Orchid Project

Report on the Citizen Cyberscience summit that took place in London Feb 16-18.  The summit was mainly run by the UCL group led by Muki Hacklay and Francois Grey (head of the citizen cyberscience centre) from CERN. The summit involved a number of participants from around the world (many of them invited by the cyberscience […]

The cleanweb [...] is all about using inexpensive information technology to change how the world consumes energy. Projects from the hackaton include a tool to compare appliance sold by amazon in terms of energy efficiency and google-mapping carbon emissions of public buildings. More information on: http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=39596&a=f

We are currently at the Cyberscience summit in London and this can be seen live here: http://www.livestream.com/excites There are a bunch of interesting talks coming up: 1. 11:20 to 12:55 (interesting) 2. 14:00 to 15:20 (very interesting) 3. 15:40 to 16:40 (discussions/panel) 4. 17:00 to 18:00 (includes a talk by Eric Paulos from CMU about […]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17014808 Torches, drones and an electric Le Mans racing car are all test-beds for a new kind of “structural battery”, BAE Systems has said. The batteries use carbon fibre and can form part of the body of a device. By effectively building the power source into the fabric of an object they can save weight. […]

Stumbled upon this series of articles in an unusual place, gives quite a good overview. Part 1: The Playershttp://www.core77.com/blog/social_design/redesigning_international_disaster_response_part_1_the_players_20987.asp Part 2: The Challengeshttp://www.core77.com/blog/social_design/redesigning_international_disaster_response_part_2_the_challenges_20988.asp Part 3: Looking to the US Militaryhttp://www.core77.com/blog/social_design/redesigning_international_disaster_response_part_3_looking_to_the_us_military_20989.aspPart 4: Current Innovationhttp://www.core77.com/blog/social_design/redesigning_international_disaster_response_part_4_current_innovation_20990.asp

Two more links that people may find interesting. The first is about the parliament having second thoughts on the smart metering rollout for a number of reasons such as security/privacy and cost-benefit concerns (will smart meters result in widespread behavioural change that will make up for their cost) http://spectrum.ieee.org/riskfactor/energy/the-smarter-grid/parliament-predicted-benefits-of-uk-smart-metering-program-overblown The second is about the new […]

Hagent is a portable heating concept by German designers Andreas Meinhardt and Daniel Abendroth. It looks like a simple black box on the outside,  but the mobile robot is capable of searching out heat, absorbing it, and then re-releasing the heat in cold places.  http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/home-robots/this-robotic-black-box-will-make-your-life-warmer

Hi, this could be of interest to the AgentSwitchers: Which? is aconsumer group that is inviting utility companies to bid in a reverseauction for a coalition of consumers it has gathered online here:www.whichbigswitch.co.uk See the news article here:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/consumertips/household-bills/9069342/40000-consumers-join-forces-to-get-lower-utility-bills.html James

This is very relevant to what we are planning to do in terms of citizen science/crowdsourcing. If you are interested please register asap as there are limited spaces. A number of Soton people are planning to go! — The London Citizen Cyberscience Summit in 2010 brought together for the first time volunteers and scientists from […]

Dear All, Attached to this post, is a link to a video introducing ARGUS, a coordination system for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) developed at the University of Southampton and deployed in collaboration with the Australian Center for Field Robotics (ACFR). ARGUS has been designed to support situational awareness for disaster management settings. It is based […]