival, three lives are laid bare, each with their own stories, their own missions, and their own paths to salvation," the trailer says. These three characters are featured on the game's key artwork, which was created by Yoji Shinkawa, the artist known most for defining the look of the Metal Gear Solid franchise. Shinkawa is serving as character designer on Left Alive.
Shinji Hashimoto, meanwhile, is Left Alive's producer. He has worked on the Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts franchises. Joining Shinkawa and Hashimoto are Toshifumi Nabeshima, director of the Armored Core series, and Takayuki Yanase, mech designer on Ghost in the Shell: Arise, Mobile Suit Gundam 00, and Xenoblade Chronicles X.
An anime-inspired beat-?em-up with a gaggle of varied enemies, deep customization?and ninjas! Play through side-scrolling worlds consisting of multiple stages and collect carrots stolen by the evil Shogun Moe.
A Continent Engulfed in the Bitter Flames of War. Commander Claude Wallace and his childhood friends set out to fight in a desperate war, but bone-chilling blizzards, waves of imperial soldiers, and the godlike powers of the Valkyria stand between them and victory.
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 09-11-2018, 03:44 AM - Forum: Lounge
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Last Chance To Get This Week's Xbox One Digital Game Deals
Each week, Microsoft drops prices on a selection of Xbox One and Xbox 360 games. This week's sale has nice discounts on some fantastic games across a variety of genres. So whether you're into action games, fighting games, survival games, racers, or something else, you can probably find something that appeals to you. And be sure to check out the massive backward compatibility sale for discounts on Xbox 360 games. With that out of the way, read on for some of our picks of the best Xbox One deals ending September 10.
With Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice coming in March, you might want to try out From Software's previous game, Dark Souls 3. It offers a serious challenge, but its finely tuned gameplay usually keeps your failures from feeling cheap. And when you win, victory is that much sweeter. It's on sale for $15 / £13. Or, if you want to see where the story began, you can pick up Dark Souls Remastered on sale for $28 / £25.
Conan Exiles is a recent survival game that starts when the Cimmerian frees your personalized character from being crucified in The Exiled Lands. Which would be great if you didn't have to fight tooth and nail to survive. It's on sale for $30 / £25.
We've highlighted even more deals in the list below, and you can find the full list of discounts right here. Also be sure to check out the backward compatible game sale, because it's filled with bangers from the 360 era.
After quickly selling out of a sleek but underpowered wireless smartphone charger in late August, Tesla this week informed customers that the device will soon be back in stock at a roughly $16 discount.
Tesla is in the process of emailing customers who purchased the eponymous charger last month for $65, saying new shipments of the product are coming in and will be sold for $49 on the company’s online store, reports The Verge.
According to the email, copies of which were posted to social media on Monday, the $16 price drop is thanks to a higher quantity second production run. Customers who bought the Tesla Wireless Charger when it first went on sale last month will be refunded the $16 difference for being “early adopters.”
Tesla quietly introduced its Qi-compatible wireless charging device at the end of August. Described as a charging pad that “features the same design language used in our energy products, like Powerwall,” the charger sold out within a matter of hours.
Along with inductive charging, the device integrates a USB-C plug for compatible phones, while a USB-A cable provides a means to recharge the pack. With a 6,000mAh battery cell and wireless module that outputs 5W of power, the Tesla Wireless Charger is easily outperformed by cheaper, more capable products. As AppleInsider noted last month, RAVPower’s HyperAir battery pack boasts a 10,400mAh cell and 7.5W wireless charging capabilities for $50.
Still, Tesla’s brand appeal is sure to give the wireless charger a boost when it goes back up for sale in the near future. The company did not specify a restock timeline, but the recent emails suggest that date is soon approaching.
As far as solitaire board games go, The Draugr stands out as an example of how the iOS can give a game that could easily vanish in the tide of competition some much needed exposure. In some more nuanced ways, it can also be an example of how removing some of the tactile experiences can change how easy it is to comprehend a game, at first.
