Hotline Miami

Game Review_Costantino

Push start. Grab a weapon. Get shot. Repeat… ad infinitum. ‘Punishing’ hardly describes a session of Hotline Miami. Typically, within 10 seconds you could die three or four times. It is just as frustrating as it is challenging. Addictively, you will not give up until you pass that sneaky little passage. 

Hotline Miami is an ultra-violent, psychotic game, where your only aim is to kill all the ‘bad guys’.

Yet, every little move counts, and deciding which weapons to use or which door to open first will reveal the deep strategic possibilities of the game’s intense experience. As you make your way through a pile of corpses, the suspense builds up to unbearable levels as you risk losing all in-game progress for just a little mistake. The massacre is only interrupted by brief moments that reveal details of our mysterious ‘hero’s’ back-story. Keeping true to expectation, even these interludes are awkward if not disturbing, and hardly shed light on our displaced, faceless avatar. 

The excellent game tops it all with an irresistible ‘80s aesthetics and a neurotic electronic soundtrack. You’ll quickly find out why this game has stolen the show winning so many awards, and has hooked fans of Grand Theft Auto and of good old shoot’em up games. Hotline Miami is a joy in repetition, providing that being stuck in a Clockwork Orange–like scenario is your idea of joy. 

Screenshot from Hotline Miami
Screenshot from Hotline Miami

www.hotlinemiami.com 

Hand pose replication using a robotic arm

Robotics is the future. Simple but true. Even today, they support us, make the products we need and help humans to get around. Without robots we would be worse off.  Kirsty Aquilina (supervised by Dr Kenneth Scerri) developed a system where a robotic arm could be controlled just by using one’s hand.

The setup was fed images through a single camera. The camera was pointed towards a person’s hand that held a green square marker. The computer was programmed to detect the corners of the marker. These corners give enough information to figure out the hand’s posture in 3D. By using a Kalman Filter, hand movements are tracked and converted into the angles required by the robotic arm.

The robotic arm looks very different from a human one and has limited movement since it has only five degrees of freedom. Within these limitations, the robotic arm can replicate a person’s hand pose. The arm replicates a person’s movement immediately  so  that a person can easily make the robot move around quickly.Controlling robots from afar is essential when there is no prior knowledge of the environment. It allows humans to work safely in hazardous environments like bomb disposal, or when saving lives performing remote microsurgery. In the future, it could assist disabled people.

This research was performed as part of a Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) at the Faculty of Engineering.

A video of the working project can be found at: http://bit.ly/KkrF39

Football like you’ve never seen it before

Freeviewpoint television (FTV) is expected to become the ultimate 3D TV experience. With FTV, the viewer can choose from which angle and position to view a scene. Want to watch football from above, the East Wing, or with your fellow fans?  At the press of a button, with FTV you can. For FTV to work, the same scene needs to be captured from a number of different viewpoints and the virtual scenes in between generated. To broadcast the service requires a huge bandwidth, which on your mobile would quickly soak up all your data. Current mobile FTV frameworks cannot handle the broadcast capacity required and FTV has never been deployed over a specific cellular technology.

Terence Zarb (supervised by Dr Ing. Carl James Debono) proposed a framework to compress and transmit FTV to mobile devices. The system was adapted for the next generation long-term evolution (LTE) networks, currently available on high-end smartphones. To reduce bandwidth and reduce mobile phone workload, the FTV broadcast data is processed at the transmitting end, before it is sent over the mobile network. The physically captured views are transmitted. Depending on the user’s choice, the mobile phone either presents one of these views or generates an arbitrary viewpoint. By using the novel proposed framework, the bandwidth required was reduced by over 70% compared to current methods. It also provided a better viewing experience.

Taken together, the proposed framework can realistically be deployed on LTE networks, which means we might be seeing an incredibly innovative way of viewing sport, documentaries and maybe even films on our 3D TVs — is that enough to make you buy one?

Proposed framework to allow an incredible 3D video experience to be compressed and transmitted to mobile devices.
Proposed framework to allow an incredible 3D video experience to be compressed and transmitted to mobile devices.

This research was performed as part of a Masters of Science in Information and Communication Technology at the Faculty of Information and Communication Technology. The research is partially funded by the Strategic Educational Pathways Scholarship Scheme (Malta). The scholarship is part-financed by the European Union – European Social Fund, under Operational Programme II – Cohesion Policy 2007-2013, “Empowering People for More Jobs and a Better Quality of Life”.

Did Albert Einstein say we only use 10% of our brain?

Probably not.Brain2 It has been misattributed to Einstein to explain his great intelligence. The idea being that if only we used more, we would unlock the powers of our mind, become mathematical geniuses, perhaps even become telekinetic. Unfortunately, even when we think we are being lazy, like sleeping, our minds are quite busy.

Is all hope lost? Are we stuck with the intelligence we have? Probably a good education does not hurt and cognitive scientists have identified two methods that can push our brains further. The first involves focus. By concentrating on a single task, you can use more of your brain and tackle those complex mathematical formulae. The brain is usually very distracted.

The second strategy is optimisation. It involves letting your brain find the optimal solution by stopping to think and considering many alternatives before jumping on one answer.

Creativity can use a totally different ball game. Sometimes it is best to let your brain wander and simply consider all alternatives. Our brain is too complex for a few basic strategies to apply to all situations.

Better, cheaper smartphones

MICRo-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) are about the width of a human hair. They can tell a smartphone which way is ‘up’, enable inkjet printers to eject ink precisely, and are even found in high definition displays. These chips have sensors that detect a physical quantity such as temperature or direction, which is then converted into an electrical signal. The signal can be passed on to a customised computer chip designed for a specific use, called an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC). A MEMS device operating through an ASIC is called a microsystem, commonly found on handheld devices. Students at the University of Malta are currently researching ways to crucially improve these devices.

Over the past years, research into MEMS has developed sensors for temperature, pressure, inertial forces, chemical properties, magnetic fields, radiation, and more. These tiny microsensors outperformed their larger counterparts at a lower price. Recently, they were adapted for gas and liquid flow control, optical switches, and mirrors found in video projectors.

Locally, the Department of Microelectronics and Nanoelectronics is collaborating with STMicroelectronics, which is funding postgraduate studies in both MEMS and ASIC design. They are investigating accelerometers that, for example, enable a smartphone or a gaming console to know how the device is being held. The Department is using the latest manufacturing techniques to test its research innovations.

Accelerometers have two main functions: sensing direction using an MEMS chip, followed by processing the information using an ASIC. Both chips are placed on a single package. The research focuses on reducing power consumption and cost, which will enable smartphones to perform better at a lower price.

“Training in this field will hopefully entice industry to develop research and design teams focused on this rapidly expanding field,” says Dr Ivan Grech, senior lecturer at the Faculty of ICT. The development of microsystems is an attractive and exciting area of study, which provides new and innovative ways to use smart devices for everyday applications.

 

Research in this area was carried out by Ansel Briffa, Jean Marie Darmanin and Kristian Grixti, as part of their Master of Science in Microelectronics and Nanoelectronics at the Faculty of Information and Communication Technology. They were supervised by Dr Ing. Edward Gatt, Dr Ivan Grech, Dr Ing. Owen Casha and Prof. Ing. Joseph Micallef.