Engineer

Cruise Automation, the driverless car startup General Motors (GM) bought for $1 billion in 2016, is readying a formidable fleet of robo-taxis for rollout in cities throughout the US. But when it comes to details about how the company plans to realize these lofty goals, it's be ...more

Even though it seems like forever, the phenomenon of "rickrolling" has only been around since 2007. It was started as an inside joke by a 19-year-old who just wanted to troll his buddies, but ended up becoming one of the Internet's most popular memes with over 66 million views ...more

With technology giants like Apple and Google finally entering the fray, the move toward mass adoption of augmented reality is ramping up. Apple's ARKit and Google's ARCore will allow entirely new categories of apps to be made. Unfortunately, in a world of heavy competition, ge ...more

Moving a 2000 pound safe isn't easy... I was working as manager for a construction company that was performing an up fit on a century old building in downtown Concord, N.C. The owners wanted us to move a two thousand pound (that's a ton!) safe up to the second story so that i ...more

Earlier this month, John Oliver spent a segment on Last Week Tonight explaining native advertising, a practice followed by many online media outlets such as BuzzFeed, The New York Times, and VICE, which combines editorial content along with sponsored advertisements. Video: . W ...more

When Facebook launched its first hardware products last year, the Portal and Portal+ smart displays, the company mostly touted its video-calling features as it faced off against Amazon and its Echo Show. But Facebook also had an interesting feature that mostly flew under the ...more

As Microsoft continues to bask in the glow of its HoloLens 2 unveiling and begins ramping up the hype to launch, Nreal and Vuzix are carving out their own niches in the AR hardware landscape. Nreal continues to make waves with its forthcoming tethered smartglasses, and its fo ...more

It is almost indisputable that smartglasses and head-worn displays are the future of augmented reality. However, at this precise moment, they are still a very niche market. Those who have been in the presence of a HoloLens, Meta 2, or Magic Leap One have witnessed how powerfu ...more

Welcome back, my greenhorn hackers, and happy New Year! Now that your heads have recovered from your New Year's Eve regaling, I'd like to grab your attention for just a moment to preview 2015 here at Null Byte. I hope you will add your comments as to what you would like to se ...more

It's all fun and games until the technology is actually put into use and you realize augmented reality is now part of Death Star. That's what some AR insiders may be thinking once they get a look at the latest modified HoloLens 2 images released by the US Army. • Don't Miss: ...more

Developers can now publish augmented reality experiences that are viewable through the experimental version of Chrome and ARCore. Google announced the release of the WebXR Device API last month for VR experiences in Chrome version 67. Now, Google has made the WebXR Hit Test A ...more

The tradition of using cutting edge technology to prepare for missions in space, in this case, augmented reality, continues with a new team of international astronauts slated to board the International Space Station (ISS) later this year. On Tuesday, European Space Agency ast ...more

While consumer-grade smartglasses are the holy grail for tech companies, smartglasses maker Vuzix knows where its bread is buttered, and that's in the enterprise segment. As such, the company used the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2020 as its stage for unveiling the M4000, ...more

LOOOK, a Seattle-based mixed reality and development studio, can now peer into the future with their new geotechnical engineering visualization application for Microsoft HoloLens. Developed in partnership with BCG Engineering, a geotechnical consulting firm based in Vancouver ...more

Hi, my name is Matthew9170 and I would say I am a decent minecraft redstone engineer. I am entering the Elevator Redstone challenge. I have 2 entries on a double plot of land in the opposite corner of the /warp tower. The first is a minecart based elevator using a bug where m ...more

Peach trees and other related plants are susceptible to the devastation caused by fire blight, a contagious bacterial disease. Once contracted, infected trees have to be burned to contain the disease and prevent spread to nearby trees. Increasing resistance to antibiotic treat ...more

Two companies behind a number of augmented reality devices have joined forces to develop a 3D depth-sensing camera system that will facilitate computer vision capabilities for augmented/virtual reality experiences and more. Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., whose processors power ...more

The search for a cancer treatment that selectively finds and kills only the cancerous cells has just made a giant leap forward. A new study published in Nature Communications, by a group of researchers from the August Pi i Sunyer Biomedical Research Institute, Barcelona Insti ...more

Snapchat made augmented reality selfie effects famous, with Facebook copying the feature across its mobile apps. Of course, others have followed, but their face tracking apps often pale in comparison to the original. Now, Google is giving Android developers the keys to adding ...more

In a stunning end-of-year twist to the Magic Leap versus Nreal legal saga, the China-based startup is now filing a motion against Magic Leap. Documents detailing the motion were filed on Monday with the US Northern District Court of California. Don't Miss: Hands-On with the ...more

When I get struck by a craving for something SCJ (savory, crunchy, juicy), nothing fits the bill better than a BLT. But why settle for the sandwich form when there are so many other possibilities? Some of my favorite alternative ways to serve up a BLT are 1) as a salad, 2) in ...more

A recent security risk exposed by software engineer Szymon Sidor has raised a few eyebrows amongst the Android community. Work outlined in a blog post by Sidor depicts an ultra-secretive exploit that apps can utilize to film you without showing any indication on your device—e ...more

Publicly, things have been pretty quiet over at Meta, the augmented reality headset and software startup based in Silicon Valley. But that doesn't mean that the company doesn't have a few strong opinions about the state of AR in 2018. In a recent TED talk, one of the company' ...more

Augmented reality startup Nreal was a hit at this month's CES event, with some even calling the device a worthy challenger to the Magic Leap One. However, the company's path to success in the US may not be as smooth as it first seemed, as gaming giant Epic Games has lodged a ...more

It's been a while since I wrote up an article for this series but I did say that I'd be covering some WinAPI. So if you're interested in programming for the Windows platform, hop aboard and follow along. Note: This is an extension of the standard C that the previous material ...more

