Ford, MIT and Standford band together to further the cause of automated driving research

In order to reach automobile utopia of the future, Ford needs to lay the foundations of that dream today. That is why the car maker has chosen to join forces with the brightest minds from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Standford University to help it achieve its goal of making tomorrow's roads safer and more efficient with cars that have eyes, ears, and even a dash of common sense.

Ford's vision of the future is outlined in its Blueprint for Mobility, a set of goals and programs that it has put in front of its eyes to guide it towards that utopian future. It is a system that not only addresses points directly related to car manufacturing but embraces other support systems as well, which include government collaboration, infrastructure development, and research, particularly in the field of automated driving. While Ford already has some of the technology and hardware, it is looking towards these two universities to provide the much needed upgrade to the brains of the system.

Ford's research vehicles may be equipped with the latest LiDAR sensors, but that can only describe what is happening at the moment. Its research with MIT focuses, then, on trying to predict the future. By using algorithms, the car will be able to foresee where vehicles and pedestrians are likely to move after a given time, helping it to map out potential risks surrounding it and plan a path that will safely avoid such obstacles.

With Standford University, Ford is trying to develop a way for cars to see around obstacles as well. After all, it is one thing to know that there is something blocking your immediate view but another thing to know what's beyond that. This kind of "peek ahead" system can help cars and drivers determine whether it will be safe to change lanes in case of an emergency that involves a truck in front of the car.

These two research projects will be built on top of the recently unveiled Ford Fusion Hybrid research vehicle, itself a product of the car maker's collaboration with the University of Michigan and State Farm. According to Ford, drivers know that what you don't or can't see is just as important as what you can and it wants to develop a car with that same intuition or maybe even better.

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Smart object-recognition system could spy on your milk in the IoT

Computers that can identify objects without requiring any human training are now a possibility, as researchers figure out how to teach AIs to intuit the key features and differences between faces, objects, and more. The new algorithm, developed by engineer Dah-Jye Lee of Brigham Young University, avoids human calibration by instead giving computers the skills to learn how to differentiate themselves: so, rather than the operator flagging individual differences between, say, a person and a tree, the computer is given the tools to identify the differences on its own, and then use them moving forward.

Lee says it's similar in theory to how a child is taught. His research saw a computer loaded with image sample sets - he picked faces, airplanes, cars, and motorbikes - and then the algorithm, known as "ECO features", left to calculate its own distinguishing elements.

For instance, the distinctive angles between the fuselage of a plane and its wings might be observed by the computer, which then allows it to tell the difference between that and a car. Lee's team found the algorithm was 100-percent accurate at recognizing each of the four datasets.

That high degree of accuracy continued when faced with the more difficult challenge of identifying objects within a category. Faced with classifying four different species of fish, Lee's algorithm achieved 99.4-percent success.

In contrast, rival object recognition systems only managed at most 98-percent success at distinguishing in the original four categories, never mind matching ECO features within categories.

Lee's team envisages ECO features being useful for unmanned and manpower-intensive applications like tracking invasive species in habitats and spotting flaws in products on production lines. Of course, there's also huge potential in the "Internet of Things" where systems are left to their own devices but could monitor individual people entering and leaving buildings, track what food you have left in your fridge, monitor individual cars as they navigate smart cities, and more.






VIA Google+

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US drone trial sites confirmed as FAA tests UAS

Six US teams have been given permission to build and test drones, with the FAA green-lighting several test sites across the country as it figures out how safe, useful, and easy to fly unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) might be. The six sites - University of Alaska, the State of Nevada, New York's Griffiss International Airport, North Dakota Department of Commerce, Texas A&M University - Corpus Christi, and Virginia Tech - will collectively examine how drones operate in wildly different climates, how they best navigate, how they'll co-exist in the sky with traditional aircraft, how 'smart' they can be made, and what qualifications remote pilots should have.

No one single site will take on all of those factors, each instead playing to its own strengths. Texas A&M University, for instance, will look at airworthiness safety, and the factors that UAS will need to satisfy if they're to be allowed to fly. Meanwhile, Virginia Tech will look at failure mode testing, to see what risks might arise from dodgy drones.

At Griffiss Airport, meanwhile, the UAS team will be looking at sense and avoid technologies: namely, how well drones will be able to intelligently navigate through skies already congested with air traffic. It will also be looking at how drones are verified and validated in terms of existing FAA regulations.

The University of Alaska will test its drones over "seven climatic zones" and different geographies, working on standards for different UAS categories, navigation, and monitoring. Meanwhile, the State of Nevada will particularly focus on matters on the ground, specifically on operator standards and what certification remote drone pilots will need to meet.

Finally, the North Dakota team will look at the link between the two elements: how secure and reliable the wireless connection is between pilot and drone. It will also look at what human factors might affect operations.

