World’s fastest robot arm has a 50ms reaction time

Researchers at the EPFL in Switzerland have built one of the fastest robots on the planet. According to a news release, the multi-axis arm can catch all manner of crazily shaped objects in less than five-hundredths of a second. That sounds pretty impressive, an even looks impressive, but what else can it do?

The robot is a fairly sophisticated four-fingered hand connected to a standard Kuka arm. It is trained using a technique called “programming by demonstration,” which basically means imitation by trial and error. The trainer creates sample trajectories for the arm by manually guiding it, similar in a sense to what babies must be doing when they learn to control their own arms. Using an array of cameras, the robot creates a model of the object’s motion. This model includes the object’s flight path, rotation, and whether it is a hammer, racket, bottle, or something else.

One of the potential applications offered for this arm is for collecting space debris. While there would seem to be a bit of a gap between catching 10 mph sporting goods and 20,000 mph space junk, it all makes slightly more sense (from a funding point of view) when noting that there is also a Swiss Space center nearby at the EPFL. More practically, a robot arm with this kind of speed would give even the new Deka arm a run for its money.

Now that robotics researchers are beginning to realize the futility of bottom-up programming in which a near infinity of possible scenarios must be prefigured in software, top-down approaches are all the rage. If the larger world consists of more than a limited set of objects, the real top level must lie significantly beyond mere object identity. But what is the real top level? Perhaps what we humans do is use something more like good and evil to represent various object incidentals.

Perhaps the best way to answer the question of what to do with an incoming ball or hammer is to apply a bit of will and feeling to the problem. Lacking pain receptors, a robot has little skin in the game when it comes to choosing among competing possible trajectories to use. A human, on the other hand, seeks to minimize the penalty of the sudden impact while at the same time maximizing the robustness of the response. In other words, the human wants to bring its large muscles into play for initial speed and rigidity, but also its smaller effectors to precisely decelerate the object in the most pain-free way possible.

Having constraints like these greatly simplifies the problem of how to intercept an object. The question then becomes not how to orient an arm or hand, but getting it to respond in the first place. In the not so uncommon event of stroke or even intentional surgical procedure for epilepsy, patients sometimes walk away with a bizarre affliction known asalien hand syndrome. Not only does the victim of this condition lose control over the hand, but the hand will sometimes do the opposite of what is desired; this frequently becomes the worst thing imaginable in any given circumstance. Alien hand syndrome falls under the province of neurology, which in practice, is chiefly concerned with converting the strange into the obvious. While for many, the height of personal absurdity would have to be our left hand randomly choking or undressing us while the right hand tries to restrain it. For a robot, we might expect this to be a familiar bug we dial out in much the same way we now tweak a servo loop.

Clearly, there is much to be added to the robot model before it is capable of reducing a 10-degree-of-freedom joint configuration space into a cascading tree of binary good versus bad decision points. Drawing such a distinction may now seem as strange as assigning gender to names for objects in many of the world’s languages. But even for things like space debris, the most important thing about it that we need to know may be the split-second decision of whether to avoid, destroy, or keep it.

LG L90 Dual review: Could shake up mid-range segment with its solid feature set

LG hasn’t exactly been ‘Mr Popular’ in the mainstream smartphone segment. While some of their recent budget offerings might have sold well, they didn’t really have anything that was memorable. The L90 however packs in enough substance to jump out of the crowd. In a price bracket which doesn’t really have anything terribly exciting at the moment, the L90 has a strong chance to shine. We got the dual-SIM version of the L90, which retails for a couple of hundred more than the single-SIM version. Let’s see if it can shine in this price point.

Design and Build

The L90 Dual is not particularly striking in any respect. It sports a simple candy bar form factor and makes no fuss about the fact that it’s a budget offering. We quite like this simplistic approach, even more since there’s no ugly chrome trimming anywhere in sight. This is the oldest trick in the book which OEMs use to bling up their phone. The black variant has a full matte body. The sides has a dual tone finish while the rear cover gets a roughened texture. This gives you good grip and makes it very easy to keep clean.

Excellent fit and finish of the plastics

We appreciate the attention to detail as well like the little concentric circles on the buttons and the overall nice fit and finish of the plastics. The L90 Dual looks polished and sturdy and feels really good to hold.

The capacitive buttons don’t have backlighting

Along with the usual set of buttons, LG also throws in their IR blaster which is used in conjunction with the Q Remote app. The buttons have good tactile feedback and are ergonomically placed. Unfortunately, the capacitive buttons are not backlit, which is a problem in the dark. The icons do feature a reflective chrome lining, which makes it easier to spot in daylight but not at night.

