NEWS : TECH (NFPC)

Rent a Drone to Stop Intruders

A small, helicopter-like drone could be the best defense against an intruder.

Japanese security company Secom has announced that they'll be renting out camera-equipped drones capable detecting intruders, following them and taking their pictures. The drones, which are 24 inches wide and weigh only 3.5 pounds, can accomplish this task automatically or via a dispatcher.

The idea is to let managers of large buildings like factories monitor areas that aren't covered well by conventional security cameras. And even in areas that are covered, a drone can get closer to the action and provide more details.

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Brain in a Dish Flies Plane

Each drone, the company says, is programmed to remain a constant distance from whatever it's following, either a person or a car, for safety reasons. If communications with the drone are interrupted, it automatically lands in a safe place to avoid damaging itself.

The system might be a better sell in the United States rather than Japan, since crime of any sort in Japan -- includng break-ins -- is relatively rare. Japanese companies can rent the drone as part of Secom's online security system for around 5,000 yen ($58) a month some time after April 2014, though a company spokesperson said Secom wants to expand that to other countries eventually.

via AFP, Secom (in Japanese)

Credit: Secom

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Military Drones Prowl US Skies

By TechNewsDaily Staff

FAA documents don't show any oversight of how drone flights could affect the privacy and civil liberties of Americans. Credit: David Howells/Corbis

Military drones used to track terrorists or insurgents in Afghanistan have also been flying across the U.S. homeland. Newly released documents show U.S. drone flights by the Air Force, Marine Corps and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency for the first time.

The Air Force has tested drones in U.S. skies ranging from hand-launched Ravens to the larger Reaper drones responsible for targeting and killing people overseas — all recorded through the Federal Aviation Administration licenses required to fly in national airspace. That information became public through a Freedom of Information Act request from the nonprofit digital rights organization Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

"The FAA recently announced it wants to slow down drone integration into U.S. skies due to privacy concerns," the EFF said. "We are hopeful this indicates the agency is finally changing its views."

But the advocacy organization noted that the FAA documents don't show any oversight of how drone flights could affect the privacy and civil liberties of Americans.

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The advocates run a U.S. drone census that aims to track drone flights made in the homeland by the U.S. military, law enforcement agencies, local police departments and universities. Part of that effort has involved requesting the FAA to release documents showing what agencies and organizations applied for licenses to fly drones in U.S. national airspace.

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Drones flown by the Air Force near places such as Virginia Beach, Va., have the cameras and sensors to track moving ground targets for hours at a time. The Reaper drone capable of both spying on people and firing missiles at them has spent much of its time prowling the skies above Nevada, California and Utah.

Some Air Force operators have even practiced surveillance missions they might carry out in Afghanistan by tracking civilian cars on the highways, according to a New York Times report.

The Air Force proved the most accommodating by allowing the related FAA records to go public. The Marine Corps chose to redact so much material from the records that the EFF had a difficult time figuring out the Marines' drone programs.

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On the civilian side, the drone records show how many U.S. law enforcement agencies want to use drones for spying on drug activities in the war on drugs.  But some police departments -- specifically the Orange County, Fla., sheriff's department and Mesa County, Colo., sheriff -- chose to withhold some or most of the information about drone flights by claiming that public information could threaten their police work.

The FAA released the new batch of documents more than a year and a half after the EFF filed its Freedom of Information Act request, but has yet to release more than half of the available drone records. The EFF called that "unacceptable."

"Before the public can properly assess privacy issues raised by drone flights, it must have access to the FAA's records as a whole," the EFF said.

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• 10 Ways the Government Watches You
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Tiny Dragonfly UAV Flies and Hovers to Spy

You'd probably recognize a quadrocopter or a swarmbot swooping in for a closer view, but a tiny dragonfly might escape your notice. A Georgia Tech spinoff is betting their unmanned aerial dragonfly vehicle will leave other micro flying bots in the dust.

