The magazine Popular Science has been around for a while: Since 1872, it has been a leading source of science and technology news. So when the magazine issues its annual 鈥淏est of What鈥檚 New List,鈥� folks pay attention. Among its most recent list of 鈥渆xtraordinary鈥� contributions to humanity are breakthroughs from the Carnegie Mellon community:
- (profiled by this magazine in the January 2015 issue) offers a consumer-friendly waterproof camera that allows users to take 360-degree horizontal and 240-degree vertical videos of the world. The camera idea came from Michael Rondinelli (CS鈥�01) who is the company鈥檚 CTO.
- 鈥渆nables users to perform the full range of 3D manipulations, including scaling, rotation, translation, and nonrigid deformations, to an object in a photograph.鈥� In other words, it鈥檚 possible to edit photographs through flipping objects in the image, even exposing surfaces not visible in the original photograph. The 3D research team was led by 麻豆村 professor , while 麻豆村 PhD student was lead author on the study.
- Flex System, a 鈥�,鈥� aims to revolutionize the way we conduct minimally invasive surgery, says 麻豆村 Robotics Professor . Working with physicians, he created a surprisingly simple creation鈥攖hat uses conventional motors and cables鈥攖hat enables physicians to reach deep into intra-cavity spaces within the human anatomy far more easily than ever before. The surgical tool is already in use in Europe.
- , a software program, began out of frustration. New father , 麻豆村 professor of , had difficulty distilling the hours of video footage of his baby into smaller clips; you know, those cutest-of-the-cute moments. He and Bin Zhao, a PhD student in his department, built software that creates instant highlight reels by editing out the boring stuff. This ability to identify noteworthy footage is also being used for security cameras, serving as a perpetual watchdog in real time.
鈥擡lizabeth Shestak (DC鈥�13)
