Some herald it as the cure for terrorism, others deride it as mindless video game warfare, but few doubt that the American era of drone warfare has arrived. From short range surveillance craft like the Raven to missile packing hunter-killers like the infamous Predator, the US military is awash with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV). According to a recent report from the Congressional Research Service, nearly one in three US warplanes are drones…and those machines are changing the way the world wages war. US soldiers in Afghanistan rely more and more upon intelligence gathered from drones, and President Obama recently lauded the precision and success of deadly drone-strikes against top terrorist targets in Pakistan. Meanwhile all advanced militaries in the world, from Israel to Russia, seem to be improving their own drone capabilities. Yet with this surge in robotic craft come rising concerns over the ethics, and liabilities, of UAVs. The rise of drones seems unstoppable, but will this shift in tactics improve or deepen the ravages of war?

Wired’s Danger Room broke the Congressional Report Service story earlier this month, calling out some of the most enlightening figures from the 50 pages study (mirrored here). About 31% of US aircraft are unmanned. That represents an amazing change over the past few years as such UAVs only represented 5% of the US total in 2005. Of course, the vast majority of these drone craft are relatively small, able to be launched by hand. The most prolific is the Army’s Raven, with 2200 on order and 1300 delivered. The most widely discussed, and feared, drones are the Predators and Reapers, which can carry heavy ordinance (including hellfire missiles) and are often operated remotely by human pilots stationed in the US. However, CRS reports that there are only about 160 Predator and Reapers in service.

Why is the population of drones rising exponentially in the US military? Again, the CRS numbers are very revealing. While representing more than 30% of the total aircraft flown, drones account for just 8% of the warplane budget. Nearly forty Predator and Reaper drones have crashed in Afghanistan and Iraq (with the loss of small UAVs like the Raven being considerably higher), yet the accident rate for Predators has dropped significantly in the past few years falling from 20 cases per 100,000 hours in 2005 to just 7.5/100k in 2009. That accident rate puts the Predator (and Reaper) on par with the F-16! And pilot lives are never lost in a drone crash. On a case by case basis, individual UAVs may or may not be more cost effective than manned planes for a particular mission, but as a whole they seem to be a better investment. In fact, the US is on track to spend $26 billion on drone R&D between 2001 and 2013. A small fraction of the total US military budget, but possibly the investment that may yield the highest dividends.

No new technology can be borne into battle, however, without carrying with it some new dangers as well. Critics of the reliance on drones point to two large security risks, both in the handling of data. First, most aerial drones are not used directly as weapons, but as mobile platforms for intelligence gathering. Even the Predator comes packed with cameras to observe its surroundings in high definition and at high speeds. With the surge in the use of UAVs has come a tidal wave of video and sensor information, much of it streamed to remote locations far from the point of operation. There have already been a few well-reported cases of insurgents tapping into that data stream for use against US troops. Such risks are likely to increase as technology-use among opposition forces improves.

Second, whether a drone is operating under its own programming or being remotely piloted by a human, they are open to receive control commands. The possibility of drones being hacked is very real, and some claim that the recent capture of an RQ-170 spy drone in Iran was accomplished through such hijacking techniques. Whether or not that’s the case, UAVs are clearly susceptible to inflight theft in ways that manned vehicles simply are not.

The following video describes the RQ-170 and its recent capture by Iran:

Above and beyond technological concerns is the growing opposition to UAVs on ethical grounds. The issues raised by opponents are varied but can be categorized into three general critiques: that drones give the US (and other governments) unchecked ability to assassinate their targets, that drones developed for use in foreign conflicts may eventually be used against a nation’s own citizens, and that drones desensitize soldiers to killing (and that, by extension, a large number of civilians have been killed in drone strikes). Among those raising concerns on the growing use of drones is the ACLU, which has filed suit to gain access to the US’ so-called “targeted killing program” that seeks to eliminate high-value targets using Predators. Protestors in both the US and Russia have reported strange surveillance craft hovering during their demonstrations, reportedly the use of drones as domestic spies. Public opinion on drones in the UK, and much of the EU, is generally considered poor. While it is difficult to find a single source that articulates the wide range of outrage against drone warfare, the following news segment from Russia Today certainly tries:

Trivializing the concerns over the use of UAVs in war would be a mistake. Yet the armed forces of nations all around the world seem undeterred by opposition voices. As mentioned in the CRS study, the per year investment in drone R&D is increasing, projected to rise to $3.9 billion from the US Department of Defense. Among the upcoming vehicles expected to see launch is the Avenger, the successor to the Predator and Reaper, capable of flying higher, longer, and 50% faster and carry upwards of 50% more/heavier ordinance. Private companies are developing scouting UAVs armed with anti-personnel weapons for use by border agents and police. The US Navy is developing both unmanned jet fighters and automated turrets capable of destroying drones. Trade organizations for UAVs are attempting to recast their public image in the EU, Israel has its own UAV projects, and systems from China and Russia can be assumed to be developing on pace as well.