The rear cover has a very good finish

A couple of other features that are sorely missed are the ambient light sensor and a notification LED. There’s simply no excuse to omit these two features when you’re paying this much. The rear mono speaker is not very loud for media but is enough for alerts.

Underneath the hood

Underneath the cover, are the two SIM slots and a microSD card slots. The L90 Dual accepts regular sized SIM cards and not micro-SIMs. Overall, we quite like the understated looks of the L90. It’s built well and the fit and finish of the plastics is very good. The omission of the ambient light sensor and notification LED are the only pain points so far.

Features

The L90 Dual sports a 4.7-inch IPS display but with a rather low resolution of 960 x 540. While this is not a deal breaker in the real world, we wonder what stopped LG from using a HD display instead, especially when the cheaper Moto G sports one. Thankfully, the colours and viewing angles are pretty good for a mainstream phone although it lacks a bit of sharpness. We also found the sensitivity to be a bit off at times.

The Optimus 3.0 UI

The Optimus 3.0 user interface masks the shortcomings of the low pixel count very well. Icons and text are devoid of any pixilation and the overall experience is very fluid. A bit of lag rears its ugly head intermittently but nothing that will detract you from the overall pleasant Android experience. The L90 also gets some of the cool tricks from its elder siblings and well as some brand new ones.

An admiral performer in benchmarks

Plug and Pop gives you a contextual menu when you plug in your earphones or the charging cable. Capture Plus lets you save an entire webpage or portions of it quite easily. We also have Smart Screen and Smart Video which perform their respective actions as soon as you look away. There are a whole bunch of gestures as well for calls. Last but not least, we also have Quick Memo and QSlide apps which make a reappearance.

The most interesting of the lot however is Knock Code and Clip Tray. The former is a type of security lock which lets you unlock your phone by tapping on portions of the display. It’s a slightly longer process for unlocking but works well every time.

Clip Tray is easily our favourite thus far. Rather than only remembering the last image or text you’ve copied in the clipboard, Clip Tray saves everything in memory so you can directly paste content in a message or mail that you might have used weeks ago. Clip Tray even shows you all your media that you might have copied in the past so you paste multiple content directly without having to manually do it one at a time. This is  an extremely handy feature which we hope to see other OEMs use as well.

Some of the nifty additions

Coming to the hardware, the L90 is powered by the same Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 chipset which we’ve seen in the Motorola Moto G,Samsung Galaxy Grand 2 and even in the upcoming Nokia Lumia 630. The quad-core chip chugs along at 1.2GHz and there’s 1GB of RAM for company. With no apps running in the background, there’s roughly 390MB RAM free. This is also one of the few budget phones that isn’t a Motorola to come with Android 4.4.2 KitKat out-of-the-box. The phone doesn’t really lag all that much, except intermittently. But that’s the case with all Android phones. It does pretty well in benchmarks as well.

Media

Media playback is very good through a god pair of IEMs. The robust music player offers multiple way of sorting your music and there’s even EQ pre-sets for boosting audio. Out of the 8GB of internal memory, there’s 3.8GB free for the user. You can expand this further up to 32GB.

The music player is pretty robust

Video playback is pretty solid as well. 1080p files playback just fine, as does most popular video formats and codecs.

Connectivity

The LG L90 is a tri-band 3G and quad-band 2G device. Dual standby is also present for both SIM cards. The L90 has good audio reception through the earpiece and we didn’t face any issue with calls during our week’s usage. Other features includes Wi-Fi ‘n’, Bluetooth v4.0 and GLONASS. Sadly, USB OTG is not supported as our test Sandisk Dual USB drive wasn’t detected.

Some of the productivity apps

LG throws in a bunch of their pre-installed apps as well like LG Backup, File Manager, Voice Recorder, Quick Remote, LG World app store and RemoteCall service.

Camera

The primary camera is an 8MP shooter with auto-focus while in the front, we have to settle with just a VGA one. We also get LED flash and extra features like cheese shutter. Some of the shooting modes include panorama, burst mode, time catch shot and sports mode.

An outdoor shot

Indoor shots are usually quite noisy

Despite the healthy resolution, the 8MP sensor is not very good at capturing accurate colours and detail. We also noticed plenty of noise creeping in when the lighting was anything but optimum. Full HD recording is present but once again, the quality is not very good. Overall, the camera is a bit of a disappointment.

Battery life

The 2540mAh battery manages to keep the phone alone for an entire day, well almost. The power saver mode helps a bit but you won’t get much more out of it as your usage will be limited. After completing our 8-hour loop test, we had about 14 percent battery to spare.