After Apple unveiled ARKit 3 at WWDC on Monday, Unity Technologies wasted little time on ensuring its developers can take advantage of it. Earlier this week, Unity announced that AR Foundation, its cross-platform framework for building AR mobile apps that are compatible with ...more

Microbial cells can improve the functionality of clothes in creative and useful ways, including cooling us down during a workout or making clothing glow for better visibility. The innovative products were developed by a team of 14 researchers from MIT, in such broadly diverse ...more

We live in a computer world full of file formats. Whether we are talking about images, videos, or text documents, there are dozens of file types for each, and there are new ones added every year to applications. Keeping in mind that many of these formats were created before th ...more

As Microsoft unveiled their new Windows Phone 8.1 software update yesterday, undoubtedly the most memorable takeaway was their showcase of Cortana. Competing directly against Apple's Siri and Google's Now, Cortana is Microsoft's entry into the digital voice assistant fray, and ...more

Nick and Anna Berte of Bel Air, Maryland mischievously rigged their snowman with a flamethrower. Via the Baltimore Sun, "'My husband is an engineer and decided later on to make the snowman breathe fire,' Anna Berte writes. 'Hope everyone enjoys this snowman as much as the res ...more

We know that Microsoft's HoloLens 2 is due to start shipping later this year, but despite the trickle of news about the device, we still don't know when. Now, a new set of documents on the Federal Communications Commission website confirms we probably won't have TOO much long ...more

Less than 20 days after the launch of Magic Leap One, Mapbox has jumped at the chance to provide its map services to Magic Leap developers through its Maps SDK for Unity. Dubbed the Magic Maps SDK, the toolkit enables developers to pull 3D vector maps, satellite maps, and ele ...more

Waymo just received approval on a patent for a push-button console that replaces not only a steering wheel in a car but the brake and gas pedals, too. This reflects Alphabet's driverless arm could remain true to its original mantra of developing cars that pilot themselves with ...more

We're still weeks away from a probably HoloLens 2 release, but Microsoft's immersive computing team is still hard at work on other aspects of its "mixed reality" ecosystem. Earlier this week, Microsoft published a new extension for Unity and the Mixed Reality Tookit that enab ...more

It looks like Pokémon GO players may get a surprise gift from the game's developer, Niantic, this holiday season. After teasing the arrival of Buddy Adventure last month, Niantic revealed on Tuesday that the new interactive mode for its blockbuster game will arrive by 2020. A ...more

Leave it to the Russians to come up with this borderline suicidal winter sport. After all, they did invent the terrifyingly lethal game of chance, Russian Roulette. From the blog English Russia, "It’s new fun in some Russian cities to jump from a bridge roped together in a b ...more

Engineer-turned-artist Jim Campbell's recent installation "Scattered Light" converts New York City's Madison Square Park into a ghostly world of light bulb pixels. Campbell dangled 2,000 floating LED light bulbs programmed to display shadowy human silhouettes passing by. How ...more

Everyone seems to be talking about Elon Musk's new futuristic Tesla Cybertruck, the vehicle that either looks like a cool moon rover or an outlandish video game replica, depending on your tastes. That's why it's no surprise that early HoloLens 2 partner Trimble decided to joi ...more

This week, the beginning of an epic legal battle was set to begin between augmented reality players Magic Leap and Nreal, the small China-based startup accused by the former of stealing trade secrets. However, a new wrinkle has emerged in the legal skirmish that could change ...more

The recent announcement of a $480 million US Army contract awarded to Microsoft over Magic Leap for supplying 100,000 augmented reality headsets shows just a how lucrative the enterprise (and government) sector can be for AR. However, considering sales of total smartphones to ...more

When filtered through the prism of the top stories of the year, the business of augmented reality 2019 was defined as much by epic failures of AR startups as it was by the promising developments that propelled the industry forward into 2020. On the dark side of the spectrum, ...more

After weeks of teasing what many hoped might be a live, on-device demo of Magic Leap software to go along with the hardware glimpse we got last month, it turns out that all we got was a bit of new demonstration video footage. Once again hosted by Alan Noon, a senior learning ...more

If you use Ubisoft's uPlay browser extension, you should probably get rid of it right now. An Information Security Engineer at Google discovered that the plugin has a hole in it that allows programs to be installed through uPlay, essentially letting anyone who feels so incline ...more

The Association for Computing Machinery's annual Siggraph conference, taking place next week in Los Angeles, will bring researchers from around the to show off their latest innovations in imaging and display technology. This year, the conference has a new headlining act, as M ...more

Hand tracking technology company Leap Motion has built a stunningly fluid augmented reality ping-pong game that not only showcases the capabilities of its open source Project North Star augmented reality headset, but also demonstrates how artificial intelligence can elevate im ...more

Location services company Mapbox has added new capabilities to its location-based gaming tool to fend off Google's challenge for the same mobile app category. With version 1.4.2 of its Maps SDK for Unity, Mapbox has made it easier for developers to target real-world points of ...more

You already know that 3D-printing technology is swiftly evolving—it's been used to print balloon animals, bikinis, and house keys, and there's even an affordable home version of the printer, as well as one you can 3D print. Now, I'm happy to say, 3D printers might just end up ...more

Last year this guy made his own smartwatch from scratch, so in 2020, naturally, he decided to give making smartglasses a try. And it worked! Nashville, Tennessee-based electrical engineer Sam March is the kind of DIY guy we love. He realized he had a problem he wanted to solv ...more

Are you having problems because the game was released a long time ago and the more experienced players are better than you? Then you should be very excited to find out that I will be giving you some general tips & tricks about the different classes that I have learned the hard ...more