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Vision Robotics' harvesting machines edge closer to the farm -

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

In just eight short months, the automated harvesting machines at Vision Robotics have apparently come quite a ways. Currently, funding is flowing in from growers' associations who are "very nervous about the availability and cost of labor in the near future," which has allowed the company to move forward in developing a pair of robots to pluck fruit from trees or vines. The duo would work in succession as the first robotic "scout" would scan the area and construct a 3D map with the location of each item that needs captured; the "harvester" would follow behind and pick the fruits that its eagle-eyed teammate mapped out. The firm has reportedly reached the build phase on the complex machines, and while a prototype or two should be ready to rock by next year, we're unlikely to see these go mainstream before the next decade.

[Via Wired]

Gallery: Vision Robotics' harvesting machines edge closer to the farm

 

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

[EnGadget]

Notepad++ v4.1 released - Notepad++ is a free generic source code editor (and Notepad replacement), which supports several programming languages, running under the MS Windows environment. The version 4.1 is available. In this release not only the interface of Find in files dialog is improved distinctly, but find, replace and find in files dialogs are now 3 in 1. The version 1.73 of Scintilla include the CMake lexer. And just by chance, I worked a lot with CMake recently at work, so I updated Scintilla from v1.71 to v1.73, and supports the language of CMake. CMakeLists.txt is also available for the source code of Notepad++ (in "src" directory). It's tested only with the generation of VC project file, but not with the generation of MinGW makefile. 3 new plugins are added in this release : SpellChecker, NppExec and QuickText. SpellChecker help you to corect the tipos in your document. You should have aspell instaled to make it work. With NppExec plugin you can execute your commands or saved scripts without leaving Notepad++. It makes you triple your productivity! QuickText is a snippet manager. Once you define all your snippet in you beloved language, type the macro keyword then Ctrl+Enter - I can hear you say "wow". Another new feature is the clickable URL (http only). It's rather a gadget, but I like it. v4.1 fixed bugs and added features (from v4.0.2) : 1. Fix the crash issue while saving settings on quit. 2. Fix the crash issue while using the command line with one launched Notepad++ instance. 3. Enhance Find in files feature : * Improve Find in files user interface (more intuitive). * The search result (also for find in all opened files) is docked on the bottom of Notepad++. * Recursive search is optional. * Search result is collapsable by file. * User defined keywords for search result. 4. Add tabbing interface in Find dialog : Find/Replace/Find in files 5. Add clickable URL http link feature (double click to trigger). 6. Add cmake language support. 7. Add mark all without launching Find dialog (Ctrl+M). 8. Fix the ROFL (Recent Opened File List) bug : try to open a non-existing file from ROFL, the full file path doesn't be removed from ROFL. 9. Enhance the backup feature : in verbose mode, the file will be backed up in .\nppBackup directory. 10. Update Scintilla component to v1.73 For further information about this project, see : http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/ and the project page : http://sourceforge.net/projects/notepad-plus/ Don

[SourceForge]

Microsoft Offers Further Open Source Patent Threats - An anonymous reader writes "Via Groklaw comes comments from Microsoft's Steve Ballmer at a UK event, in which the company once again threatens Linux distributions that haven't signed up with their program. '"People who use Red Hat, at least with respect to our intellectual property, in a sense have an obligation to compensate us," Ballmer said last week ... Ballmer praised Novell at the UK event for valuing intellectual property, and suggested that open source vendors will be forced to strike similar deals with other patent holders. He predicted that firms like Eolas will soon come after open source vendors or users. Microsoft paid $521m to settle a patent claim by Eolas in August.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

[Slasdot]

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