Verdict and Price in India

Leaving the MRP aside, the LG L90 Dual can be bought online and in most retail stores for as low as Rs 16,500. Its closest competition here is theSamsung Galaxy Grand Neo, although calling it competition would be a bit of a stretch. As it so happens, the L90 Dual doesn’t really have any strong competition if you compare its feature set with other offerings in this segment. It actually makes a very strong case, despite some of its shortcomings; we would recommend this phone if your budget permits.

We didn’t like the fact that it doesn’t have an ambient light sensor or a notification LED, while the camera is average at best and battery life is strictly OK. Beyond this however, it’s a value for money handset which features the latest version of Android, has a great feature set (IR blaster, Clip Tray) and is powerful enough to run most of the current apps and games with ease.

Canon EOS 1200D review: Decent performer with greatly improved build

Canon released the EOS 1200D,  a refresh to the entry-level EOS 1100D, back in February during the CP+ photo event in Japan. The India launch happened towards the end of March. While some years back, entry-level DSLRs were the only option for those looking to move up from a compact camera, the situation now is not so simple. With advanced point and shoots with fast lenses, mirrorless cameras, and even high end cellphone cameras which let you not just shoot but also share images, the entry-level DSLR has some healthy competition. Does the Canon 1200D manage to keep the category relevant? Let us find out.

Build and Design

Canon EOS 1200D has a much better build than its predecessor – the 1100D

Canon entry-level DSLRs have had a constant design, so not much has changed on the exterior of the EOS 1200D. But it does feel good in the hand as compared to the EOS 1100D. Canon has finally moved ahead from the cheap plastic body seen on the 1100D to a metal body with the 1200D. Canon has completely covered the right hand side which has the palm grip, with textured rubber which is neatly complemented by a rubberised thumb-rest area on the rear side. This was missing on the EOS 1100D which give the EOS 1200D an edge over the older model. The design on the top is identical with the mode dial on the right hand side.

Only on the rear side will you find a change in the button layout. The four-way keypad is placed on the right hand side, but the buttons surrounding it are placed more in the centre than on the corners. The live-view button has been moved from beside the LCD screen to the beside the optical viewfinder. This is to accommodate the bump in the screen size from 2.7-inches on the EOS 1100D to 3-inches on the EOS 1200D. The buttons are well built and have a nice feedback, except for the zoom buttons on the top right hand corner, which have a more soft feedback.

Canon EOS 1200D dual kit combo comes with an EF-S 18-55mm IS II and an EF-S 55-250mm IS II lenses

The Canon EOS 1200D dual kit comes with the bundled EF-S 18-55mm IS II lens as well as EF-S 55-250 IS II kit lenses. The lenses are well-built and have dedicated notches to switch between manual/auto-focus and another one to activate/deactivate image stabilisation.

Features

Canon EOS 1200D has used an 18MP APS-C sensor in place of the older 12MP sensor that was seen on the EOS 1100D. This is still lower than the 24MP sensor seen on Nikon’s entry level D3300. Canon EOS 1200D has kept the same DIGIC 4 image processor and it has the same 9 AF points along with 1 cross-type AF in the centre. Barring support for full HD video recording, most other specifications on the EOS 1200D match those of the EOS 1100D.

On the rear side of the EOS 1200D you have a 3-inch LCD screen with a 460k dot resolution

The 3-inch LCD screen has a comparatively higher resolution at 460k dots, but that is not the best when you consider that even advanced point and shoot cameras sport higher resolution screens. Canon has tweaked the user interface to an extent in the live view mode. Where initially you would have to click on Quick menu, enter a particular option such as ISO or WB and then change it, with the EOS 1200D, you can make these changes without leaving your live view screen. This makes navigation relatively faster.

Canon EOS 1200D comes with the same layout on its top edge as the 1100D

The EOS 1200D lacks a proximity sensor near the optical viewfinder eye-cap, so you will need to manually switch off the display in case you don’t want it on. In terms of creative modes, the EOS 1200D has modes such as portrait, landscape, macro, sports and night portrait. There are different colour styles (filters) that can be tweaked according to your preference and you get three user-defined ones at your disposal. Nothing much has changed with the menu interface as well, with every option neatly categorised under shooting mode, review mode, settings and so on. You can create your own list of most commonly used settings and add them under My Menu. On the left hand side of the camera, you have a rubber flap which covers the HDMI port and remote trigger port. We would have liked it if Canon had placed the SD card compartment separate from the battery compartment.