Simply stated, no matter what moral issues are raised, UAVs are not going away. The tactical and economic advantages are too large for any military to sacrifice. Accordingly, governments are becoming more vocal in the support of this technology. President Obama recently admitted to use of Predator drone strikes in Pakistan, which were long rumored to be killing Al Qaeda operatives, during a recent Google Hangout. Obama, however, denied that such strikes had high rates of collateral damage and generally supported the use of drones as precise (see clip below, full video available here).

US allies are likewise vocal about their support. Yemen has requested, and received, increased US drone patrols as the nation prepares to shift power from its president to its vice-president. It’s hoped that well-placed UAVs could curb the growing threat of terrorist groups hoping to influence the country during political volatile times. Even as Pakistan, and other nations have condemned US strikes as violations of the sovereignty of their air space they have requested access (sales) of the vehicles to their own militaries.

The fact that no armed force wants to sacrifice the use of drones should suggest the recent success and ongoing potential of this technology. Undoubtedly the growing reliance on UAVs has altered warfare and will continue to do so. With that change we should also expect battles over domestic use of these aircraft for it’s almost certain that law enforcement agencies will find the vehicles just as advantageous as their military counterparts. We may also fear that remotely targeting enemies will lend a certain “numbness” to soldiers around the globe. Yet that fear was raised with long range high altitude bombers in the Second World War, with nuclear proliferation in the Cold War, and perhaps with every military technological innovation since. Smart warfare seeks to remove soldiers from danger even as it makes those soldiers more effective. UAVs are no exception. If we must argue against unmanned warfare, let us argue against warfare itself, for it is the intention of deadly force, not the technology that delivers it, which ultimately bears responsibility for the death and destruction that follows. If we must use robots to fight, let us use them well, use them decisively, and then stop and transform them into something more productive. Ultimately it is the peaceful applications of such drones: search and rescue, novel construction, exploration, etc, that will hopefully form their lasting legacy.

[image credits: Public Domain image (Brigadier Lance Mans, Deputy Director, NATO Special Operations Coordination Centre), Congressional Research Service]
[video credit: PressTVGlobalNews, Russia Today]
[source: Congressional Research Service, Danger Room, WhiteHouse.gov]

Today, genomic interpretation can be like looking at tea leaves, but the CLARITY Challenge is hoping to change that. (Image: micahb37/flickr)

Children’s Hospital Boston recently announced a $25,000 competition for the development of an interpretation and communication system that can deliver genomic information from the lab to physicians and patients. As the cost of genome sequencing continues to fall and may break the $1,000 barrier soon, the issue is no longer about acquiring genetic data but about what all the data means. Scientists around the world have been making progress interpreting the molecular language of DNA but, as the Human Genome Project revealed, the human genome contains at least 25,000 genes, so research can be slow going. Furthermore, what information is obtained and published in journals has a hard time finding its way into practices for physicians to understand and apply toward patient care.

At the heart of the challenge is a rather simple question: can genomic information be analyzed effectively and presented to a doctor in a way that helps the patient?

While the hospital could have just tossed more money at genetic research to promote advances, it’s chosen to host a competition to drive innovation. The CLARITY Challenge, which stands for the Children’s Leadership Award for the Reliable Interpretation and appropriate Transmission of Your genomic information, directs research groups and companies to focus on major bottlenecks in genomic medicine. Competitors will receive raw DNA sequence data from three de-identified children with confirmed, unknown genetic diseases and their families. The challenge is to develop a system to root out the underlying genetic basis for the disease and communicate that information in a way that guides physicians in caring for their patients.

The winner is scheduled to be announced in October.

Frankly, in the healthcare world, $25,000 is really not that much money, considering that research grants frequently are in the millions of dollars. But the prize that awaits the group that wins the CLARITY Challenge is what every researcher on the frontier of medicine can claim and reap the rewards from: being first. For something this significant in genomic medicine, odds are that whoever claims the prize will be winning for years to come.

[Media: micahb37/flickr]

[Sources: PR Newswire, Vector, WSJ]

DAPRA released a video of the LS3 Alpha Dog as it conquers a woody hillside. More intensive testing is to begin this summer.

First there were porters, then beasts of burden, then mechanized vehicles. And now we’re back to beasts of burden – and I mean beast! Yesterday Boston Dymanics took their Alpha Dog for a walk in the woods. After putting the LS3 prototype through the rigors of warehouse testing, like trying to kick it over with all their might, they decided it was ready for a real terrain test.

