Tech Shakes Things up Across Sports, Biology, Art, and More
Emerging Tech Roundup — July 29
The Quantious team’s top picks for timely trending news in the tech world.
This week in tech: The NBA considers VR for referee training, a micro drone offers views from within the human body, Apple is granted patents for body-tracking tech, 19th century artwork is modernized into an AR exhibit, AI depicts the last selfie on Earth, AMD update includes noise suppression tech, and DeepMind releases a thorough protein structure database.
The NBA May Use Summer League — And Virtual Reality — To Train Refs
(FiveThirtyEight, July 21)
Already being leveraged by some referees in Las Vegas, Rezzil has developed a VR training platform that the NBA may incorporate into its referee training. The VR technology presents referees with an immersive basketball game in which they can analyze players from different perspectives, as well as pause or playback the games.
New Tech Allows Doctors to Travel Inside of Your Body
(VentureBeat, July 24)
Endiatx has developed the first version of its robotic drone, which is small enough for patients to swallow. After swallowing the PillBot™, it travels into the “stomach and other parts of the digestive tract.” Though the drone has not yet received FDA approval, it has been tested on both cadavers and live humans and has successfully streamed videos to doctors’ devices in real-time.
Apple Is Granted Patents Relating to a VR Headset Input System Involving VR Gloves & More
(Patently Apple, July 26)
Apple has been granted a patent by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for new body-tracking technology. The patent involves technology that can measure users’ movements to detect skin-to-skin contact between two body parts — all without using cameras and relying on electrode sensing instead. Currently, the patent is illustrated leveraging “wrist-worn wearable devices.”
Getty Museum and Apple Bring William Blake’s Monsters to Life for New AR Project
(ARTnews, July 27)
On July 28, Apple’s London storefront will be debuting its “United Visions” AR art experience, based on the work of William Blake. The 19th-century artist’s work has been modernized into animated, 3D artwork by Ed Cutting and Tin Nguyen. Its showcase in the Apple store will include audio components as well.
Dall-E’s ‘Last Selfie Ever Taken on Earth’ Response Goes Viral
(TweakTown, July 27)
AI DALL-E is a technology capable of producing images in response to human text prompts. This week, it was asked to produce “what it thinks would be the last selfie a human ever took on Earth,” and its response went viral. DALL-E produced a series of images with grim, bloody, or masked humans posed in front of black holes, mushroom clouds, and other end-of-the-world-depicting backgrounds.
AMD Releases Its Own Noise Suppression Tool to Take On Nvidia’s Rtx Broadcast
(The Verge, July 27)
AMD has included a noise suppression feature in its Adrenalin Edition 22.7.1 update, allowing users to filter out background noise from devices within the interface. The feature will only be supported on select hardware, however. The update also includes improved image quality via AMD’s Radeon Super Resolution feature update.
Deepmind Found the Structure of Nearly Every Protein Known to Science
(The Verge, July 28)
DeepMind plans to release a database containing almost “every protein known to science,” offering help and information to scientists working in healthcare and medicine development. There are over 200 million protein structures in the database, deeming it one of the largest advancements in scientific knowledge thus far.