The Atlanta-based company TechJet started as a spinoff from developments in Georgia Tech's Robotics and Intelligent Machines Department. One of their projects, called Dragonfly, was initially developed with $1 million in funding from the U.S. Air Force's Office of Scientific Research. Since then, the Dragonfly prototypes have become smaller and there are now five technology patents on the design.

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TechJet, led by cofounders Jayant Ratti and Emanuel Jones, pictures different Dragonfly versions being used for gaming, dynamic photography, home security and military surveillance. Inspired by the way real dragonflies can fly and hover, they developed a four-winged robot weighing less than one ounce that can do the same.

Each Dragonfly has stereoscopic vision, flight control systems and a camera-ready operating system, according to the company. TechJet will be offering different options for robotics elements such as wings and actuators through its website, depending on what the user wants to do. For example, one version could be made more stable with better endurance for aerial photography.

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TechJet is currently raising money through the site Indiegogo with the goal of delivering the robots starting early next year. Dragonfly packages range from around $100 to $500 and include Wi-Fi and cameras at the high end.

So if you see a strange-looking insect flying your way, just be careful before you swat at it. That dragonfly could be a spy.

Image: A prototype for TechJet's robot dragonfly in action. Credit: TechJet.

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Drone Missile Kills Electronics, Not People

As modern warfare continues to be fought behind key boards and monitors, last week Boeing successfully tested a missile capable of making screens go blank. Boeing says their Counter-electronics High-powered Advanced Missile Project known as CHAMP may one day change modern warfare by knocking out electronic targets with little or no collateral damage.

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Here's how Boeing described the event:

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CHAMP approached its first target and fired a burst of High Power Microwaves at a two story building built on the test range. Inside rows of personal computers and electrical systems were turned on to gauge the effects of the powerful radio waves.

Seconds later the PC monitors went dark and cheers erupted in the conference room. CHAMP had successfully knocked out the computer and electrical systems in the target building. Even the television cameras set up to record the test were knocked off line without collateral damage.

In one hour, seven test-range targets were hit and all electronics inside the buildings were degraded and defeated.

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"This technology marks a new era in modern-day warfare," said Keith Coleman, CHAMP program manager for Boeing Phantom Works. "In the near future, this technology may be used to render an enemy's electronic and data systems useless even before the first troops or aircraft arrive."

So, uh, al Qaeda, you know those Sexy Tanja videos you like to make and watch in your free time? Heads up.

via io9

Credit: Boeing

 

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Robot Spies On Sharks

Observing sharks in the wild isn't always the easiest thing to do. Sharks can be tagged and tracked via satellite, but that information gives a mostly two-dimensional view of where the fish has come from and where it's going. Now a group of researchers at the University of Delaware has turned to an underwater robot to observe sharks.

The robot is called the Oceanographic Telemetry Identification Sensor, or OTIS. Shaped like a torpedo, it tracks previously tagged sharks -- specifically, sand tiger sharks, stealthily over the course of several days.

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Ordinarily OTIS is used to sample water conditions, but this time it was fitted with receivers to pick up the signals from the shark tags. Since OTIS is remote-controlled, it can be sent to follow a shark and report back in real time, giving a much clearer picture of where the animals travel.

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OTIS meanwhile, will help the scientists figure out what kind of water conditions sharks like to swim in during their travels. The robot will test the temperature, clarity and oxygen levels. This too could offer insight into behavior -- and also how to protect the sharks. The species is listed as "vulnerable" by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.

Eventually the information could be combined with other data gathered from other shark-tracking technology. One type of tag transmits its location while listening for the "pings" from other sharks tagged with the same device. That means scientists can see not only where a shark is but how many of her fellows are nearby. This offers insight into sharks' social behaviors and the location of their habitats.

Credit: Evan Krape / University of Delaware

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Robo-Bee To Get Brain for Autonomous Flight

Autonomous robots can do reconnaissance for the military, fly in complex patterns and even explore other planets. But they aren't great at complex, open-ended problems. Military surveillance drones or NASA's Curiosity rover are both doing largely pre-programmed tasks.