The Army considers physical overburden one of its top five science and technology challenges. Soldiers in the field can end up carrying gear weighing 100 lbs and the physical strain takes its toll. The LS3 (Legged Squad Support System) Alpha Dog is DARPA’s solution to lightening the solder’s load. But more than just navigating rugged terrain, yesterday’s demonstration tested the robot’s ability to follow a person using its “eyes,” a set of sensors that enable it to distinguish between trees or other obstructions and humans. You can actually see in the video that it follows the leader pretty well. With the strength to shoulder up to 400 lbs, the Alpha Dog will definitely be a soldier’s best friend. It also serves as a mobile power source that troops can use to recharge batteries for radios and other devices. It is still quite loud, however, so sneaking up on the enemy with Alpha Dog trailing probably wouldn’t be very smart.

This summer, DARPA and Boston Dynamics will begin an 18 month test period during which they will sharpen Alpha Dog’s capabilities. Its vision will be fine-tuned to follow individuals or designated objects and its ability to autonomously navigate over and around terrain obstacles will be evaluated. One planned test will see if Alpha Dog can complete a 20-mile trek while loaded with 400 lbs and without refueling. In addition to improving its vision, hearing technology will be added so that it can respond to commands like “stop,” “sit” or “come here.” At the end of testing, the robot will be given a chance to work with real Marines as they carry out field exercises. After watching the video, I’m pretty confident Alpha Dog will be ready.

[image credits: DARPAtv via YouTube and ieee spectrum]
[video credit: DARPAtv via YouTube]
image 1: Alpha Dog
image 2: Alpha Dog
video: Alpha Dog

Straight to the Inbox

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Wrist positioning is just one of many improvements that make the Michelango Hand feel more natural to amputees.

On January 12 Matt Razink received a prosthetic hand equipped with an electric opposable thumb. The Michelangelo Hand has given Razink so much added control that he no longer needs to change attachments according to the task. The new hand does it all.

The Wisconsin resident had lost part of his arm in a rock-crushing machine six years ago. He traveled to Advanced Arm Dynamics in Maple Grove, MN to try the new hand on for size. Advanced Arm Dynamics works closely with Otto Bock, makers of advanced bionic hands that are guided by the electrical activity of nerves and muscles in the forearm. Rezink has only had the Hand for a short time, but already it has made a world of difference. “It’s more natural to me,” he told CNN. “It’s like it used to be, before I lost my arm.” In the days and weeks to come, his control over the hand will only improve as he continues to train with it.

Along with the electric opposable thumb, the battery-powered Michelangelo Hand features a neutral mode for natural hand positioning, and a flexible wrist that can be moved up and down and turned inward and outward. Advanced software and improved electrical signal processing have also increased responsiveness and predictability, making movements that much more instinctive. A computer program is used to customize settings to each patient for maximum control. Movements are controlled by two drivers that control the fingers and the thumb separately. The fingertips are made with both hard and soft material that closely mimics the structure of real fingertips for more natural gripping. The PVC skin also looks impressively real, and it comes in several color variations for a more natural appearance.

In the following video from Advanced Arm Dynamics, retired army sergeant Ethan Payton demonstrates the Michelangelo Hand. I think you’ll agree that the level of control is pretty remarkable. The Hand is sure to be a game changer for the upper prosthetics field.

Ten US soldiers who’d lost their hands fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan have received Michelangelo Hands, but Rezink is the first civilian to do so. The added control doesn’t come cheap. A Hand costs about $100,000 and some insurance companies won’t cover it. According to Kare11 in Minneapolis, Rezink is currently negotiating with his insurance company to help cover the cost.

The vast majority of amputees suffer lower limb loss. In 2005, 623 Americans suffered amputation of a lower limb while only 41 lost an upper limb. Advanced Arm Dynamics argues that the huge disparity can turn many general prosthetists from investing in the training and specialized equipment required to treat upper limb amputees.

When Rezink lost his hand his biggest concern was not being able to return to work, to provide for his family. Hopefully the Michelangelo Hand offers a way back to life “like it used to be” for Rezink and others waiting for a hand that’s closer to the one they lost.

[image credits: CNN and Otto Bock via chemitec]
[video credits: Advanced Arm Dynamics via YouTube and CNN]
image 1: Michelangelo
image 2: Michelangelo
video 1: Michelangelo
video 2: Rezink

Jim Kramer uses strobes, water coloring, and high-speed photography to create works of art.

Jim Kramer is an amateur photographer, but his subjects aren’t waterfalls or cityscapes. He narrows his focus on a natural process that most of us see everyday but rarely take notice of. He captures the beautiful shapes found in drops of water. His palette is made up of water coloring, and he uses liquids like glycerol and dishwashing soap to alter the water’s consistency.

