1. This is a story about the rapid evolution of a technology that has forced the American legal system to play catch up. Cody Wilson, a 25 year old University of Texas Law student, is an advocate for the open source production of firearms using 3D printing technology. This makes him a highly controversial figure on both sides of the gun control issue. MOTHERBOARD sat down with Cody in Austin, Texas to talk about the constitution, the legal system, and to watch him make and test-fire a 3D-printed gun.
    Posted by Mr. M
    Labels: vice Printed guns




  2. NASA.gov brings you images, videos and interactive features from the unique perspective of America’s space agency.

    Recently they have pusblished a gallery with all the NASA supersonic aircraft and a brief explanation.
    It is really interesting: NASA supersonic aircraft gallery

    Posted by Mr. M
    Labels: Supersonic NASA


  3. The US Office of Naval Research thinks that Marine air-ground task forces are too vulnerable to adversaries flying cheap, small UAS overhead, like the four-pound Raven the Marines themselves used in Iraq. Its answer: outfit Marine ground vehicles with laser guns.
    It’s all part of a new Office of Naval Research programme, formally unveiled last Thursday, with the clunky name of Ground-Based Air Defense Directed Energy on the Move. For the time being, it’s just a research effort, but the office expects to award grants and contracts for it worth up to $400,000. And it’s doable.

    So, the specs. The idea is to get a laser cannon weighing less than 2500 pounds mounted onto a Marine Humvee or comparable truck. The cannon needs to provide a “minimum optical output power” of 25 kilowatts, with an eye toward scaling up to 50 kilowatts, for a two-minute full-power blast. Hardware that can adjust for all “environmental conditions” Marines operate in — from a muggy beach to the arid climes of Helmand Province — is encouraged; the Office is agnostic on how researchers get there.

    The Navy is making a big push during 2013 to get its laser arsenal finally out of the lab and into the fleet. The first task anticipated for the laser arsenal is exactly the one envisioned here for Marine trucks — shooting down small UAS hovering too close for comfort. The Navy’s had solid-state lasers capable of burning through a boat’s outboard motor at sea for two years, and those models generated 15 kilowatts worth of power. In tests three years ago, an MK-15 Phalanx cannon tricked out to host a laser successfully shot down small UAS.

    The hard part is going to be generating the power necessary for the laser beam either from a truck or portable within it. The generators on board ships are massive things that can divert enough power to a sub-100 kilowatt laser without jeopardizing propulsion. It’s unclear from the outline the Office of Naval Research provides just how a generator capable of generating 25 kilowatts worth of pew-pew-pew for two minutes and “followed by a 20 minute recharge to 80% of total capacity (power and thermal)” (!) is going to either fit in a Humvee or, more problematically, draw from the truck’s electrical systems. Then there’s the problem of cooling the thing down so it’s safe to drive.

    Those are engineering problems that the Office of Naval Research feels confident its industry partners and associated geeks can crack. The effort underscores one of the drawbacks of small surveillance UAS, even as they proliferate and generate angst within defense circles: they’re slow and easily shot down — particularly by a line of sight weapon that can burn through them. And the Marines definitely want to demonstrate that as the UAS just get cheaper.


    Posted by Mr. M
    Labels: US Navy

  4. A statement by the Turkish General Staff about the unmanned aircraft cooperation agreement expressed that the flights in northern Iraq will be “conducted entirely under Turkey’s direction.” Turkey and the United States have signed an agreement regarding the use of unmanned aircraft under the direction of Turkey.

    A statement by the General Staff had indicated that, due to the need for intelligence in struggles against the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) following the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, Turkey has signed a memorandum of understanding with the United States regarding the use of unmanned aircraft.

    “Within the framework of this agreement, the flights of American unarmed unmanned aircraft regarding members of the separatist terrorist organization in northern Iraq will be conducted entirely under Turkey’s direction. Additionally, the 4 unmanned aircraft stationed at Incirlik are conducting their flights unarmed,” the statement said.


    Posted by Mr. M
    Labels: USA Drones Turkey

  5. The US Navy has announced its intention to fund four companies to design new unmanned air vehicles as part of its unmanned carrier-launched airborne surveillance and strike (UCLASS) programme.

    Boeing, General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman “have credible, existing, comprehensive UCLASS design solutions, and associated production capabilities and facilities” to design UAVs through the preliminary design review phase, the navy says.

    The presolicitation, announced on 26 March, is the first step towards securing funding for the carrier-based strike and surveillance aircraft. A full solicitation is likely to go out “in the summer timeframe,” says the navy.

    The first UCLASS aircraft are planned for production beginning in fiscal year 2016, following a likely downselect to a single manufacturer.



