Light Start – GT Sport, Dronebuster, robot insects, and Google’s VR drum keyboard

Gran Turismo Sport announced for PS4, landing on 15 November

Gran Turismo fans will be pleased to hear that they won’t have to wait another half-decade before getting a crack at Sony’s racing sim on the PlayStation 4. The title, Gran Turismo Sport, was announced at an event in East London yesterday (in London-London, not the Eastern Cape – that would just be weird) and it’ll be hitting the PS4 on 15 November this year. Based on the gameplay and features video revealed at the event (above) Sony have jacked up their ideas. This might have been spurred by Microsoft’s recent Forza games on the Xbox One, which look amazing, or by the racing excellence that is Project Cars. As long as their racing AI is working well out of the gate, we suspect that Gran Turismo Sport‘s looks will take care of themselves.

Source: Gran Turismo

Wait, is this the future? Here’s a gun for shooting software hacks at drones – the Dronebuster

Last week, if you told us that you had a gun that shoots computer hacks, we would have thought that Kung Fury was getting a sequel. Turns out, though, that that’s an actual thing and it’s not from some 80s version of the future. The Dronebuster is the work of a company called Flex Force and its current incarnation interferes with drones using RF, GPS and broadband jamming. The company’s working on an update, that will ‘fire’ known exploits at specific drone types, either forcing them to back off or to land. We may have said this yesterday but… what a time to be alive. Now we just need to join an American government agency so we can get one of these.

Source: via Ars Technica

First it was drones, now we’re making robot insects too

Earlier this week we saw that researchers are giving drones the ability to stick to walls an ceilings. Like bugs. If that’s not creepy enough for you (even if it’s potentially useful), there’s something called the Robobee. This is a tiny little robot that is able to attach itself to things like plants, using static electricity. Technically, an electrostatic pad lets this little robot stick to things like an actual insect. Its purpose is much the same as the lizard-drone thing in the link above. The robots could monitor … stuff… more effectively if they didn’t have to expend energy flying. So we guess that the CIA and the NSA are about to make some completely unrelated investments right about now.

Source: The Verge

Is this how you’re going to send messages in VR? Google’s Drum Keys could be the future

One thing that is on everyone’s mind is the interface that we’re going to wind up using in virtual reality. Are you going to turn your head, using your gaze as a mouse pointer and a clicker to select text? Er… sounds painful. How about some sort of glove thingy? That has potential. But Google’s Drum Keys offer another route for typing, at least in their experimental app. Using two controllers, users could essentially type like a company CEO (one letter at a time, normally performed with index fingers only) only with drumsticks. The demo video above gives us some idea of how that might look and the potential for speedy typing (and massive forearms) is there. Hey, we learned how to send text messages at high speed using thumbs, right?

Source: Google VR