The Flickr photo has notes on Kramer’s setup, which one comment lauded as “technically impressing, creatively remarkable.” The images are taken against the frosted plexiglass backdrop panels. He uses seven Yongnua YN-560 strobes controlled by a strobe distribution box that allows up to eight strobes to be triggered simultaneously. And the drops of colored liquid fall from a Mariotte siphon that sits in the silver ring at the top of his setup. The height of the siphon can be changed. Right now it sits at a height of two feet above the water surface.

High-speed digital cameras capture beautiful shapes that result as droplets smack the water’s surface. He’s doing some really magical photography, just take a look at his High Speed Water Drop Collection. Admittedly off topic for us, but what a joy to look at, like the longterm exposures of Roomba Art. Many more pictures can be found on Kramer’s Flickr page. I’ve included Kramer’s own titles and descriptions of the images.

Edge Bleed: This is a glycol crown shot on black plexi with a single drop of red food coloring on one side of the drop zone.

Drop Collision: Red/Blue High Speed Water Drop Collision

Liquid Mercury: This is a glycol crown on a piece of partially water covered black plexiglass. It has a metal feel to me

Crowning Moment: The moment just before the formation of the crown. The disk on the bottom is the primer drop of glycol. The surface is black plexi. Lighting is from 4 Yongnuo YN-560's behind a piece of opaque white plexi.

Singing In The Rain: I can't seem to find the words to describe this one... I'm anxiously awaiting to hear the comments... I hope you love it as much as I do!

All the color in this shot comes from the gels. I used (2) Green, (1) Yellow, and (1) Blue on the backdrop strobes. In fact, this shot had the least amount of post of any shot in recent memory. I simply cloned out a couple stray drops, and did normal adjustments

Flammenco Danseuse: In this shot I intentionally created some waves in the drop tank prior to releasing the drops. I like the way the reflection is disturbed in this one. This is a triple drop collision shot, with the very beginning of the crown on top of the umbrella. Thanks RoyalDuck for the title (yet again!)

Four Color Crown: Same type of shot as the last one, this time 4 colors were used in the drop zone (red, green, yellow, and purple). Thanks for looking, commenting, and fav'ing my photos! I appreciate ALL! Somebody on Reddit mentioned that it looks like the Google Chrome logo exploded... I thought that was an interesting observation... it kinda does, doesn't it?

Red and Blue: I shot 3 strobes through a red background, and used blue gels over the front strobes for this shot. Getting enough light for the shot was tough, you lose a lot of light shooting through colors.

[image credits: IR Cincy Jim's photostream via Flickr]
images: High Speed Water Drop Collisions

With 3D printing, doctors can now create better bone implants at less cost than with conventional implants.

An 83-year-old woman suffering from a lower jaw infection became the first person to receive a jaw implant manufactured with a 3D printer. Infections such as hers are normally remedied with reconstructive surgery, but doctor’s deemed the procedure too risky because of her age and health. Instead they turned to LayerWise, a company that specializes in 3D printing of metallic structures.

Titanium powder was melted with a high-precision laser into layers guided by a computer model of the jaw. The computer model was digitally divided into 2D layers and printed at 33 layers per millimeter. The 3D printing made it possible to create an implant that just as intricate as the real thing. With articulated joints, cavities that foster muscle attachment, and grooves to guide nerve and vein regrowth, the new jaw was an intricate piece of hardware. It normally takes several days to make a custom implant, but the 3D printed implant took just a few hours to print. After the implant was made it was treated with a bioceramic coating by Cam Bioceramics BV. The surgery to attach a jaw implant normally takes around 20 hours. But because the printed implant fit so well surgeons were able to attach it in just four hours. A shorter surgery makes for a shorter recovery. The patient was able to go home with her new jaw after only four days. Normally recovery takes weeks. She was able to speak a few words after waking up, and the following day she was able to swallow again. Being made of titanium, the new jaw weighs 107 grams or about a third heavier than the patient’s own jaw. The doctors think she’ll adjust easily.

The implant is treated with a bioceramic coating prior to implantation.

The new method was made possible by research performed at the Biomed research group at the University of Hasselt in Belgium and researchers at four other universities. The surgery was performed last June but is only now being announced. Later this month the patient will undergo a follow-up surgery to remove healing implants which have served as place-holders for the patient’s teeth. After they’re removed, false teeth will be screwed into their place.

The structures that can be produced by the layer-by-layer materialization of 3D printing are practically limitless. By comparison, creating medical implants with conventional metalworking is time-consuming, expensive, and the implants don’t match the original as well. Last year an orthopedic surgeon used a 3D printer to make bone models from CT scan images that doctors could use to prepare for surgeries. Others are trying to push the medical implant envelope by printing organs! It will be a while before our bodies’ organic material will provide us a reliable ‘ink,’ says Ruben Wauthle at LayerWise, citing many biological and chemical issues that are yet unresolved. Even so, 3D printing could be a major boon for medicine in the near future. No doubt others will adopt printing for jaw and other types of bone replacements. The patients will be better off, and hospitals will save time and money.

