The developers of this technology have made great efforts to make it better than Siri, Apple’s stumbling assistant for the Iphone. They studied many other assistants including actual human assistants, keepers of executive calendars and interceptors of phone calls. After analysing them, they concluded that virtual assistants need to do a better job of anticipating their bosses’ needs.

“Siri is this anthropomorphized character, but Siri doesn’t know you personally,”, co-vice president of Microsoft’s OS group, said in an interview.

Late last week in a conference, Belfiore demonstrated Cortana’s Siri-like basic  features, with similar shortcomings. Users can use her to set calendar appointments with voice commands like “Schedule a phone call with Jim at 2 p.m. tomorrow.”

Belfiore also showed how Cortana thinks beyond Siri to figure out what users want before they even ask for it. If you keep searching for cricket scores, local traffic conditions and news on the stock exchnge, she will herself start to proactively display fresh data about those topics prominently.

Given permission, Cortana can also examine a user’s email to check airline reservations and warn if a flight is delayed. If there is heavy traffic to airport on the day of departure, Cortana notifies the users that they should leave early.

It will become much clear whether Cortana has a real edge over Siri, only when it is use by the masses.

During its early days, Apple’s virtual assistant, Siri also had many performance issues that rendered it unavailable when people wanted to use it. Though Apple has improved its technology still there are many issues to be resolved. Cortana may also have to face similar problems but it is highly likely that it perform better.

References
www.techgig.com

Bhanu Vrat
IIIT-ALLAHABAD(MS-CLIS)

The engineers have created a battery which can be charged in only 30 seconds. But the prototype battery is not fit for the smartphone battery. It is the size of a cigarette packet. The creators said that in a year’s time they will create a battery of size which is required to fit in a smartphone. They have predicted that the device will be available in the market in three years.

The secret behind the less charging time is the use of Nano-crystals made from peptides. Peptide is a compound consisting of two or more amino acids linked in a chain. Peptide is used in many biological processes in the body.

A Nano crystal is a material particle having at least one dimension smaller than 100 nanometers (spheres just 2.1 nanometers across).There are many atoms arranged in either a single- or poly-crystalline manner in a Nano crystal.

These are used by the electronics engineers frequently. Engineers have used Nano crystals to develop memory chips. These chips can help to write data three times faster than the other available ways.

StoreDot assumed that this technology can be bad for industries in the future. But for now, the battery device will attract a big part of market because of smartphones.

Well, for now let’s wait for this invention to come in the market.

Mrigendra Pratap Singh
IIIT-ALLAHABAD(MS-CLIS)

The parts required for building this robot are:-

• Chassis (For body to the robot)
• DC Geared Motor (min. 100 rpm) – 4
• Wheels – 4
• DPDT(Joystick) Switch-2
• General Purpose PCB-1
• Ribbon wire or 6 core wire – 3meter or above
• Connecting wires

The tools required are:-

• Soldering wire and Soldering Iron
• Screw Driver
• Spanner
• Wire Stripper

Procedure

1. Assemble the mechanical parts:

Fix the motors in the holes provided on the chassis and couple the wheels with each motor. (refer the following figures)

Before creating the remote we have to learn basic movements of robot which is shown in the following table:-

To make anti-clockwise motion of motor, the polarity of supply must be inverted of polarity of supply in clockwise motion. For “Polarity Reversal” DPDT Switches are generally used. This can be done by using following circuit.

DPDT stands for ‘Double Pole, Double Throw’.

• The number of “poles” is the number of separate circuits which are controlled by a switch.
• The number of “throws” is the number of separate positions that the switch can adopt.

There are several types of DPDT Switches available in the market. The one which I used is shown below:-

1. Mount both the DPDT Switches on PCB.
2. As you can see each switch has 8 legs:- 4 on each side. For each side of a switch, solder the 2 legs in the middle (i.e. make a short b/w them).
3. Now make the connections as per the above figure. Please note for connections with the motor use ribbon or 6 core wire and for other connections you can any other wire(I would prefer thin single strand wires).
4. After these connections, the remote will have 4 outputs lines (for motors) and 2 input lines (for power supply).

3. Connections with motors:

1. Carefully make series connection between two motor for each side (left or right).
2. Now connect the 4 outputs with the motors such left switch is connected to left motors and right switch is connected to the right motor.

(NOTE:- Before connecting the motors with the switch please check the polarities of motors on each side with the help of any battery.)

4. Power Supply:

For Power supply you can use the rechargeable battery of rating 9 volts and 4.5 amperes or else i would prefer you to use power adapter which is used for charging the laptops (rating 18V-20V or 60W – 90W) because it gives constant voltage and required speed for your robo car.

Speed of Robot

Speed of robot can be calculate by following formula:
Velocity = circumference * rpmHere, the circumference of the wheel is to be taken.
The RPM of motor will perfect match with its specification if only is power rating of motor is provide by power supply.

(NOTE:- You can also make this robot by using 2 motors and a castor wheel but this will reduce the stability of car in fast tracks during a race.)

References
www.theirtechno.blogspot.in

Nikhil Aggarwal
IIIT-ALLAHABAD (MS-CLIS)