Animals -- even insects -- are a lot smarter than robots, so scientists are constantly looking at ways of mimicking insect behaviors in robots. At the Universities of Sheffield and Sussex in the U.K., researchers are building a software model of a bee's brain.

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Called the "Green Brain," the software model will focus on how a bee sees and smells. With that, a robotic bee could be built that actually behaves like a real bee, rather than just flying on a pre-programmed path and carrying out instructions.

"The benefit of an autonomous model is clear when you have complex tasks you want to undertake," James Marshall, a computer scientist at the University of Sheffield who is leading the three-year project, told Discovery News.

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If the programming works as the scientists hope, the robo-bee could do things like pinpoint the odor of a gas the way a bee looks for a certain flower. Ordinarily a robot could detect the gas and fly a pre-programmed pattern to find the source. But a bee doesn't have to be told to do that -- it learns from experience.

The brain simulations will use hardware from NVIDIA. Graphics processing unit accelerators, used in rendering complex three-dimensional images, will provide a lot of the computing power necessary to simulate a brain, even one as simple as a bee's. Marshall noted that once the program is complete, it will run on a large computer that transmits data to the flying robot, as it isn't yet possible to cram that much computing power into a small space.

Even a bee has a pretty sophisticated brain. So the problem of programming it will be broken up. The team will look at different functions of a bee's brain and simulate those and the interactions between them. Marshall said they hope that the bee behavior will emerge from that interaction.

The project is designed to shed light on how bees think and how artificial intelligence differs. Given that bees are vital to pollination of many crops, the recent stresses on bee populations are a big concern and any new knowledge about how bees navigate their environment would help. It might even be possible to make artificial pollinators. (It remains to be seen whether bees would complain about being replaced by robots).

Tiny Pop-Up Robots Combine Origami and Insects

The actual flying machine -- the artificial bee -- is being designed by a group at Harvard working on an actual robotic bee. Prior to that, though, the bee brain program will be tested in a more conventional remote controlled flyer. "We'll be using a rather expensive executive toy," Marshall said.

Beyond that, the robo-bee type brain could even be used in a search and rescue drone, or a smarter reconnaissance vehicle. "A human rescuer isn't specifying step by step how to find people," Marshall said. "With an AI robot you don't have to specify how to solve a problem."

Credit: Henrik Trygg/Corbis

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Autonomous Airplane Dodges Obtacles

There are drones that can hunt hurricanes, land on aircraft carriers and combine helicopter and airplane flight. And now they can even dodge obstacles indoors, without access to global positioning system satellite signals.

It's a massive computing challenge, but an important one for designing autonomous fliers that can operate when they can't "hear" a remote operator or satellite. GPS signals can occasionally be blocked by bad weather or in combat situations by jamming. A plane that can navigate with no outside help at all has an advantage over remotely controlled drones.

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MIT's Robust Robotics Group has built a plane that can fly around a room -- specifically, weaving around pillars in a parking garage, where no GPS signal can penetrate. They were able to write an algorithm that allowed the airplane to determine its own acceleration, speed, orientation and position.

While there are some air vehicles that can navigate around obstacles and even coordinate with each other in the air, they tend to be helicopters. Helicopters can control their flight more precisely at low speeds, but they can't stay up long because they use a lot of power just to hover. A fixed-wing aircraft can stay up longer on a given amount of fuel (or charge), but it can't manuever as easily as a helicopter.

To deal with that, the MIT researchers gave the plane relatively short and stubby wings that allow it greater maneuverability and slower airspeeds.

The MIT team cheated a bit, giving the aircraft a "map" of it's surroundings that they knew was accurate. But that isn't so different from having map data uploaded to any robot's memory. Even with that, the plane still had to figure out where it was and where it was pointed. That required an on-board laser rangefinder, accelerometers and gyroscopes. A dozen values had to be calculated in a fraction of a second.