[image credits: LayerWise]
images: LayerWise

Feeling good!

A few days ago we launched the Singularity Hub membership program, and I am pleased to announce we are off to an amazing start.  We’ve already got an outstanding group of people from around the world that have joined the membership program, and we’re adding more every day.  If you haven’t taken a look yet, I hope you will consider joining us soon.  For those who want to know more, here is a summary of what we have planned for the coming weeks:

As many of you know, Futuremed officially starts today at Singularity University, and Singularity Hub will be on site throughout the week to provide live, in depth coverage only for Singularity Hub members.  Peter Diamandis, Chairman and Founder of both the XPRIZE Foundation and Singularity University will be giving his keynote speech to Futuremed tonight (Monday at 6pm PST) and Singularity Hub will provide members with a live stream.  On Tuesday of this week, at 8:30am PST we will also be on hand to stream Ray Kurzweil’s Futuremed opening presentation titled “Exponentials in Medicine”, followed by several other presentations throughout the day.  For members that cannot attend the live streams, we will archive the videos for you to view at your leisure.

We’ve got interviews lined up this week and next with most of the staff at Futuremed, and we’ll also be interviewing a great list of individuals including Sonia Arrison (author of  100+), Aubrey De Grey (Chief Science Officer of the SENS Foundation), and Michael Anissimov (Media Director for the Singularity Institute). The best thing about these interviews is that we will be hosting them as Google+ Hangouts, which means members will have the chance to join the interview via webcam and directly participate in the conversation with our guests.

The discounts are already rolling in for our membership program, and we’ve got tons of other discounts that will be coming in throughout the year.  For starters, all members get 30% off on their purchase of the awesome products at RobotoWear.  We’ve also got a $10 coupon for purchases at Thinkgeek.

Although the events, interviews, and discounts above are going to be very valuable to those who join our membership program, what I am most excited about in the coming weeks is for all of our members to begin the process of getting to know each other and socializing for everyone’s mutual benefit.  We will be hosting member-only hangouts on Google+ pretty much every day this week, and via the mailing list,  we will begin sharing ideas about cool products, trends for the future, and so on.

In other words, the Singularity Hub membership program is quickly becoming THE place on the web to connect with the thousands of people around the world that are passionate about the amazing future that science and technology can bring to mankind.  Again, please consider joining now – as more and more awesome people become members, the membership program will become exponentially better.  Now what Hub reader can resist an exponential!  If you have any questions or comments at all about the membership program, we’d love for you to drop us a line at singularityhub@gmail.com.

Thanks,
Keith Kleiner
Founder/Editor Singularity Hub

Introduced by MIT’s Thomas Malone, one of the leading researchers in the field of Collective Intelligence, Schmidt explores a wide range of topics. By the time the presentation really gets going around 11 minutes in, he declares the global network of knowledge to be “as important, if not more important, as the development of electricity.” He also gives the audience a new motto: “in God we trust, but all others bring data”. Of course Schmidt brings Google into the conversation, pointing out how the search engine giant researches 200,000 experiments in their field each year, incorporates 500 new developments, and faces an ever changing web – 16% of searches each day are new. Google’s also becoming more open, revealing some of their recent changes in approach last fall. On a more personal note, Schmidt’s data-centric approach to global problem solving shapes not only his take on politics (leaders should follow facts, not opinions), but also his take on the future of humanity. Around 22:00 he delves into the merger of the physical and virtual worlds. Yet for all the change Schmidt foresees, and he predicts quite a bit, he clearly views the global sharing of information as a powerful tool for freedom against oppression: “the last gasp of an autocrat is to turn off the internet.”

Questions, starting around 33:30, discuss digital rights managements, renewable energy, global warming data, exponential growth in intelligence (41:20), pending government regulation, how to maintain physical intuition in a virtual reality dominated Earth, and the ways in which we can use data to motivate behavior.

[image credit: Guillaume Paumier / Wikimedia Commons, CC-by-3.0]
[screen capture and video credit: MIT TechTV]

These acrobatic robots can launch themselves through rings, duck and weave around obstacles, and even fly through your bedroom window. Hell, they can construct your bedroom window. Flying quadrotors first developed at UPenn’s GRASP Lab by Daniel Mellinger have reached the big time. Their latest video, released last week on YouTube, has garnered nearly 3 million views! What’s the big draw? Mellinger and his colleagues Prof. Vijay Kumar and Alex Kushleyev have created a swarm of 20 “nano quadrotors” – miniature versions of the stunt bots that can fly in complex 3D formations. The coordinated acrobatics of these quadrotors is truly amazing and exciting to behold (don’t miss the video below). Not only have the quadrotor team out done themselves with this latest demonstration, they’ve apparently formed a new company, KMel Robotics around the devices. Could swarming flying bots be coming soon to a store near you?

