Really Rocket Science

What’s that in the sky? A bird? A plane? No, it’s a flying robot. An unstoppable flying robot, according to some experts. 

The technology for remote-controlled light aircraft is now highly advanced, widely available — and, experts say, virtually unstoppable.

Models with a wingspan of five metres (16 feet), capable of carrying up to 50 kilograms (110 pounds), remain undetectable by radar.

And thanks to satellite positioning systems, they can now be programmed to hit targets some distance away with just a few metres (yards) short of pinpoint accuracy.

Security services the world over have been considering the problem for several years, but no one has yet come up with a solution.

The article quotes a number of experts who suggest flying robots may be a security threat, includes a photo of the U.S.-built "Predator" unmanned aerial vehicle, and cites development of similar technology in other countries. 

But the discussion in the blogosphere is tinged with doubt. Over on Dvorak Uncensored, at least one commenter rattles off a laundry list of pitfalls between having the technology and making it work, including everything from getting a decent engine to finding an open channel. Meanwhile, Bruce Scheiner pegs the article as tipping the" movie-threat hype meter." 

On the other hand the DefenseTech post mentioned in the article ends with the statement "How great the threat is this time remains to be seen."

The popularity of geocaching– a high-tech scavenger hunt conducted using handheld GPS units– is not likely to be a surprise to readers of the Really Rocket Science blog. But the AP has an interesting report on how a lodge in Yosemite National Park is capitalizing on the sports’ popularity to bring visitors to its luxurious surroundings:

 [T]he Tenaya Lodge, just outside Yosemite National Park near Wawona, began offering a geocaching program along with its nature hikes and horseback riding outings last year….

Built 15 years ago and renovated recently, the 244-room Tenaya Lodge is the grandest of Yosemite’s perimeter "gateway" hotels catering to the park’s overflow and visitors who prefer to put a little distance between themselves and Yosemite Valley’s bustle….

Essentially, the sport is a cross between orienteering and a treasure hunt using high-tech navigation. Someone hides a "cache" – typically a plastic or metal bucket with a lid – with a logbook and some goodies in it and publishes the precise latitude and longitude on the Web. The goal is to dial those coordinates into your handheld GPS unit and have it lead you to the stash.

Since the sport began in 2000, it has grown exponentially. According to Geocaching.com, there are currently 202,735 caches in 218 countries…..

When I switched on the unit, it locked onto four satellites in geostationary orbit – meaning they appear to hover over one point on the globe – and spat out our elevation (5,288 feet) and our exact location (37 degrees, 26.402 minutes by 119 degrees, 36.237 minutes.) Depending on how well it linked up with the satellites, it was accurate to anywhere from 25 to 100 feet. With various "waypoints" pre-programmed, the GPS unit directed my wife, Jeri, and me down a series of increasingly rough dirt roads – the last was four-wheel-drive territory _ and beeped to alert me at various junctions. Or at least it was supposed to. The hotel is still working the kinks out of the system.

Read the full report on the author’s geocaching adventure in Yosemite here.

It works for finding lost pets and kids out past curfew, so it makes perfect sense to use GPS in fighting crime. I’ll be interested to see how California’s plan to track gang members using GPS works out.

 Under an arrangement between prison officials and San Bernardino, high-risk parolees known to belong to street gangs will be released from custody on the condition that they wear a GPS bracelet on their ankles at all times.

They appear as moving dots on a map and if they try to remove the anklet or enter unauthorized areas the device sends an alert to a base station monitored by law enforcement officials. 

I suppose it’s nothing new. According to the article, it’s already used by some California counties to monitor sex offenders. But when you combine that story with the ability to track wandering teenagers (or spouses) via GPS, it starts to sound like an episode of Wild Kingdom. It’s just that the tag is on a tasteful bracelet instead of being fastened to an ear. 

One question arises in my mind, however. How secure is this tracking system? In the cases of people who might be subject to retaliation or other attacks if identified — like sex offenders and gang memvers — how easy would it be for someone with enough technical knowledge, and an intent to do harm, to hone in on their tracking device and  locate them?