Performance
Studio ISO Performance
Canon EOS 1200D performs well from ISO 100 to ISO 800. Images are relatively noise-free and there is no drop in image quality. At ISO 1600, you see a marked spike in luminance noise as compared with ISO 800. The text starts to get fuzzy and the threads start losing some detail, but the overall image is still usable, if you excuse the slight drop in image quality. From ISO 3200 onwards, noise is quite prominent. Edges around objects lose definition and the overall image appears quite soft. ISO 3200 is still usable but going over ISO 3200 is only meant for emergency situations.

Note: Images below have been resized. To see the full sized images, please click on them. Additionally, visit our Canon EOS 1200D album on Flickr to see more high resolution images.

ISO 100

ISO 200

ISO 400

ISO 800

ISO 1600

ISO 3200

ISO 6400

Image Quality
Out of the camera, the images appear natural although a bit flat, but that can be taken care of by boosting up the contrast and saturation settings. The metering is quite decent and gives correct exposures on most occasions. The auto lighting optimiser mode enables you to get more details in the shadow and highlight areas. Only in tricky lighting situations – extreme highlights and dark shadows – does the exposure go for a toss. We were surprised to find the Spot metering feature absent on the Canon 1200D and a less accurate Partial metering in its place.

The Canon EF-S 18-55mm lens is very good at controlling purple fringing, but barrel distortion is noticeable. Image sharpness around the edges was quite good considering we were using a kit lens. We also tested the camera with the Canon EF-S 55-250mm IS II lens and were impressed with the results while shooting at the local zoo. The RAW images look softer out of the camera but you can extract a lot of detail in post processing. JPEG processing does tend to show minor artifacts when compared along side a RAW file.

Note: Images below have been resized. To see the full sized images, please click on them. Additionally, visit our Canon EOS 1200D album on Flickr to see more high resolution images.

ISO 100, f/4, 1/200th sec

ISO 800, f/5.6, 1/1000th sec

The RAW file on the left retains more detail than the JPEG on the right (check folded skin below the eye region) and with noise reduction you can extract more detail.

ISO 3200, f/5.6, 1/50th sec

ISO 400, f/5.6. 1/1000th sec

ISO 1600, f/6.3, 1/4th sec

Focus

The AF speed is decent when composing via the optical viewfinder, but using the AF is painfully slow in the live view mode. You can change the individual focus points, but pressing the button on the right hand corner with the zoom in symbol brings up the nine points. Then using the direction keys, you can select the focus you want. Under low light, we did notice focus hunting.

ISO 800, f/5, 1/125th sec (Shot using Canon EF-S 55-250mm IS II)

ISO 400, f/5.6, 1/60th sec

ISO 800, f/5.6, 1/250th sec (Shot using Canon EF-S 55-250mm IS II)

Video

The Canon EOS 1200D can shoot full HD videos at 24p and 25p along with HD videos at 50p. But it gives decent output only if you have the camera steady in one place. The moment you pan your camera, you will notice considerable rolling shutter, specially if you are shooting handheld. AF hunting is also quite prominent while video shooting. At best it is good for casual family videos, nothing mode.

Verdict and Price in India

Canon EOS 1200D is priced at Rs 39,995 for the 18-55mm IS II and 55-250mm IS II lens combo whereas just the kit lens plus body costs Rs 34,995. The body plus 18-55mm IS II kit lens price is a high launch price for an entry-level DSLR and while Canon may have got away with higher pricing of entry level DSLRs in the past, currently it has many competing products.

For starters, at the Rs 35,000 price point, you have some stellar advanced point and shoots from Sony (RX 100), Canon (Powershot G1 X), Nikon (P340) and Olympus (XZ-2) which offer much better image quality and low light performance vis-a-vis the EOS 1200D plus 18-55mm kit lens. Agreed the advanced point and shoots are compact cameras, with no option to change lenses and address a different need as compared to DSLRs. But if you are never going to change your kit lens, then it makes more sense to go for the advanced point and shoot cameras over the EOS 1200D.

If you want to upgrade from a compact camera to learn photography and you are willing to invest in lenses sometime in the near future, then the EOS 1200D is a good starting point. But we would recommend you to wait for the price to drop closer to Rs 30,000 to Rs 32,000. The combo deal at Rs 39,995, on the other hand is quite a good one as you are getting a lens priced around Rs 12,000 at just a Rs 5,000 premium over the regular body + kit lens pricing. If you are going to use your camera for wildlife photography or bird photography, then the combo kit offering is quite good.

The overall performance of the EOS 1200D is good for an entry level DSLR. Canon does deliver good image quality, good build and a good AF performance in daylight. Sure, it does have its shortcomings when it comes to shooting and focussing in low light, prominent noise beyond ISO 1600 and below average video quality when panning. But then, show us another entry-level DSLR that does not suffer from either or all of the issues above. If you a first time DSLR buyer who just wants the kit lens, the Canon 1200D is a good choice.

