Blog Assignment #5

                                                        
                                                               iPad vs Surface Pro

Mictosoft's interest to tablets traces back to 2002 when first Microsoft Tablet PC was designed to run Windows XP Tablet Edition. That tablet was bulky and heavy, and offered a technology with pen-writing recognition abilities. At that time tablets didn't interest anyone on a market, so sale of this technology was significantly less than other electronic devices in the same field. Few years later when this market was "reopened" by Apple again, all companies followed Apple with their own similar products, and surprisingly Microsoft was last of the companies who started to chase Apple. Can Microsoft take back what is belong to it, or will Apple keep a bigger slice of pie to itself? Let's compare Surface Pro vs 4th generation of iPad with Retina display.

Dimensions and weight

Surface Pro came out to be slightly longer, yet a bit lower at the same time. In this case it's just a matter of taste which proportion to pick. However, Apple is obvious winner if you take a look at thickness of two devices. Difference of 4.1 mm makes iPad significantly slimmer compare to Surface, but most importantly almost twice lighter!  Surface 907g > iPad 653g. Bigger not always better!

Display

New generation of iPad has a higher resolution screen than the previous generations. In fact, a higher resolution of tablets from other manufacturers on today's market. On the other side, Surface ClearType technology makes a picture look sharp and detailed with even lower resolution (Wagner, 2013). A pixel density of Surface is also less than iPad, which makes a difference in a picture quality.

Processor (Chip) and memory

Surface Pro is equipped with Intel Core i5 with 1.7GHz (Wagner, 2013), which is the same processor that offered in newest MacBook Air. This processor makes tablet run fast, and switch between apps easily and quickly. iPad oppose with its A6X chip that offers as much performance as it takes to run iOS 6. The only advantage of A6X against intel core i5 is the ability to drain battery life a bit slower.

Like any current laptop or even desktop, Surface Pro offers 4Gb Ram of memory, and  iPad is limited only to 1Gb Ram. Even though iPad needs less resources to run iOS 6 than Surface Pro does to operate Windows 8, this round without a doubt wins Sufrace!
 
What to buy?

The specs found in Surface Pro can be found in current laptops and ultrabooks; consequently, according price for the one of the fastest tablets on today's market is labeled to Surface Pro. Price starts at $899.00, and to be honest you can go ahead and add another $120.00 for a keyboard (Microsoft doesn't include a keyboard in the set). Unfortunately, when bed news come, they come together. Surface Pro with 64Gb and 128Gb of internal memory comes with pre-installed Windows 8 and other software, so a user gets only 23Gb and 83Gb of available memory accordingly. In this case I would consider purchase of Surface Pro with 128Gb of memory to feel free.

iPad with 32Gb has more available memory than Surface Pro 64Gb, and together with a Bluetooth keyboard it will cost you around $670.00.

Choice is always yours!


                                                                   References

Wagner, K. (2013, February 5). Microsoft Surface Pro review: too much future? Gizmodo.
       Retrieved May 30, 2013, from
       gizmodo.com/5981224/microsoft-surface-pro-review-too-much-future

                             

Blog Assignment #4

Nao and the Ladder (Climbing Skills)

This video, uploaded by The Amazel, demonstrates the ability of Nao robot v3.3 to climb a ladder. As the author stated, the demonstration was not performed at autonomous mode, and the robot's movements were programed by NAO's, Valentin (The Amazel, 2011). Despite the robot's movements were programmed it is still impressive how Nao can execute series of complex movements to complete the task. Nao demonstrates not only its capabilities but progress of robotics technology in general. This video ends with Nao cute waving at a viewer, yet I expect the robot has no idea how to get down. Unfortunately, this video does not provide any specific characteristics of Nao. It shows how Nao can be programmed to complete certain tasks. This demonstration is one of many others that show improvement in programming artificial intelligence (AI), so it suggests advanced AI in the near future.


Artificial Intelligence

In his encyclopedia article on AI from the Gale Science Collection, John Sullins discusses artificial intelligence (AI) as the science and technology. The AI aims to duplicate human behavior to robots and computational systems as a progress makes computers smarter(Sullins, 2005). Artificial intelligence already used widely in order to calculate difficult tasks much faster and precise than any person. It can absolutely replace people in some areas, which, of course, will lead to many crucial changes. It may result in disappearance of many jobs, and there are many examples when it happened. On the other hand, human-like intelligence is still weak, and cannot survive on its own or interact with real world like living creatures. Also it can perform one operation very well, but can't do anything else in other areas.


Back to Nao Specifications

Technical description on Nao Robot by Lallee S. gives us details regarding what is inside of Nao. It also describes the robot's software and how it can be programmed. Nao robot is 57-cm tall (about 22 inches), which has two 640x480 face/image-recognition cameras, tactile sensors, voice synthesizer, and two speakers. Inside of the robot is x86 AMD 500 MHz CPU, 256 MB SDRAM, and 1Gb of Flesh memory. Nao robot equipped with Wi-Fi connectivity as well. Six-watt battery provides up to an hour and a half of life of the robot (Lallee, 2010). The author claims that Nao's can be programed with SDK called NaoQi. Choregraph allows to a user to  design series of separate movements, and then putting them together into complex conditional behaviors (Lallee, 2010). This software includes C and C++i languages, and it is implemented on Linux platform. On the official website of Aldebaran Robotics, price of a single piece on today's market is equivalent to $15,000 thousands (Aldebaran Robotics, 2013).




                                                                 References

Aldebaran Robotics. (2013). Aldebaran robotics Nao H25 humanoid robot academic edition - 
       robotshop. RobotShop. Retrieved May 2, 2013, from 
       http://www.robotshop.com/aldebaran-robotics-nao-h25-humanoid-robot-academic-3.html  

Lalle, S., & Jouen, A. J. (2010). Cooperative Human Robot Interaction with the Nao Humanoid:
      Technical Description Paper for the Radical Dudes. 

Sullins, J. P. (2005). Artificial intelligence. Encyclopedia of Science, Technology, 
       and Ethics (Vol. 1, pp. 110-113). Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA. Retrieved from 
       http://go.galegroup.com.rpa.laguardia.edu:2048/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CCX3434900060&v=2.1&
       u=cuny_laguardia&it=r&p=GVRL.Science&sw=w

The Amazel. (2011). Nao and the ladder. YouTube. Retrieved May 2, 2013, from
       http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MD48SLxwezg