Although the announcement will mean more drones in the skies from 2014 on, the FAA says that public privacy is still a key concern. The sites themselves have been selected, in part, because of the privacy they offer, while each team will have to observe not only federal, state, and other laws regarding privacy, but to have their own privacy policies, made publicly available, along with a written data retention policy and annual revies.

The goal is to get the US up to speed for drone-friendly airspace by 2015, something being closely watched by companies that would like to use UAS technology sooner rather than later. Still, schemes like Amazon's proposed PrimeAir - which would deliver online orders by remote-control drone - may not be operable even when the first set of guidelines go into place, experts warn.



source : slashgear

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'Facebook' dead and buried to teens, research finds

Facebook is 'dead and buried' to older teenagers, an extensive European study has found, as the key age group moves on to Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp and Snapchat.

Researching the Facebook use of 16-18 year olds in eight EU countries, the Global Social Media Impact Study found that as parents and older users saturate Facebook, its younger users are shifting to alternative platforms.

"Facebook is not just on the slide - it is basically dead and buried," wrote Daniel Miller, lead anthropologist on the research team, who is professor of material culture of University College London.

"Mostly they feel embarrassed to even be associated with it. Where once parents worried about their children joining Facebook, the children now say it is their family that insists they stay there to post about their lives."

Teens do not care that alternative services are less functional and sophisticated, and they also unconcerned about how information about them is being used commercially or as part of surveillance practice by the security services, the research found.

"What appears to be the most seminal moment in a young person’s decision to leave Facebook was surely that dreaded day your mum sends you a friend request," wrote Miller.

"It is nothing new that young people care about style and status in relation to their peers, and Facebook is simply not cool anymore."

In part of the study's research with Italian Facebook users, 40% of users had never changed their privacy settings and 80% said they "were not concerned or did not care" if their personal data was available and accessed, either by an organisation or an individual.

Information that people choose to publish on Facebook has generally been through a psychological filtering process, researchers found - unlike conversations, photos and video shared through more private tools such as Skype, or on mobile apps.

"Most individuals try to present themselves online the way they think society is expecting them to," wrote contributing anthropologist Razvan Nicolescu on Thursday.

"It seems that social media works not towards change – of society, notions of individuality and connectedness, and so on – but rather as a conservative force that tends to strengthen the conventional social relations and to reify society as Italians enjoy and recognise it.

"The normativity of the online presence seems to be just one expression of this process."



SOURCE: The Guardian

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Samsung KNOX flaw leaves Galaxy S 4 compromised say researchers

Samsung's KNOX security system on the Galaxy S 4 has a significant security hole that could allow data believed secure to be intercepted, including messages, browser use, and files transferred, researchers claim, though the South Korean company denies the seriousness of the supposed flaw. KNOX, which Samsung launched at Mobile World Congress earlier this year, is the company's attempt to take on BlackBerry in the enterprise, creating secure partitions on the phone for business and personal use. However, researchers at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev claim to have discovered a flaw in KNOX that allows data to be easily intercepted, despite supposedly being protected by the system.

According to the university, the issue was inadvertently spotted by Ph.D. student Mordechai Guri while doing other testing on the Galaxy S 4. He found that by loading a special, compromised app on the non-secure, "personal" part of the Android smartphone, all of the data transferred by the handset - including what was used by the "secure" part - could be monitored.

Alternatively, the app - which could be disguised as a game or other simple application - could even surreptitiously inject its own code into the secure data transfer, the researchers say.

According to Guri, the fault has been replicated on several Galaxy S 4 handsets purchased through retail stores. KNOX can be downloaded to the phone, having been released earlier this year; the system is preloaded on the Galaxy Note 3. Although it carries no cost for users to download, corporations must pay a licensing fee for the various server-side components to the system.

Meanwhile, Samsung maintains that its preliminary inquiries suggest the issue is not as serious as the university researchers claim. Although conceding that a loophole exists, in a comment to the WSJ, a Samsung spokesperson argued that the original testing looked to have been done on a device not equipped with the typical security measures.

A typical enterprise user would have other software on the Galaxy S 4 which the lab team did not load, Samsung claimed, and with that in place "the core Knox architecture cannot be compromised or infiltrated by such malware" the spokesperson concluded.

Around 500 Galaxy S 4 handsets have been bought by the Defense Information Systems Agency and are undergoing testing, in collaboration with the NSA, to ascertain their potential safety for use on Pentagon systems. However, a US Department of Defense spokesperson said in response to the reported flaw, none of the handsets had been deployed, and the phone was still not approved for Pentagon use.

Samsung has already patched some holes in the KNOX system, releasing security updates as it identifies issues. The company is continuing to look into the claims made by the Israeli university.




VIA : Android Community

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Researchers create robot muscles 1000 times stronger than humans

Researchers from UC Berkeley are working hard on making robots that are incredibly strong. Researchers at the university laboratory have created artificial robot muscles that could give a robot 1000 times the strength of a human. The robotic muscles are said to take advantage of special properties of a material called vanadium dioxide.

