During the week of this year’s summer solstice, June 18-24, people worldwide are being urged to create gigapixel imagery of natural areas near where they live or work as part of the first Nearby Nature GigaBlitz. As envisioned by a trio of biologists and their partners at the Robotics Institute's CREATE Lab, the project would reveal the extraordinary biodiversity of the ordinary settings where people live, learn and work.

Carnegie Mellon faculty and students will help Toyota turn five ideas for repurposing Toyota automotive technologies into reality during a rapid prototyping session in Newell-Simon Hall and the Electric Garage June 3-5. Improved bike helmets, a solar-powered device for clearing smoke from huts, a system for converting the energy of gym rats into electricity, technology to help firefighters position their ladders and a device that combines a computer mouse, keyboard and numerical pad are the five winning ideas submitted for Toyota’s “Ideas for Good” campaign.

The Robotics Institute’s CREATE Lab, which recently unveiled its GigaPan Time Machine for exploring high-resolution videos, is the winner in the media category of the 2011 Data Hero Awards. The awards, announced May 9, were created this year by EMC Corp. to honor innovative uses of Big Data to profoundly impact individuals, organizations, industries and the world.

Learning how to program a computer to display the words “Hello World” once may have excited students, but that hoary chestnut of a lesson doesn’t cut it in a world of videogames, smartphones and Twitter. One option to take its place and engage a new generation of students in computer programming is a Carnegie Mellon University-developed robot called Finch. A product of the Robotics Institute, Finch was designed specifically to make introductory computer science classes an engaging experience once again.

Revolutionary technology from researchers at Carnegie Mellon University's Quality of Life Technology Center is helping the blind to see. With the BrainPort Vision Device, users can perceive the approximate shape, size, location and motion of objects in their environment.

The Girls of Steel, a first-year, all-girl robotics team from the Pittsburgh area will compete in the FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Championship in St. Louis, April 27-30, after winning All-Star Rookie awards in regional competitions in Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C. The 24-member team includes girls from 11 Pittsburgh area high schools, one from a home school and three from schools outside the Pittsburgh area. Systems Scientist George Kantor and other members of Carnegie Mellon University’s Field Robotics Center have hosted and mentored the team.

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute have leveraged the latest browser technology to create GigaPan Time Machine, a system that enables viewers to explore gigapixel-scale, high-resolution videos and image sequences by panning or zooming in and out of the images while simultaneously moving back and forth through time.“With GigaPan Time Machine, you can simultaneously explore space and time at extremely high resolutions,” said Illah Nourbakhsh, associate professor of robotics and head of the CREATE Lab. “Science has always been about narrowing your point of view — selecting a particular experiment or observation that you think might provide insight. But this system enables what we call exhaustive science, capturing huge amounts of data that can then be explored in amazing ways.”

“Hear Me,” an initiative of the Robotics Institute’s CREATE Lab, has been listening to children of all ages talk about issues important to them. Bullying. Education. Healthy choices. Environmental Issues. Aspirations. Transitions. With more than 2,500 of these stories and thoughts now recorded, Hear Me, http://www.hear-me.net/, is giving people throughout southwestern Pennsylvania a chance to listen as well. Some of the audio recordings are included in “Hear Me: Month of the Young Child Exhibition,” on the first floor of the Carlyle Building at Fourth and Wood Street, Downtown.