Synopsis: Ict:

Thanks to GPS phone apps and ignition locking devices lenders can remotely shut down the car of someone who's behind on payments.

#Facebook Says Wi-fi Drones Will be sized Jumbo jet If a new Facebook plan is successful the easiest way to access the cloud may be...

#in the clouds. Facebook wants to spread Wi-fi Internet to unconnected parts of the world with drones

and at#a summit in New york earlier this week the company revealed those drones will be the size of jumbo jets.

In March of 2014 Facebook acquired drone maker Ascenta whose solar-powered drones could potentially#remain airborne at 65000 feet for months or years at a time.

Ascenta's web page has disappeared since the acquisition leaving only a goodbye notice in Facebook-blue.#

#To make this project fly Facebook plans on testing one of the drones over American skies by 2015 hoping to#have the project off the ground in three to five years.

While bringing Internet connectivity to unconnected parts of the world should be a good enough move for public relations Facebook also joined the ongoing war against calling unmanned aircraft drones:

Whatever its#name the craft without people on board will let people access#the web from the heavens.

Internet. org a collaboration between social media giant Facebook#and telecom behemoths Nokia and Qualcomm created a short#optimistic video about these sky Internet#robots.

Paralyzed Rats Walk Again, Now Farther Than Ever Like a severed telephone line (from back in the days when phones had wires) a spinal cord injury can cut off communication between the brain

And it appears that the new algorithm has promise. As the signal's frequency was dialed up from 20 to 90 Hertz the rats took larger steps ranging from 2. 9 to 6. 8 centimeters in height.

The new turning algorithm also helped the rats to overcome more complicated obstacles in the form of rodent-sized staircases

In a nutshell the new algorithms make it easier to control the body's movements to a finer degree in an adaptable way--and in real time.

Up next the lab will be testing out the new signaling algorithm in human patients beginning as early as next summer r

and computer science tells Popular Science. It recognizes specific sequences of DNA and cuts it. So what we can do is take that genome-editing tool

#Snake Robots And A Quadcopter Fuse Together In this Chimera Drone Rescue robots are better when they travel in packs.

Quadcopter drones can quickly fly over and around obstacles but once on the ground they can t too much besides take off again.

A new chimera-like creation from the Modular Robotics Lab at the University of Pennsylvania combines two snakebots and one quadcopter into a sort of drone superorganism bringing rescue robots together

Creatively titled Mobile Protected Firepower (MPF) it s an armored vehicle that can be dropped from cargo planes.

The system uses a Wi-fi protocol for vehicles 802. 11p to see where the driver cannot.

Wi-fi as you probably know from using it in your house for phones laptops and gaming systems in different rooms can.

and alerted the driver on a screen fixed to the clean knob-less dashboard that the limit was 25 mph.

Patrick Meier director of social innovation at the Qatar Computing Research Institute applies artificial intelligence to this crowdsourced data organizing digital photos and messages into dynamic maps that can guide real-world

In disasters there are a lot of eyewitness accounts on social media. But the overflow of information can be as paralyzing to response teams as the absence of it.

Once people tag between 50 to 100 examples an algorithm then classifies similar tweets with 90 percent accuracy.

We want to apply machine learning to aerial imagery. Once we know what huts without roofs look like from a bird s-eye view we can run algorithms on photos to accelerate damage assessments.

PS: How about other applications? PM: We re creating a clone of the platform that enables election monitors to identify tweets related to intimidation bribery corruption or violence.

We ve also partnered with a wildlife reserve in Namibia to identify animal species in aerial images

#The Rise Of Open source Hardware So in the summer of 2012 Petrone (then an engineer at a Portland startup) launched a site where flexible matrix boards

Almost immediately Tindie began attracting favorable attention from the indie hardware community #and then expanded from there.

Today around 600 inventors sell more than 3000 different hardware products which have shipped out to more than 80 countries around the world.

but others are large entities like the Australian government Google and NASA. These days Petrone says NASA s purchasing department just calls my cell phone.#

#The site has gained also a strong following from hard-core DIY types. Just as Etsy became the go-to marketplace for craft creators Tindie has become the primary hub for hardware aficionados.

We are definitely part of and supportive of the maker movement Petrone says. We fill the hardware side.#

#While Petrone achieved his goal of creating a marketplace for hardware projects Tindie also inadvertently made a second contribution to the hardware world:

it now stands as the largest collection of open-source hardware on the planet. Nothing on the site is patented

and the vast majority of sellers have their source code and documentation links available right there on the page Petrone says.

Open source has become very much a part of the brand and what people within the hardware world associate with us.#

#Part of the reason software has led the open source charge is that it has the advantage of being lightweight Petrone explains.