    None of the involved companies had immediate comment, and all declined to share details of their proposals. All four have been working towards a UCLASS-capable aircraft for over a decade. In recent years, Northrop has won a navy contract to demonstrate the X-47B (above) onboard a carrier. General Atomics has developed and flown the jet-powered Avenger, while Lockheed has shown off a concept of a stealthy UAV for the requirement. Boeing has retired its Phantom Ray demonstrator, but has said it is prepared to compete for the contract.

    Posted by Mr. M
    Labels: UCLASS

  6. What would you do with Google Glass? The company asked the public that question, with the hashtag #ifihadglass, to help find testers for its “explorer” programme.



    Though those applications are closed, one local engineer from Wayfair posted on Google+ last month a fascinating idea with potential social impact: use it to allow physically disabled individuals to control their wheelchairs using only their eyes.

    Wrote Wayfair’s Steve McHugh:

    #ifihadglass I would use the eye tracking technology described in US patent 8,235,529 to implement a Masters robotics lab project’s alternative mechanism for quadriplegic and other disabled persons to control their powered wheelchairs (start/stop, speed, turning) while displaying real-time feedback about their surroundings (dangers, obstacles, suggested routes).

    Since first posting the idea, McHugh has worked with a UI designer to refine it. Though many of the details are speculative, subject to unconfirmed details of how Glass operates, McHugh has clearly thought through exactly how this would work. I asked him over email to explain more about the origin of the idea and his proposed implementation.

    How did you come up with this idea?

    The idea for my project came from a robotics class I took while completing my Masters in Mechanical Engineering at Tufts University. For a class project, one of the groups built an eye-tracking software and an eye-tracking apparatus. They did this by using a webcam to control the motors of a small robotic car with the intention of applying this technology to a wheelchair. Later on, Tim Roberts, the group lead was able to pair his technology with an electric wheelchair as part of his Senior Capstone.

    When the co-founder and chairman of my company, Wayfair, encouraged all of us to submit ideas for Google’s Glass Explorer contest, the first thought that popped into my head was how the technology built into Google Glass could bring that project to life in a completely different way. I quickly verified if I was right in my assumption that Google would build eye-tracking into their device and found US patent 8,235,529 which confirmed that assumption. A professionally developed eye-tracking package provided by Google eliminated one of the two largest obstacles I saw to Tim’s project becoming a reality. My project will be able to utilize a highly optimized and professional eye-tracking library. The second major obstacle to the original design is the visual obstruction of the eye-tracking apparatus. Google Glass not only removes the need for an obstruction as in the original concept, but it also allows for adding in feedback to the user about their surroundings. Google Glass will provide a fantastic interface for the wheelchair controls by providing GUI overlays in real-time on top of the glass.

    Can you explain a bit about the eye tracking technology and how you see it being applied in this context?

    While I won’t know more about the specifics of the eye-tracking technology until I gain access to the Glass API, the patent Google issued (US 8,235,529) indicates there will be rather precise tracking of the right eye’s movement relative to objects presented in the user’s line of sight. This level of precision will make it possible to seamlessly use subtle eye motions to select controls that change the speed and direction of the chair when the user stares at a particular button for a determined period of time. What constitutes a significant period of time will need to be determined through some testing, but it will be more than the amount of time someone might absently glance past a button and less than an amount of time that degrades the ability to seamlessly switch from one direction to another or from speeding up to slowing down. The Google Glass human interface guidelines will most likely provide guidance on timing. Being able to rely on subtle eye motions for button-like control also allows us to track for more extreme eye motions, as well as shutting the eye all together for a significant period of time, to programme in system overrides such as an emergency stop.

    What about the image you have of what the visual UI would look like. Can you talk me through what I’m looking at and what the functionality is?

    The UI image attached to my contest application is a very rough concept about how a user would interact with the controls. What you see in the upper right is the card used to control the speed of the wheelchair. I have worked with a UI designer since then to iterate on the process further and sketch out what the UI may look like. So far it is still in conceptual stages as we’re missing the Glass GUI Library which will likely be part of the developers kit. Once that is released the buttons you’re seeing will likely be replaced with standard interface elements. The basic functionality on the image below are the buttons at the top which allow you to increase, decrease the speed of the wheelchair or to stop it altogether. The bottom right is a status bar letting the rider know their current speed and whether it is accelerating, decelerating or staying constant. The bottom left is a battery indicator for the chair itself and provides an estimate of how much battery is left in the chair. The last element I added is the obstacle and path detection. The machine would be able to detect potential obstacles in the path such as potholes or objects in the way and alert the user.

    Anything else you’d like to add?

    I am really excited about this project. My loftiest dream is that Google would somehow pick me out of thousands of submissions and that I would ultimately be able to turn this into a real product by sometime next year. I think medical applications of Google Glass are huge and even at the rumored $1500 Google Glass would be potentially life-changing for quadriplegics and even paraplegics, freeing their hands to do other tasks. I really hope that this project becomes a reality to help anyone who could benefit from supplemental control interfaces.