Mellinger has been developing various versions of the quadrotor system at UPenn for several years. In previous demonstrations he and Vijay Kumar have shown larger incarnations of the quadrotors buzzing around at high speeds, revving up their engines to “leap” through obstacles, and dashing about like mad hornets. The swarm showcased in the video above adds the element of coordinated movement across a large number of the robots, up to 20, and in complex three dimensional formations. While the scale of these movements is really impressive (3 million views doesn’t lie) it should be noted that the swarm relies upon external sensors for tracking position and movement. These robots aren’t quite smart or aware enough to fly so smoothly entirely on their own. Vicon cameras (the boxes seen along the walls in the video) provide a central control computer with necessary data to help the robots keep from smacking into one another. Simpler instances of coordination were seen in earlier demonstrations when quadrotors worked together to build basic structures out of prefabricated beams. In that light this nano swarm should be seen as a natural progression of the technology rather than a quantum leap.

On a related note, previous demonstrations from Mellinger also revealed that the larger quadrotors were purchased form Ascending Technologies, not produced in-house at UPenn. While the latest video doesn’t address this issue, the nano quadrotors bear a remarkable resemblance to AscTec’s Hummingbird ResearchPilot drone. Undoubtedly Mellinger and his colleagues augmented the devices to work with their tracking and coordinating system, but the robots themselves may not be proprietary to the team.

Which raises some interesting questions about what the new startup, KMel Robotics, will focus on. The KMel site has almost no information beyond the statement that they are preparing to tell the world more (that’s actually very understandable considering the enormous interest from the press and public the latest video has received). However, I will venture two guesses on the subject. First, while you can go to the AscTec site today and rent one of their quadrotors for aerial photography or acquire one for research, the capabilities developed by KMel are clearly above and beyond what the robot producer provides. That means KMel is likely going to focus on the networking/tracking/coordination side of swarm robotics, and that the quadrotors themselves may not be their actual product – just a test platform. Can you imagine similar feats of piloting performed with full scale military drones or surveillance UAVs? Definitely something worth forming a company around.

My second guess? Daniel Mellinger’s online handle is “The Dmel”, which probably means that the ‘K’ in KMel Robotics is for Professor Vijay Kumar. Singularity Hub is glad to see that partnership continue, likewise with their impressive work on flying drones. Kudos to KMel for pushing the envelope; showing the world that modern robots have evolved beyond their awkward origins and can now move with the beauty of a perfectly synchronized ballet.

[image and video credits: KMel Robotics]

The Pandora of movies. Films by Eve Sussman and Rufus Corporation are clips pieced together by a computer algorithm.

Indie movie makers can be a strange bunch, pushing the envelope of their craft and often losing us along the way. In any case, if you’re going to produce something unintelligible anyway, why not let a computer do it? Eve Sussmam and the Rufus Corporation did just that. She and lead actor Jeff Wood traveled to the Kazakhstan border of the Caspian Sea for two years of filming. But instead of a movie with a beginning, middle and end, they shot 3,000 individual and unrelated clips. To the clips they added 80 voice-overs and 150 pieces of music, mixed it all together and put it in a computer. A program on her Mac G5 tower, known at Rufus as the “serendipity machine,” then splices the bits together to create a final product.

As you might imagine, the resultant film doesn’t always make sense. But that’s part of the fun! As the Rufus Corporation writes on their website, “The unexpected juxtapositions create a sense of suspense alluding to a story that the viewer composes.”

It’s a clever experiment even if some viewers end up wanting to gouge their eyes out after a sitting. And there is some method to their madness. The film, titled “whiteonwhite:algorithnoir,” is centered on a geophysicist named Holz (played by Wood) who’s stuck in a gloomy, 1970’s-looking city operated by the New Method Oil Well Cementing Company. Distinct scenes such as wire tapped conversations or a job interview for Mr. Holz are (hopefully) woven together by distinct voiceovers and dialogues. When the scenes and audio are entered into the computer they’re tagged with keywords. The program then pieces them together in a way similar to Pandora’s stringing together of like music. If a clip is tagged “white,” the computer will randomly select from tens of other clips also having the “white” tag. The final product is intended to be a kind of “dystopian futuropolis.” What that means, however, changes with each viewing as no two runs are the same.

Watching the following trailer, I actually got a sense…um, I think…of a story.