PRICE

₹39,995

TECH2 RATING

7

YOUR RATING

5

HTC Desire 310 review: Buy a Moto G instead!

The HTC Desire 310 dual sim is the company’s answer to Motorola’s Moto G. Priced at roughly the same range, the 310 is designed to be affordable yet offer some of the basic tools needed to give first-time smartphone users a pleasant experience. But does it succeed? And more importantly, does it offer better value compared to the Moto G?

Design and Build

When HTC announced the Desire 310, we felt it had better aesthetics compared to Motorola’s offering. However, in reality, things are quite the opposite. The matte-finished plastic body has a very cheap feel to it and is not something we expect from HTC. It’s a bit chunky as well at 11.3mm in depth.

The 310 doesn’t look all that good outside press shots

Apart from the logo, there aren’t any capacitive buttons since everything is on-screen now. There’s a front-facing VGA camera for Skype calls. The display is a 4.5 TFT LCD, which is the most disappointing part of the phone. Not only is the resolution not HD, the quality of the panel is below average. Due to this, the colour reproduction and viewing angles are sub-standard at best.

The 5MP fixed-focus sensor on the back

We found the button placement and the feedback to be quite disappointing as well. Not only is everything on the right, it gets worse as the buttons sit almost flush with the body making it a task to actually press them. Tactile feedback is almost non-existent as well. Around the back is a 5MP shooter but no flash.

The matte-finished back is quite drab

The HTC Desire 310 hasn’t really gotten off to a very good start. The build and finish of the handset are very disappointing to say the least. Hopefully, it will redeem itself in the software department.

Features

The Desire 310 is bundled with Android 4.2.2 but is stripped off the Sense user interface. It’s a little weird using an HTC phone without Sense as it feels like a lot like a Micromax or a Karbonn phone, since the UI is very similar to what you get on those phones. There are some remnants of Sense like video previews and BlinkFeed but that’s about it. Since the 310 doesn’t have to deal with this extra burden, the interface is quite spiffy despite the 512MB of RAM.

The 310 has mostly stock Android

The Desire 310 is powered by a MediaTek MT6582M quad-core chipset running at 1.3GHz. This ‘M’ moniker at the end indicates the GPU runs at a slightly slower 416MHz as compared to 500MHz on the standard version. The 512MB of RAM raises an issue if you try to multitask. This is where the phone gets a bit laggy. You get the standard suite of Google apps pre-installed as well as apps like Facebook, Polaris Office 5.

Media

We have the stock music player for music and the same goes for videos. Audio quality is not bad through a pair of good IEMs. You even get equaliser presets to tune your music. There’s 4GB of internal memory out of which, the user gets 2.6GB. This can be expanded by 32GB thanks to the MicroSD card.

Media playback is decent

There’s 1080p video playback support but we doubt you’d enjoy a movie on this phone due to its low-res screen.

Connectivity

The Desire 310 is a dual-SIM phone (GSM+GSM) with single-band 3G and quad-band 2G support. Call quality was good as well as we didn’t have much issues here. The phone isn’t the best for surfing the web due to the lacklustre display but there’s the basic connectivity in place. There’s also Wi-Fi ‘n’, Bluetooth 4.0, GLONASS and USB 2.0. Sadly, there isn’t any notification LED to alert you with incoming calls and messages.

Some of the bundled apps

Camera

Adding to the roster of disappointments is the 5MP camera. To start off with, it lacks auto-focus, which is the last nail in a coffin as far as we’re concerned. Unsurprisingly, the quality of pictures is pretty bad despite the lighting condition. The interface is also very basic and similar to what local brands offer. You can record in 1080p though, for whatever that’s worth.

The camera UI

Quality of pictures are below average

Battery life

Battery life gives the 310 a small feather in its otherwise sparse cap. The phone managed to complete our 8-hour loop test with 17 percent to spare. The 2000mAh battery does offer good back-up time but then it ought to when you have only the bare essentials in the phone.

Under the hood

Verdict and Price in India

With a street price of roughly Rs 11,500, the HTC Desire 310 dual sim is too expensive for what’s on offer. In fact, we wouldn’t even recommend it if dropped to half its price. It’s quite simply a disaster of a product which is too bad when you consider the Desire 210 and Desire 816, which actually have good potential. The Motorola Moto G continues to be the best Android under Rs 15,000. If you don’t mind the rival camp, then we also recommend the Nokia Lumia 525 instead of the 310.

PRICE

₹12,999

TECH2 RATING

5

YOUR RATING

4