The titular draugr are a collective force to be reckoned with. Drawn from a pool at the beginning of the game, six of them descend on the town of Stjordal. Their task is simple and cruel – slowly corrupt the people and places of the region with their undead magic. You, a lone revenant hunter, can’t just stand by and let this happen.
The undead menace plays the long game, only slowly compromising prominent people and places in town until they topple to the darkness. You must run from place to person and back, protecting them from harm, and being persistent in your rebuke of these twisted villains. Your only tools of the trade are iron spikes, holy water, and your wits.
If The Draugr does one thing well above all others, it’s translating a sense of tenacious doom. No matter how hard you work, the end always feels like it’s near. The tokens that mark the spread of corruption multiply quickly. The randomness of where they can be spread is sort of a clever chaos. Even when you can prevent the spread in some way, it’s usually only partially, and often at the opportunity cost of re-upping supplies, or taking the fight to the beasts directly.
The randomness can create some inconsistent experiences, though. A random, unseen roll is made to determine where the corruption spreads during the next ‘corruption phase’ and which draugr causes it. They each divide the locations among each other, so you can have a top line look at who can hurt whom. But how much corruption can happen from turn to turn feels completely inconsistent. Sometimes, just one point of interest is affected, other times, the whole row feels like it’s under attack. It feels impossible to really counterplay. That seems like the point here, but if someone’s first game is one of these randomly bad ones, then it almost guarantees that it’ll be their last one.
And for as much personality famed Irish artist Harry Clarke adds to the game’s key art and the pictures of the draugr, the creatures are massively bland mechanically. Each are defined by how many units of spikes and holy water it takes to slay them. A handful of them impose a penalty when they strike, taking some of your resources as well as corrupting places or people. But there isn’t much difference between Ivers and Lord Molton save for their names. It almost doesn’t matter whose name is drawn during the corruption phase, because they all do the same thing.
Each have varying amounts of necessary spikes and water necessary to kill them, so over multiple sessions you develop macro-level strategies. That’s where the game’s real commanding charm reveals itself: through repetition. Any given session can take upwards of 20 minutes, which is no time at all in board game minutes. Learning how to react tactically to a board driven completely by chance is engrossing. It does its best to replicate that you-versus-the-cold-machine vibe well executed in games like Arkham Horror. For what it lacks as far as in depth board game mechanics, The Draugr has a speed running sort of appeal to it that you really only find in roguelike video games these days.
The Draugr holds up as a mobile app, but there are things that aren’t translated well to the digital format. Besides the collectors appeal of having the physical cards on a shelf somewhere, some physical cues are missing that helped pass on some simple mechanics. A single die roll tells you which draugr will attack and where, thanks to the combination of numbers and symbols on the die. In the video game, there is no roll, just some border flashing and a tossing of tokens. It leads to the same end, but a bit less elegantly.
On the other side of that token, this would have been a great opportunity to add visual cues that you couldn’t add in the physical version of the game. For example, The Nunnery and The Foundry are locations that you can choose to forgo gaining resources from in order to protect all townspeople or locations from corruption, respectively. Once you choose the option, turns sort of go by unbothered, and maybe you did stop a person or place from being targeted thanks to your sacrifice. Since you aren’t actually rolling dice and passing out physical markers, and there’s no visual signifier that you’re protecting something this turn, you don’t have the same satisfaction in your sacrifice. It’s a ‘gamefeel’ thing that I didn’t expect to see as a problem until several runs deep.
And the app itself suffers from some minor, but annoying, bugs and glitches. More than once has a draugr flashed, notifying me that it will attack, and then never stop flashing. It’s a cosmetic blunder that always seems to translate into a mechanical one, because that draugr now requires multiple taps to register things that previously only took one or two.
All told, The Draugr is a very clever single player card game in a world where they are few and far between. Finding the physical version may be a challenge, and though there are plenty of pluses to pursuing it versus this digitized version, being able to engage with these simple yet shrewd systems on the train or on a lunch break is handy. It’s imperfect in execution, but it delivers the tension and desperation of a lone peace keeper trying to fend of the imminent and inevitable threat with the best of them.