Rufus Corporation says the movie was “inspired by Suprematist quests for transcendence, pure space and artistic higher ground.” I have no idea what that means but I hope they’ve achieved it. Beautiful things can happen when computers create art. And it’s only a matter of time before people attempt the same sort of thing with novel writing. Just watching the trailer, it’s hard to tell if the movie’s any good or not. I missed the showings at the Sundance Film Festival, but even so, they probably didn’t resemble the trailer anyway. And that’s okay, because that’s the whole point.

[image credits: Rufus Corporation and PRI via YouTube]
[video credit: PRI via YouTube]
image 1: whiteonwhite
image 2: Rufus
video: whiteonwhite

Witha PogoPlug NAS box, a few antennae, flash memory and some batteries, and you've got a cheap, disposable F-BOMB with which to collect data on adversaries.

Attach a camera to a drone, fly the drone around the back of the house, locate the bad guys. Robotic UAVs are being used for surveillance by everyone from the military to local law enforcement to emergency personnel. But if you think about it, drones are kind of big and really noisy, not the ideal tool for spying on someone. Their data gathering capabilities are limited too and they’re really expensive. What about a computer, small and durable enough for you to toss over a fence or inconspicuously attach to a car? Equipped with Wi-Fi cracking software or GPS, it could infiltrate someone’s computer or track someone’s location without them knowing.

Allow me to drop the F-BOMB. The Falling or Ballistically-launched Object that Makes Backdoors, that is. Invented by Brandon O’Connor as an alternative to high-tech and costly spy devices, the F-BOMB is made so cheaply with off-the-shelf parts that you’ll feel perfectly okay with losing one or two. Very convenient when it’s sitting in the backyard of a drug lord hideout.

Before building the F-BOMB, O’Connor challenged himself with several constraints. He wanted multiple wireless radios, USB capability for expansion (add GPS for example), battery life that lasted hours to days, a size small enough that it won’t be found by the “bad guys with guns,” as he calls them, and do all this without spending thousands or even hundreds of dollars.

The key addition was the PogoPlug. The PogoPlug is a NAS (Network Attached Storage) box, a data storage device through which people can share information over the Internet. It runs on Linux which makes it pretty user-friendly, according to O’Connor. Normally the boxes cost about $150, which would have made the F-BOMB too expensive for O’Connor’s purposes, but the company is having a hard time selling the devices. PogoPlug’s misfortune becomes O’Connor’s advantage as he can now purchase them for just $25 on Amazon.com. And that’s the most expensive bit of hardware. Add the antennae, eight gigabytes worth of flash memory and a plastic casting that’s 3D-printed and you’ve got a little spying computer you can build for under $49. Four D batteries will provide power for 30-plus hours.

Aside from being cheap and reproducible, building a monitoring device with commercial off-the-shelf, or COTS, components from Amazon or craigslist means when the bad guys find it in their backyard they won’t be able to trace it to you. Were the F-BOMB to require any kind of made-to-order, a determined person could find the manufacture, start asking questions.

O’Connor talked about the F-BOMB (“because one time I worked for DARPA and they love terrible acronyms”) at ShmooCon 2012. As you’ll see in the video, he’s nothing if not enthusiastic.

The F-BOMB won an award from DARPA’s Cyber Fast Track program. The title of the project is “Reticle: Leaderless Command and Control,” which kind of makes me wonder what else he’s developing. As Forbes reports, O’Connor was tight-lipped about what DARPA might do with the technology.

But we can venture a few guesses. The platform can be attached to a quadcopter and dropped onto a roof. It can be hidden inside a carbon monoxide casing, or any other imaginative cover container such as a box of stale Triscuits that you’re pretty sure no one’s going to touch. As I mentioned before, Wifi-cracking software will allow you to eavesdrop on a person’s computer, and you can track someone with a GPS module. And if you’re more in the business of science than spying, you can add temperature or humidity sensors to collect data for meteorological research.

O’Connor has a security and software consultancy called Malice Afterthought. He learned about such things teaching at cybersecurity schools for the military as well as working in the security devisions of VeriSign and Sun Microsystems. The website describes him as “dreamer and mad scientist capable of making even the most challenging tasks into reality.” Being that he kind of runs the consultancy himself, he probably wrote the description himself, which is kind of weird. Anyway, he certainly has created a little security monster in the F-BOMB. Effin’ cool.

[image credits: Forbes and Wired]
[video credit: USSJoin via YouTube]
image 1: F-BOMB
image 2: F-BOMB
video: F-BOMB

The upright, folded hands is a sign of confidence. So is driving a BMW. With ConnectedDrive Connect, BMW owners can do both!

While robotic cars have a ways to go yet before rolling (themselves) out onto showroom floors, BMW is incorporating driver assistance features into its cars that drivers can use – and they can sell – sooner rather than later. Their semi-autonomous driving system, ConnectedDrive Connect, was announced last year. The car maker has finished its closed track test runs and has released a video of the car out on the Autobahn for some good old fashioned hands off driving fun.