I’m impressed.  Really impressed.  I think this calls for the first space-based human vs. computer chess tournament. Any takers? Check out what our fine computer scientists and mechanical engineers at Los Alamost National Laboratory are cooking up for us: 

Los Alamos National Laboratory has announced funding of a new space payload which dramatically increases on-orbit computational capabilities. The project is jointly sponsored by the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) Office of Nonproliferation Research and Development (NA-22), and the U.S. Department of Defense.

The experimental payload will demonstrate and validate technologies offering more than 1,000 Giga Operations-per-second (GOps) processing capability for Software-Defined Radio (SDR) functions in space. SDR is a technology of interest to the military to support tactical communications and to commercial television and radio broadcasting. The payload computer’s signal-processing capability of 1,000 GOps is approximately the same as supercomputers of the last decade, which occupied 50,000 cubic feet and used 50 kW of power. This new payload, by contrast, is designed to weigh 40 pounds and consume only 80 watts, a performance which is enabled by state-of-the-art, 90-nanometer Virtex-4 silicon-chip technology from Xilinx, Inc.

It’s not everyday you get to launch a Crayon. Trailer Trash Aerospace (what a name…) gives us the lowdown on how they made this happen:

The crayon came from our "need" for a cheep 4" rocket to test our 54 mm motors, at $6 for the airframe and nose cone the cheep part is covered! It has proven to be very sturdy by landing several times with the laundry still safely tucked in the airframe! The drawback is due to the plastic tail cone, they are somewhat labor intensive to build. Only a couple of pictures were taken of the build, when we make an another one we will shoot more!

So what would you call it if you get all the colors in a Crayola box up in the air at the same time? 

Doug Lung presented his paper RF Delusions Saturday afternoon at the NAB2006 Conference (which we covered here) and has now posted the presentation online for those who missed it:

The presentation addresses common "delusions" concerning broadcast coverage, interference and RF safety. The major focus is coverage. One example illustrates that using data from the azimuth patterns in the FCC CDBS and the standard elevation patterns from OET-69 may lead to significantly different results from those obtained by using the actual antenna azimuth and elevation patterns. (These would include the actual electrical and mechanical beam tilt.) This is one of the more extreme cases and limitations on time and computer resources would make it difficult, if not impossible, for the FCC to study all U.S. TV stations using their actual 3D antenna patterns.

Most interference studies conducted using the FCC software (available on its Web site) with its inherent simplifications and methodology for calculating the depression angle will not show such an extreme difference in signal levels. Ironically, errors are likely to be greater when azimuth and elevation patterns from the FCC antenna database and OET-69 are used instead of actual antenna patterns for studies conducted with third party coverage and interference software that accurately calculates the depression angle. Directional antenna azimuth and elevation patterns should be included with recent TV construction permit applications, but they have to be extracted individually from exhibits attached to the application.

Audio copies of the presentation are also available at NABStore.com.

Seed Magazine takes a look at Fermi’s Paradox:

Sometime in the 1940s, Enrico Fermi was talking about the possibility of extra-terrestrial intelligence with some other physicists. They were impressed that life had evolved quickly and progressively on Earth. They figured our galaxy holds about 100 billion stars, and that an intelligent, exponentially-reproducing species could colonize the galaxy in just a few million years. They reasoned that extra-terrestrial intelligence should be common by now. Fermi listened patiently, then asked, simply, "So, where is everybody?" That is, if extra-terrestrial intelligence is common, why haven’t we met any bright aliens yet? This conundrum became known as Fermi’s Paradox.

"The Paradox has become even more baffling" in the past 60 years, as the technology to conduct the search for intelligence has improved dramatically with no results, according to the article’s author, Professor Geoffrey Miller of the University of New Mexico. Miller posits a radical hypothesis:

I suggest a different, even darker solution to the Paradox. Basically, I think the aliens don’t blow themselves up; they just get addicted to computer games. They forget to send radio signals or colonize space because they’re too busy with runaway consumerism and virtual-reality narcissism. They don’t need Sentinels to enslave them in a Matrix; they do it to themselves, just as we are doing today. Once they turn inwards to chase their shiny pennies of pleasure, they lose the cosmic plot. They become like a self-stimulating rat, pressing a bar to deliver electricity to its brain’s ventral tegmental area, which stimulates its nucleus accumbens to release dopamine, which feels…ever so good.

