Boston Dynamics’ Atlas does Parkour

Boston Dynamics reports: [edited]

Atlas uses its whole body – legs, arms, torso – to perform a sequence of dynamic moves that form a gymnastic routine. We created the moves using techniques that streamline the development process.

First, an optimisation algorithm transforms high-level descriptions of each move into dynamically-feasible reference motions. Then Atlas tracks the motions using a model predictive controller that smoothly blends from one move to the next. Using this approach, we developed the routine significantly faster than previous Atlas routines, with a performance success rate of about 80%.
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London - Wigan - London, 21 & 22-09-19

Unknown Pleasures - Joy Division
Disorder
Day Of The Lords
Candidate
Insight
New Dawn Fades
She's Lost Control
Shadowplay
Wilderness
Interzone
I Remember Nothing

Nothing But A Burning Light: Bruce Cockburn
A Dream Like Mine
Kit Carson
Mighty Trucks Of Midnight
Soul Of A Man
Great Big Love
One Of The Best Ones
Somebody Touched Me
Cry Of A Tiny Babe
Actions Speak Louder
Indian Wars
When It's Gone, It's Gone
Child Of The Wind

Fat City: Shawn Colvin
Polaroids
Tennessee
Tenderness On The Block
Round Of Blues
Monopoly
Orion In The Sky
Climb On (A Back That's Strong)
Set The Prairie On Fire
Object Of My Affection
Kill The Messenger
I Don't Know Why

Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain: Pavement
Silence Kit
Elevate Me Later
Stop Breathin
Cut Your Hair
Newark Wilder
Unfair
Gold Sounds
5-4=Unity
Range Life
Heaven Is A Truck
Hit The Plane Down
Fillmore Jive

Bring 'Em All In: Mike Scott
Bring 'Em All In
Iona Song
Edinburgh Castle
What Do You Want Me To Do
I Know She's
City Full Of Ghosts (Dublin)
Wonderful Disguise
Sensitive Children
Learning To Love Him
She Is So Beautiful
Wonderful Disguise Reprise
Long Way To The Light
Building The City Of Light

Sophie Zelmani: Sophie Zelmani
I'd Be Broken
Stand By
There Must Be A Reason
So Good
Always You
A Thousand Times
Tell Me You're Joking
Woman In Me
You And Him
Until Dawn
I'll Remember You
I'll See You (In Another World)

Beautiful Freak: Eels
Novocaine For The Soul
Susan's House
Rags To Rags
Beautiful Freak
Not Ready Yet
My Beloved Monster
Flower
Guest List
Mental
Spunky
Your Lucky Day In Hell
Manchild

Bring It On: Gomez
Get Miles
Whippin' Piccadilly
Make No Sound
78 Stone Wobble
Tijuana Lady
Here Comes The Breeze
Love Is Better Than A Warm Trombone
Get Myself Arrested
Free To Run
Bubble Gum Years
Rie's Wagon
The Comeback
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iPhone 11

Apple's latest range of iPhones were announced yesterday. They're faster, more power efficient, with brighter, wider colour range screens... for full specs and prices you can visit your region's Apple website. But really, it's all about the camera(s).

Here's some snippets from Digital Photography Review:

"All three devices offer a standard 12MP camera and a second 12MP ultra wide camera with a 13mm equivalent F2.4 5-element lens, which provides a 120 degree field of view. A new feature uses the ultra-wide camera to show you what's beyond the frame when using the main camera, helping you decide whether to switch to the wider field of view."

"Portrait mode is now available with the wider 26mm field of view, since a depth map can be generated using the main and ultra-wide cameras, and portrait relighting brings a new 'High-Key Light Mono' for high contrast black-and-white portraits that mimic studio lighting."

"The 11 Pro and 11 Pro Max continue to offer the telephoto camera of previous generations. This is also a 12MP sensor paired with a faster F2.0 lens with optical image stabilisation."

"'Night mode' turns on automatically in dim conditions and uses 'adaptive bracketing' to capture and fuse multiple exposures. A new 'Deep Fusion' mode, promised later in the year, captures up to 9 frames and fuses them into a higher resolution 24MP image. Four short and four secondary frames are constantly buffered to ensure short shutter lag, and one long exposure is taken after the shutter press. These are then intelligently combined to produce a blur and ghosting-free high resolution image."

"The front facing 'TrueDepth' camera on all three iPhones have been upgraded, now with a 12MP sensor. It takes 7MP selfies in portrait orientation, but automatically switches to a wider field of view with 12MP capture when you rotate the phone to landscape orientation. Also new is the ability to record slow-motion selfie video clips at up to 120 fps."

I'll conclude with a pertinent comment from LoSPt1

"It's really easy to hate on iPhone 11 Pro simply because of how expensive it is, but if you solely look at the camera technologies used on this phone, you start to realise why compact digital cameras are falling behind phones in terms of sales. No compact cameras are capable of:

— Always on, zero shutter lag HDR with local pixel aligning that introduces far less ghosting artefacts than the traditional image stacking method
— Handheld pixel shift HDR shots
— Handheld long exposure HDR shots (Night Mode)
— 4K 60 HDR video with real time effects being shown in the viewfinder
— Audio zoom during video recording
— Portrait mode with very easy-to-use pseudo aperture control

The iPhone 11 Pro also comes with the best OLED viewfinder of any cameras in the same price range, dual pixel autofocus, and class-leading performance as a mobile phone."
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