In the man-against-machine smackdown, humans remain ahead. But for how long? World Table Tennis champion Timo Boll matched wits against “the fastest robot on Earth” to find out.

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Filed under: e-News, e-Videos, Industrial / Manufacturing | Comments Off on Man vs. Machine: Game On!

Tags: Industrial / Manufacturing, industrial engineering, man v machine, Mechanical Engineering, ping pong, Robotics, table tennis, Timo Boll

Special Feature by Guy Wilkins

Hate playing scales or doing fitness drills? In the not-so-distant future, the hours of repetitive practice necessary to learn a musical instrument, new sport, or dance may be a relic of the past. Lara Boyd, a researcher at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, believes a promising new technology called magnetic brain stimulation could cut the practice time required to learn a new motor skill.

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Filed under: Biomedical, e-News, Electrical, Explore Engineering | Comments Off on Thinking Cap May Cut Practice Time

Tags: Lara Boyd, learning, magnetic brain stimulation, motor skill, thinking cap, transcranial brain stimulation, University of British Columbia

What’s in a voice? A new gesture-to-speech synthesizer developed by researchers at the University of British Columbia adds emotion to words that text-to-speech technologies now voice only in a monotone. It also translates gestures into music.

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Filed under: Computer, Electrical, Explore Engineering | Comments Off on Talk to the Hand

Tags: Electrical, Felix Tang, gesture-to-voice, hand, Music, Music engineering, mute, sensors, Sidney Fels, sign language, synthesizer, University of British Columbia