It s a case of atoms versus bits.##Historically big companies have dominated hardware production for two simple reasons:

manufacturing is both expensive and difficult. Hardware requires physical objects which entail manufacturing costs and usually shipping.

But a precipitous drop in prices#which some attribute to the rise of cell phones which made components cheap#is helping to lower the barrier to open source entry for hardware as are crowdsourcing platforms such as Kickstarter.#

#For companies and makers the revenue model for open source hardware is still being worked out since a person could potentially exploit an open source platform and sell it for profit.

But as Arduino#a microcontroller for DIYERS and the most successful open source hardware project to date#shows people tend to buy the $30 original version rather than the $10 copycats.

Most people want to support those who are actually contributing and putting the sweat and time into the project Petrone says.

You don t get the same warm fuzzy feeling when buying a closed product as you do

when you support someone who is creating an open one.##As for Tindie sellers monetary support has so far not been a problem.

There is so much demand for the open source products sold on the site that the waiting list alone contains nearly half a million dollars worth of orders.

For Petrone This has been something incredibly interesting to see because ultimately it s a totally new market that doesn t exist anywhere else.#

#Tindie however is likely only an early example of what is to come.##I think open hardware will start coming into its own in the next ten years Petrone says.

Apple s not going to open source their products anytime soon but Tesla could.##This article was published originally in the October 2014 issue of Popular Science#with#the title The Etsy Of Hardware.

It has been expanded in this web version.#

#Google vs The DMV: How To Test A Self-driving car In May 2012 Google's self-driving car underwent a classic American teenage ritual.

It took a driving test at a DMV. The car passed but apparently not without a little lobbying from its parent.

As state officials have monitored the robot car's mileage on public roads Google has lobbied for the car to get different tests

and to report different accident figures than the DMV wants a new series of reports finds.

The reports come from U s. Freedom of Information Act requests that technology journalist Mark Harris submitted to DMVS and other agencies.

Turning to the government let Harris sidestep Google's secretive PR machine as he told the Knight Science Journalism Tracker which recently collected his stories.

Harris'work offers a detailed sense of the car's abilities. It's also a look at Google's lobbying the extent

of which is maybe unsurprising for a private company but still interesting. He published his latest#and most fun#article in IEEE Spectrum.

That's where you can see what situations the Google car is good at and in

For the Guardian Harris wrote about how Google has asked regulators to allow the results of computerized driving simulations#to stand in for tests on driving tracks

For Quartz Harris reported on Google's lobbying not to have to report#how often its cars turn over the controls to their human drivers

That's the kind of handover Google doesn't want to have to report. The company also doesn't want to report

while a human not its algorithms is driving. The California DMV disagreed. Knight Science Journalism Tracker m

DIRTT is hoping to forestall these problems with the help of their Doom engine-based software named ICE.

The Doom engine is a computer program that can render 2-D blueprints into a 3-D space.

Because the engine is open-source DIRTT was able to adapt it for their own needs--for example ICE melts with other design softwares including Autocad.

Once assembled in the shop the walls are shipped flat by truck to the construction site.

When the panels arrive at their destination they're popped into pre-cut aluminum frames which will hold the wall panels upright in the finished building.

But it s not only the speed at which the walls are built that's helpful. Jenkins explains that some buildings such as hospitals may need to reconfigure their interior panels quickly to make way for another patient with different needs.

Not only that but they need to be sensitive to rapid technology changes as well. Hospitals are making decisions for

But DIRTT's videogame background is coming into play once again they are now exploring how the Oculus Rift

and other virtual reality viewing systems may integrate with the ICE software--to further simplify the design process

#Not everything discovered at the site is millennia old. The surveyors were able to pinpoint practice trenches dug during the First world war to prepare troops for battle as well as traces of a military airbase--one of the U k.'s first--built at the site a few years later y

#Adaptive, Programmable Headlights Cut through Rain, Illuminate Without Blinding Other Drivers This is perhaps the only optical illusion you would want to see

The headlight's onboard computer reacts to what it senses whether it's cars raindrops street signs or anything else within 1 to 2. 5 milliseconds according to Carnegie mellon University.

At the crown of the helmet a flexible panel that has a polycarbonate shell attaches with a living hinge.

#Scientists Send Messages Directly From One Brain To Another So a team of neuroscientists sent a message from the brain of one person in India to the brains of three people in France using brainwave-reading equipment and the Internet.

Instead it puts together neurorobotics software and hardware that have been developed by several labs in recent years.

We're not predicting that this will have practical applications or society-changing implications any time soon.