ConnectedDrive Connect includes four types of sensors – radar, camera, laser scanners and ultrasound distance sensors – that allow it to track cars in front of it up to a distance of 50 meters. It also detects cars in adjacent lanes. A driving simulator produces driving strategies on the go. For example, the car slows if it’s moving to fast into a turn, and it taps the brakes to maintain control going downhill. Like any cruise control the driver sets the speed and the maintains a safe distance behind a car in front of it. The system can be enabled between speeds of 30 and 180 km/h (81 mph). I’d be a little worried if that truck in the next lane splashes some mud on the car that it doesn’t go pell mell into the car in front of me. The sensors are “largely resistant to dirt build-up” according to BMW, but I’d wipe down regularly just to be safe. BMW owners probably don’t need to be reminded of that anyway.

But it’s really no fun to just simply maintain a safe distance, not with a Beamer. If the car in front of you is going too slow, ConnectedDrive Connect senses your impatience, changes lanes, and leaves the slowpoke in the dust.

To date the BMW 5 Series has logged 5,000 kilometers in “highly-automated” mode on freeways. When can we expect to see BMW drivers begin using both hands to apply their makeup? The company says it’s a few years yet before CDC goes into production. One of the things they’ll have to improve is the GPS tracking. Right now they only take the car out on roads that they’ve mapped to within centimeter accuracy.

It is becoming increasingly likely that your next car will have some kind of driver assistance. Last year carmakers spent over $10 billion in advanced driver assistance systems. By 2016 that number could increase to $130 billion, according to an ABI Research projection. The rapid spread will be due largely to their incorporation into more mainstream cars rather than being an option for luxury cars. As the technology is improved production costs are decreasing, making it increasingly feasible to add driver assistance to less expensive cars. Volkswagon’s Temporary Auto Pilot (TAP) is similar to ConnectDrive Connect in that it maintains a safe distance behind cars and keeps the car from veering out of the lane. And both Volkswagon and BMW get the job done without the ungainly periscope-looking sensor on Google’s Prius.

[image credits: World Car Fans]
[video credits: motorsixty via YouTube]
image: ConnectDrive Connect
video: ConnectDrive Connect

Dropcam adds HD, infrared and two-way audio to their new Dropcam HD.

The dropcam surveillance camera was already about as user-friendly as could be, now it’s added high-definition video and two-way audio to its arsenal of awesomeness. The previous model, Dropcam Echo rolled out in 2010, was presented as an affordable ($279, $199 direct) home surveillance system. Like the Echo Dropcam’s new camera, Dropcam HD, connects through Wi-Fi and works through Dropcam apps for iPhone and Android so you can stream video to your iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, Android phone, and even a Kindle Fire tablet. The apps are free, but if you want to record the footage Dropcam offers a cloud-based DVR service. The $9.99/month plan allows up to 7 days of continuous recording with time-stamped motion and audio alerts. Because the data is recorded on Dropcam’s servers you don’t have to use valuable hard drive space to store video, which comes in handy given that the new camera has a 720p HD resolution, 16 times the resolution of Dropcam Echo. Storing videos in the cloud also allows users to log into the Dropcam network and review their videos from anywhere. You can keep the footage you want just by specifying date and start time and the length of time you want to save. New video recordings automatically erase old ones from offsite storage so you don’t have to do it manually. Email notifications are sent when the camera detects motion within its field so you don’t have to sift through hours of footage like a convenience store video rewind. And because Dropcam HD is powered by AC, you can potentially record your back patio 24/7.

Another feature added to Dropcam HD are twelve infrared LEDs that give it night vision for full 24-hour surveillance. Speakers have been added to so, together with the camera’s microphone, you can hear what’s going on and talk back. Who needs an iPad2 to Skype from anywhere?

Dropcam has also miniaturized the camera. It’s new circular plastic chassis fits into a wall bracket that gives it more pivot than the Echo had. And the small camera can be removed from the bracket and placed in a concealed location to make sure the babysitter isn’t pocketing the family silver.

In the following video CNET talks with Dropcam CEO Greg Duffy at CES 2012 about Dropcam HD.

Cameras such as dropcam are the perfect hardware to accompany video 2.0. Sites like Hulu and On Demand cable features mean you watch what you want, when you want. And YouTube revolutionized personal video. People can now instantly self-publish and share their videos, opening up an online dialogue in the form of comments, sharing and editing. Gone are the days of static content – Internet videos are works in progress. With its Wi-Fi connectivity and ease of use, Dropcam HD is the perfect “appware” to make creating videos as easy as sharing them.

[image credits: anandtech]
[video credits: CNET channel via YouTube]
images: dropcam hd
video: dropcam hd