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The next step is a plane that can figure out a map of its environment as it goes along. That might require adding visual information to the rangefinder -- a big challenge, but they have proved it is possible, at least in principle.

via MIT

Credit: MIT

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Autonomous Plane Lands on Aircraft Carrier

 

Aircraft that fly autonomously, without a pilot on board or even on the ground are taking to the air. Now the U.S. Navy is pushing a robotic airplane to do something many human pilots never master: land on an aircraft carrier.

The plane is the X-47B, and it's the first aircraft that flies completely on its own. The flight took place at the Naval Air Station at Patuxent River, Md., (otherwise known as Pax River), with the plane taking a quick jaunt around Chesapeake Bay.

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Unlike the more familiar Predator drones, the X-47B doesn't need a pilot in a control room. Once programmed it will launch, complete a mission, and come back, with no input from anyone.

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The plane didn't go as fast as many unmanned aircraft currently in use –- it hit a speed of 180 knots, or about 200 miles an hour, whereas some drones hit speeds twice that. It reached an altitude of 7,500 feet and flew for 35 minutes. Such unmanned planes are going to fly a lot higher and longer once they enter service.

It's the first flight by the U.S. Navy, and the second set of test flights for the plane. The idea is to try out the aircraft systems that would be used if it were flying to and from an aircraft carrier. It also has to show it can be launched with the catapults used at sea, and land on the relatively short carrier runways. The only systems on the plane tested were the flight controls – there were no sensors or weapons on board.

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Sometime next year the Navy hopes to test it aboard a real carrier, though it will have to prove itself at Pax River first.

The X-47B, built by Northrop Grumman, made its debut last year at Edwards Air Force Base, where it made a 29-minute flight at an altitude of 5,000 feet. The aircraft was transferred to the Pax River base in June.

via: United States Navy

Credit: United States Navy

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Titanic Finder Finds Downed Plane: DNews Nuggets

Titanic Finder Locates Turkish Plane: Robert Ballard, the man who located the Titanic, helped the Turkish government find a plane that had been shot down by Syrian forces about two weeks ago, reports the New York Times.

The Turkish administration hoped that the pilots might have survived the downing, but Ballard's equipment detected the bodies of the two men in the cockpit of the plane.

Ballard's deep-sea explorer, Nautilus, was used to find the pilots, Gokhan Ertan and Hasan Huseyin Aksoy. Ballard used the Nautilus in 1985 to pinpoint the wreckage of the Titanic. via New York Times

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Flapping-Winged Robot Perches on Hand

Flying robots are commonplace these days, from military drones to tiny helicopters that dance in the air, but none of them can flap their wings and then perch on a person's hand -- until now.

At the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, professor Soon-Jo Chung and postdoctoral researcher Aditya A. Paranjape designed a birdlike airplane that lands with precision. 

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Most aircraft (and robots) either fly like a helicopter or like a plane. Airplanes land the way they do because they need to lose lift, which they do by slowing down, but if they slow down too much they just drop out of the air and crash.

Birds are different. To land a bird will glide toward a landing point and then pull up steeply. At the same time the bird's decelerating, it's also climbing rapidly. Unlike airplanes, birds don't have vertical tails, so they have to use their wings to stabilize themselves.

A plane that can fly like a bird, land in a specific place, and launch itself again would offer the precision of a helicopter and the endurance of a fixed-wing craft. (Helicopters can't stay in the air as long as winged aircraft because they use a lot more power when flying).

Flapping wings also conserve power. Bird-like wings can be reoriented in a way fixed ones cannot, and that means it is much easier to maneuver air currents while gliding.

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Other roboticists have built bird-like machines or tried and duplicate the way birds and other animals land. MIT has built a glider that can land on a wire, and at Stanford a team designed one that can land on vertical surfaces. And of course, a helicopter can land at any point by just hovering and setting down. But none have yet used the flapping motion of a bird's wings and duplicated the perching action.

Chung and Paranjape have demonstrated the bird-like craft can flap its wings, fly a short distance and perch on someone's hand. In the associated paper (download PDF here), they say this kind of capability would be useful for small robots that have to fly around humans.

Image: University of Illinois / Didier Cauvain

Via University of Illinois Engineering

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