The cap communicates wirelessly with a laptop that shows on its screen a white circle on a black background.

The emitter translates the message she wants to send into an obscure#five-bit binary system called Bacon's cipher which is more compact than the binary code#that computers use.

The emitter now has to enter that binary string into the laptop using her thoughts.

She does this by using her thoughts to move the white circle on-screen to different corners of the screen.

Upper right corner for 1 bottom right corner for 0.)This part of the process takes advantage of technology that several labs have developed to allow people with paralysis to control computer cursors or robot arms.

The emitter's binary message gets sent over the Internet yay. The receivers sit inside a transcranial magnetic stimulation machine that's able to send electromagnetic pulses through people's skulls.

The pulses make the receivers see flashes of light in their peripheral vision that aren't actually there.

The results are called phantom flashes#phosphenes)# that seem to show up in different positions in the air which is not spooky at all no.

As soon as the receivers'machine gets the emitter's binary message over the Internet the machine gets to work.

Flashes appearing in one position correspond to 1s in the emitter's message while flashes appearing in another position correspond to 0s.

We don't know how the receivers keep#track of all that flashing. Perhaps they take notes using a pen and paper.

Dragline silk the stuff spiders use to make the spokes of their webs and to dangle creepily from ceilings is five times stronger than an equal-sized thread of steel would be.

#Pentagon Wants Artificial intelligence In Future Fighters The Department of defense wants future generations of fighter aircraft to come with copilots already installed.

According to#the U s. Naval Institute both the Navy and the Air force want their next generation air superiority fighter to have Artificial intelligence.

and autonomously so adding a computer copilot to a naval craft could help there too.

Bringing the artificial intelligence inside the cockpit is one major way robots will fly alongside humans in fighters of the future--but it s not the only one.

Why not leave all that work to a computer? Perhaps you could use this experimental app that works in Google glass.

The app is supposed to work entirely on Google glass'CPU so it doesn't need to send the images Glass records to the cloud.

A video demo of the software shows a prototype of the app on a laptop.

Over the past few years engineers working for several universities and companies have tried to make emotion-reading algorithms.

Usually the idea is that such algorithms could go into software for marketing departments (How is this new ad making viewers feel?

or into adaptive computer games (How is this level making players feel?.It's also a step toward loading the ability to read people's emotions into robots.

Making a face-reading algorithm for private individuals to use is an unusual but not unheard-of idea.

in addition to needing the software potential buyers have to be able to afford Google glass but perhaps

what's especially useful here is knowing that this kind of computing can be miniaturized to something as small and light as Google glass.

#Google Already Testing Delivery Robots In Australia In rural Australia a drone delivers dog treats to a farmer.

The robot is a proof of concept part of#Project Wing by Google X. The program is designed to show that delivery drones are possible

#Next for Google: figuring out the path from proven#prototype to everyday utility. The drone is a tail-sitter taking off vertically with its body perpendicular to the ground.

Google s driverless car program is an obvious touchstone for this project but it s a limited one.

Still Google s development and prior experience with cars is a strong sign that this work will continue and ultimately yield fruit.

Michael Toscano CEO of#the Association for Unmanned vehicle Systems International said thatit s worth noting that Google tested this technology in Australia first.

Wireless communications systems in the robots will allow users to control the droids remotely. The robot is a tensegrity structure

They developed algorithms for controlling the robots that mimic central pattern generators neural circuits in animals often vital to activities such as locomotion chewing breathing

In addition the researchers also developed a way for the robots to learn how to roll on their own with the help of evolutionary algorithms which is valuable for robots operating by themselves on another planet where the rules for movement might differ from those On earth.

and reaches its $2 million goal before the end of the month. 08/29/13 A hangar module launches allowing backers to walk around inside their ships. 06/04/14 A dogfighting module releases that lets players battle the computer and other

to host custom servers. This article originally appeared in the September 2014 issue of Popular Science e

#The Rise Of The Crypto Phone Between revelations of NSA spying and a sense that marketers and hackers are picking our digital pockets we re all getting a little edgy about cellular security.

Most of the handsets run on hardened versions of Android that make privacy the default for app permissions and network connections.

Wary users can also employ tools to convert voice or text messages into spy-proof gibberish.

#The $3500 GSMK Cryptophone s firewall even blocks snoops that can impersonate cell towers.####Free on any platformpros It allows you to query Google without accepting cookies

or giving your IP ADDRESS and to use Google as a proxy clicking through to third-party sites.

Con Proxy surfing feature can be slow.#####Free Android; ios coming late summerpros Apps enable#end-to-end encrypted calling and messaging.#

#Open-source code allows for shared fixes. Con Your callers also need to have installed the apps for the encryption to work.##

##Free WINDOWS OS X Linux Orbot for Androidpros The preconfigured browser routes you through a worldwide network of proxy servers anonymizing IP numbers.