It’s an interesting theory. Perhaps ET is too busy playing Pac Man (does that reveal I’m a Gen Xer or what?) to care about reaching out to explore our solar system. Zoning out takes precedence over homing in for alien species, says Miller:

This is the Great Temptation for any technological species—to shape their subjective reality to provide the cues of survival and reproductive success without the substance. Most bright alien species probably go extinct gradually, allocating more time and resources to their pleasures, and less to their children. They eventually die out when the game behind all games—the Game of Life—says "Game Over; you are out of lives and you forgot to reproduce."

 The full entertaining article can be found here. 

This Saturday, May 6th, is the 33rd Annual National Astronomy Day, and events are being held all around the country: 

Astronomy Day is a grass roots movement designed to share the joy of astronomy with the general population – "Bringing Astronomy to the People."  On Astronomy Day, celebrated this year on Saturday, May 6, thousands of people who have never looked through a telescope will have an opportunity to see first hand what has so many amateur and professional astronomers all excited.  Astronomy clubs, science museums, observatories, universities, planetariums, laboratories, libraries, and nature centers host special events and activities to acquaint their population with local astronomical resources and facilities.  Many of these events are located at non-astronomical sites; shopping malls, parks, urban centers-truly Bringing Astronomy to the People.  It is an astronomical event that helps highlight ways the general public can get involved with astronomy – or at least get some of their questions about astronomy answered.

Astronomy Magazine has a partial list of events around the country. If you know of events near you, please post them in the comment threads. 

While we’re on the subject of robots, how’d you like to strap these to your feet and stroll through a minefield? 

That’s what developers at Singapore’s BioMedical Research Centre have in mind. But before you decide, you should know these shoes are designed to keep you from stepping on a landmine. There’s a research paper (in PDF format) about them, that has more technical lingo than I can decipher. Fortunately Robot Gossip has translated it all into laymen’s terms. 

The shoes have six short legs under each of your feet. The pods on each of the little legs has a metal detector. If one of the robot-shoe legs senses a trigger of a mine then it releases so that it can move up out of the way without setting off the mine. You would be supported by the other five legs on the shoe. When you step forward the leg locks in place again.

Also, everyone’s talking about Genibo — the robot dog that replaced AIBO — but there’s yet another robo-dog making the scene: the X-Cybie, which is an updated version of the iCybie. The X-Cybie is already available for order on Amazon, for $149, and will ship on May 4th. 

There aren’t any pictures the X-Cybie just yet, but word on the iCybie forum is that it’s basically the same as the iCybie (pictured below) except that this model has a fur coating that will come in a variety of colors. I can only imagine the fur would make the X-Cybie more fun to pet, but I can’t help wondering if it sheds. 

Last month I posted about the Great Robot Race. Well, the folks at DARPA at it again. Only this time robots will make their way through city streets, instead of the desert, during Grand Challenge. 

The Pentagon said Monday that a third Grand Challenge competition would be held to foster research and development into advanced robot vehicles.

In contrast to the previous contest, which took place in the desert on the border between California and Nevada, the new competition will be carried out in a mock urban area. Robots will be required to obey traffic laws while merging into traffic, as well as negotiating traffic circles, busy intersections and obstacles. The event is scheduled for Nov. 3, 2007.

First prize for successfully completing the 60-mile course in less than six hours will be $2 million. Second prize will be $500,000 and third prize is set at $250,000.

But if you want to participate, you’d better hurry. There’s already an Urban Challenge Participants Conference scheduled for May 20th, in Reston, Virginia. You can register at the Grand Challenge website. After that, you’ll have a bit more time (but not much), depending on which track you choose. 

DARPA also will make funding available for contenders before the finals, through two tracks:

• Teams could submit detailed proposals for up to $1 million in technology development funds, with the government obtaining limited licensing rights to the resulting technologies. The selected teams would proceed to a semifinal known as the National Qualification Event.
• Teams could participate in a series of qualifying tests, just as competitors did in the 2004 and 2005 DARPA Grand Challenges. The teams selected for the National Qualification Event would get $50,000, and the teams that are successful at that event will get $100,000 and a spot in the November 2007 finals.

Track A proposals are due on June 23rd, and Track B proposals on October 5th.