That material is a compound that is able to change from an insulator to a conductive metal at 67C. According to the researchers, when that transition happens a significant amount of strength occurs.

The scientists say that the transition creates enough power to move objects that are 50 times heavier than the robotic muscles themselves. The muscles are able to move the objects a significant distance as well, up to 5 times the length of the object within 60 ms. That is faster than the blink of an eye.

The muscles survived repeated contraction even when the speed was ramped up to 200,000 rpm. The researchers believe that the breakthrough will be able to create more powerful robots and the tech might be used to create the next generation of energy-efficient electronics.



SOURCE: Dvice

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NASA unveils Valkyrie 'robot' for DARPA Robotics Challenge

DARPA has been hosting a Robotics Challenge since last year that challenged some participants to create robots that can be used in the real world. The official name for the Valkyrie robot given to it by NASA is R5. The bot stands 1.9 meters tall and weighs in at 125 kilograms. The robot has 44 degrees of freedom and is powered by batteries.

The robot was created in cooperation with the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston, the University of Texas, and Texas A&M universities. Funding for the robot was granted by the State of Texas. The first competition for the DARPA robotics contest will happen later this month.

The Valkyrie robot will be competing against five other Track A teams that have developed their own robots. The DARPA contest requires the robots to walk over uneven terrain, climb a ladder, use tools, and drive a vehicle. One of the goals of the DARPA contest is to create robots that can take over from humans in certain situations without needing any special accommodations, which is why the robot is humanoid.

The arms of the robot have seven degrees of freedom with actuated wrists and hands. Each hand has three fingers and a thumb. The head can tilt and swivel around while the waist is able to rotate. The legs themselves offer the robot six degrees of freedom and end with feet that have six-axis force-torque sensors. The robot has a battery in its backpack good for an hour of use per charge. The designers of Valkyrie said that they leveraged some of the tech and knowledge gained in developing Robonaut over the years. Valkyrie even has a glowing circle in its chest that looks like Iron Man’s Arc reactor.



SOURCE: Spectrum
SOURCE: Slashgear

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'Antarctica' sets record for lowest temperature ever recorded on Earth

It has been unusually cold here in parts of Texas, if we get below freezing and stay for a few days it’s a rare occurrence during the winter. Since we aren’t really prepared for the cold, those near freezing temps bring unending complaints from residents and make Northerners laugh. We’re a tropical people. Those near freezing temperatures are like a hot summer day compared to a record setting low recorded in Antarctica.

Scientists studying satellite data on the content recently found that the record low temperature was set back in August of 2010. No one even knew it got that cold until the data was recently analyzed. How cold did it get? In August of 2010, temperatures in East Antarctica reached -135.8 degrees Fahrenheit.

That works out to 93.2 degrees below 0C. That temp is cold enough that it would hurt to breathe according to scientists. The study of the satellite data also revealed that Antarctica came close to that record setting low again on July 31 of 2013.

On that day, the temperature dipped to -135.3 degrees Fahrenheit. That is a mere half-degree warmer than the record low. The previous coldest recorded temperature was -128.6 degrees Fahrenheit. One scientists said temps that low are akin to what we would see on the poles of Mars on a summer day. The scientist believes that these locations in Antarctica are the coldest places on Earth.












SOURCE: Fox News
SOURCE: slashgear

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Bezos Apollo 11 F-1 engine recovery confirmed: the real number 2044

It was just a few months ago that the folks working with Jeff Bezos and Bezos Expeditions headed to the depths of the sea to bring up a new collection of NASA history. This week it’s made clear – and confirmed – what they actually found: these F-1 engines belonged to none other than NASA’s mission Apollo 11. If there’s one tribute to the greatness of that moon exploration mission that we’re guessing Neil Armstrong wouldn’t have expected, this would be it.

The 20th of July will be the 44th anniversary of the original moon landing, and here in a mission that brought us down in the other direction to the ocean’s floor, the recovery of a big batch of hardware components brings the whole missing into clear view once more. The parts recovered here have become a whole heck of a lot more important than they were without identification here in the summer of 2013.

What’s been found – amongst other identifying markings, of course – is a simple 2044 stenciled in black paint on the side of one of the thrust chambers of these F-1 engines. This discovery was part of an in-depth exploration of the hardware’s markings and identifying bits and pieces, leading to the understanding that these units are connected to history as follows:

Rocketdyne serial number 2044 discovered stenciled in black paint
2044 correlates with NASA serial number 6044
Serial number 6044 F-1 Engine #5 belongs to Apollo 11

The connections are unmistakable – but wouldn’t just be left to a simple paint marking to hold solid. Upon deeper digging, corrosion removal delivered another clear “Unit No 2044″ stamped into the surface of the metal.

This post-sea in-depth exploration was and is continuing to be done by the conservation team at Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center in Hutchinson, Kansas. The announcement on this confirmation – stamps and all – was made here on the 19th of July, 2013.

Thanks for the tip, Jack!

SOURCE: Bezos Expeditions

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