Con NSA views Tor usage as suspicious.####Free tails. boum. org/Pros Housed on a USB memory stick

or a DVD this Linux variant OS uses only anonymous Tor Internet connections and leaves no evidence of your session.#

#Con Some popular software packages won t run on Linux.####$40 hidecell. compros Storing your phone in a metal-lined bag will eliminate surveillance possibilities by blocking cell-tower signals along with your Wi-fi GPS and Bluetooth connections.

Con#Mom can t get through either.####This article originally appeared in the#September 2014 issue#of#Popular Science p

#Boy Given A 3-D Printed Spine Implant Doctors at Peking University Third Hospital have implanted successfully the first ever 3-D-printed section of vertebra into the young patient.

and in April 2013 the Mayo Clinic used a 3-D printer to create a customized artificial hip.

the software also allows for easier design changes. This article originally appeared in the September 2014 issue of Popular Science i

and today both cars and smartphones rely on GPS satellites to know exactly where they are.

The project has gotten attention around the Internet this week thanks to a new press release announcing that the Harken system has tested een by users in closed track tests,

it's a notable accomplishment for a system that does not involve putting any sensors in direct contact with the user's skin.

which prompted some to defiantly post photos of themselves kissing camels on various social media sites.

P. S. P. S. Popular Science Postscript: How can a process that produces carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, help reduce global warming?

#Squid Protein Could Help Brains'Talk'to Computers In the most advanced prosthetics--such as this crazy mind-controlled robotic arm--electronic hardware interfaces directly with nerves and muscles in the human body.

the proposal envisages that the loan will be repaid over 40 years at an interest rate of 1. 4%.Planned upgrades will cover:

a laser beam is moved in a computer-controlled three-dimensional manner within the epoxy resin layer thus curing the resin locally.

Urban mobile robot chassis The Ground Drone Project wants to make a low cost ground robot chassis for hobbyists

https://www. kickstarter. com/projects/1145776805/ground-drone-project-a-versatile-mobile-robotic-pl? ref=categoryyou can back the Kickstarter project here:

kickstarter. com/projects/1145776805/ground-drone-project-a-versatile-mobile-robotic-p o

#Google commits $1. 36 billion for NASA facility, to house their robotics, space and flight technologies Google subsidiary Planetary Ventures has committed to a 60-year $1. 16 billion lease of the 1000 acre Moffett Field Naval Air station.

The agreement includes an additional $200 million to refurbish the hangars and improve the site with a museum and educational facilities.

Hangar One the biggest and most colorful of the buildings on the site will be restored. Also Hangars Two and Three.

The facility is slated for research assembly and testing in the areas of robotics space exploration aviation and other technologies NASA said in a press release.

NASA also said: Once renovations are complete Hangar One will again be home to high-tech innovation as Planetary Ventures begins using the historic facility for research development assembly and testing in the areas of space exploration aviation rover

This news comes on the heals of Google investment in Magic Leap last month as well the announcement of Andy Rubin departure r

The index covers a range of key segments currently with a 47%allocation to industrials 33%information technology 11%healthcare 5%energy and 4%in consumer discretionary.

This ranges for example from companies that physically manufacture robots and automation machinery to companies specialising in the types of software and technology that enable automation.

#A computer vision system for mining artistic influence When we look at an image we not only recognize object categories

In the past decade there have been impressive advances in developing computer vision algorithms for different object recognition-related problems including:

Although there has been some research on automated classification of paintings there is almost no research done on computer-based measuring

With the increasing volumes of digitized art databases on the Internet comes the daunting task of organizing

There are millions of paintings present on the Internet; to manage properly the databases of these paintings it becomes essential to classify paintings into different categories and sub-categories.

The contribution of our work 1234 is in exploring the problem of computer-automated suggestion of influences between artists a problem that has not previously been addressed in a general setting.

After browsing through many publications and websites we concluded to the best of our knowledge that this comparison has not been made previously by an art historian.

Elgammal#An Early Framework for Determining Artistic Influence#The 2nd International Workshop on Multimedia for Cultural heritage MM4CH Naples Italy 2013 3 Babak Saleh Kanako Abe

Ravneet Arora Ahmed Elgammal#Toward Automated Discovery of Artistic Influence#Multimedia Tools and Applications Journal#Springer#2014 4 Babak Saleh Kanako Abe and Ahmed

2) Programming Modeinstead of Wigl moving once it hears a note it stays still and stores it in its memory.

Every note played is memorized like lines of code in a computer program. Then to run your Wigl program you play a special NTERNOTE

notes as pseudocode! While most robotic toys on the market require a smartphone or a computer for remote control Wigl interacts directly with the child and their instruments.

Most children s entertainment is moving towards software mainly on tablets and I believe that limits their creativity and understanding of what s possible.

We want kids to think outside the tablet and so we remove the screen in order to encourage direct interaction with Wigl.

After extensive testing at a number of schools and children s museums over the past year and a half by hundreds of children and their parents Wigl is now ready for pre-orders!

Since winning the Crowd Pleaser award at Robohub s Robot Launch 2014 Odd I/O has teamed up with Indiegogo to bring Wigl to the public

#New soft ntagonisticactuator enables robots to fold Traditionally many key robot components (including sensors and actuators) are rigid

in the direction of free boundary conditions and therefore results in actuation stretch. The actuator itself consists of two rigid arms connected via elastic hinges and two sets of DEAS in an antagonistic configuration.

and a ground landing (landing is a particularly dangerous time for hardware). The elevon must sustain an angle during flight meaning that the aerodynamic force acts on its surface another a common reason for failure in flying robots.

Pepper is designed to be engaging and friendly a companion able to communicate through an intuitive artificial intelligence interface that reads

and it will make the Pepper available in the U s. at retail stores of Sprint the telecom carrier acquired last year by Softbank in a $22 billion deal.

#Google news: Rubin leaves; Pichai promoted to#2; and Google invests in Magic Leap Andy Rubin leaves Google;

Sundar Pichai promoted to#2 man at Google; and Google invests in $542 million B funding for Magic Leap.

Andy Rubin the Google executive who was in charge of the company#s robotics group and spearheaded the Android operating system before that resigned fromâ Google

and will start a tech incubator focused on hardware. According to the NY Timesâ Mr. Rubin#s departure is part of a series of recent executive moves that seem to give Mr. Page more room to focus on the company#s longer-term bets#like robotics

#while handing almost allâ the responsibility for Google products to Sundar Pichai a rising star.

 The robotics group will now be led by James Kuffner who has been at the company since 2009 and has worked on self-driving cars a Google spokesman said.

Regarding James Kuffner who replaces Rubinâ The Wall street journal saidandy Rubin former leader of Google#s Android mobile businessâ oversaw a series of robotics acquisitions last year

so his departure comes at a poor time for the company. Â That puts pressure on Kuffner to bring together disparate Google properties like Boston Dynamics and Schaft.#

#Robotics is still a difficult technology to pull off well I think moreso than many or all tech fields#said Michael Wagner a senior commercialization specialist with the National Robotics Engineering Center at Carnegie mellon University.#

#James has the expertise to navigate traps others with less experience may not expect. So I don t think this is a setback at all.#

#Sundar Pichai becomes Google Product Chief. The NY Times said of the promotion: Sundar Pichai is to oversee every major Google product except Youtube.

The move arguably makes Mr. Pichai the second-most powerful person at the company and is intended to give Mr. Page more time to focus on more futuristic projects according to a person with knowledge of the situation.

In a memo on Friday Mr. Page said that Mr. Pichai#s empire#which already includes the Android

and Chrome products along with Google Apps like Google docs and Gmail#will now include Research Search Maps the social media network Google Plus along with Commerce.

He will also oversee technical infrastructure which is essentially the ever-growing racks of servers and switches that keep all those products working.

Much interest within the robotics community has been focused on Google acquisitions in the area of robotics

because Google hasn said anything about what they are doing. So many start-ups#Â So much talent#What their long-term goal?

What the common denominator? How where andâ when will those purchases and their activities combine into some moneymaking enterprise (s) and/or product (s)?

Magic Leapas artificial intelligence software and emerging learning chips fuse into more speedy and capable pursuits the line between things robotic (which has a specific definition)

and AI-driven robotic activities not yet defined (like software bots) is coming into question. Hence the interest in whereâ Google is focusing.

Some of that focus has been on acquiring learning system companies (and talent. Additional focus mayâ includeâ virtual reality 3d imaging and augmented reality systems.

No Oculus Rift headset and goggles. Scrolling down a bit one sees a classroom scene with colorful sea horses floating inbetween the kids.

Thus it was no surprise that Google participated in the recent $542 million B funding round for the start-up Magic Leap a Florida start-up thatâ claims to merge the physical and digital worlds with hardware

and software that surpasses existing virtual and augmented reality solutions. Â Other participants in the B fundingâ included Qualcommâ KPCB Andreessen Horowitz Obvious Ventures and Legendary Entertainment m

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