    Source: BostInno

     
    Posted by Mr. M
    Labels: google

  7. “I am convinced that the domestic use of UAS to conduct surveillance and collect other information will have a broad and significant impact on the everyday lives of millions of Americans,” Senator Patrick Leahy, chairman of a Senate Judiciary Committee looking into drone legislation, said on Thursday (March 21), CNN reports.
    There’s little doubt that UAS technology is here to stay, but their use isn’t limited to cloak-and-dagger operations and military technology. Here are just a few ways the UAS can be your friend:




    Real estate sales

    Daniel Gárate had a lucrative career as a UAS videographer, using his $5,000 aircraft to capture stirring images of high-end properties for the Los Angeles real-estate market — until the Los Angeles Police Department shut him down, declaring that commercial uses for drones were not allowed, the New York Times reports.

    That’s no longer the case, since a federal law signed in 2012 opened drone technology to commercial applications. Gárate, who also uses UAS to take videos for commercials, has also been approached to take paparazzi-style photos of celebrities like Kim Kardashian, the Times reports.

    Sports photography

    Falkor Systems, a pioneer in the consumer use of UAS technology, has targeted extreme sports photography and video for drone use, focusing on skiing and base-jumping activities.

    “The angles people get [while filming] are not quite as intimate as would be possible with an autonomous flying robot,” said Sameer Parekh, Falkor CEO, who envisions a small UAS device that can accompany a downhill skier.

    “You just take it out, let it take off and it follows you down the hill. You get back on the ski lift and put it back in your backpack,” Parekh said.

    Highway monitoring

    There are roughly 4 million miles of highways crisscrossing the United States, but who’s watching them all? UAS, someday.

    A project to study the use of UAS for inspecting roads and bridges, surveying land with laser mapping and alerting officials to traffic jams and accidents recently received a $75,000 grant from the Federal Highway Administration and the Georgia Department of Transportation.

    “UAS could keep workers safer because they won’t be going into traffic or hanging off a bridge,” said Javier Irizarry, director of the CONECTech Lab at the Georgia Institute of Technology. “It would help with physical limitations of the human when doing this kind of work.”

    Wildlife research

    The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has been testing the Raven A, a small, camera-equipped UAS that’s about 3 feet (1 meter) long, to see if it can be used to conduct aerial counts of the endangered sandhill crane (Grus canadensis pulla).

    “We flew it over the cranes when they were roosting, feeding, and loafing to see how they reacted,” said Leanne Hanson, a field biologist, in a USGS report. “They sat still for us when they were roosting and loafing, but birds flushed during feeding. We will plan missions during roosting and loafing times, when their behavior is not affected.”

    And critically endangered Sumatran orangutans (Pongo abelii) nest in treetops, making them difficult to study. UAS, however, can easily navigate the primates’ aeries, providing valuable information that will assist in conservation activities, reports PCMag.com.

    Atmospheric research

    Ozone in the upper atmosphere plays a critical role in protecting the Earth’s surface from harmful ultraviolet (UV) radiation.

    To better understand how water vapor and ozone interact, NASA is sending a UAS into the stratosphere — the layer of the atmosphere where protective ozone is found — above the tropics.

    The flights are the first of a multiyear campaign to study how changes in water vapor in the stratosphere can affect global climate.

    Hunting — and anti-hunting

    Wild hogs ruining your crops? Get yourself a “Dehogaflier,” a drone devised by engineer Cy Brown of Bunkie, La., which uses a heat-sensing camera to find feral hogs at night. The UAS saves time otherwise wasted wandering muddy fields in the dark.

    “Now you can know in 15 minutes if it’s worth going out,” Brown told the New York Times.

    UAS have also been used by animal-rights advocates to determine if illegal hunting is taking place, even on private property. UAS equipped with video cameras are being used by the League Against Cruel Sports, a British animal-rights group, to spot instances of illegal fox hunting.

    Disaster relief

    UAS have a wide range of applications for disaster relief, from entering radiation-filled “hot zones” where human access would be dangerous (after a nuclear accident, for example) to searching for survivors across a debris-filled landscape.

    George Barbastathis and others at the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology recently received a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to develop drones to deliver vaccines and medicines to hard-to-reach locations and disaster zones, PCMag.com reports.

    Environmental compliance

    Midnight dumping of toxic waste and other surreptitious activities are the bane of environmental law enforcement. But UAS may prove to be a cost-effective solution to that problem.

    A hobbyist in Texas discovered a river of blood flowing into the Trinity River near Dallas. “I was looking at images after the flight that showed a blood-red creek and was thinking, ‘could this really be what I think it is?”.

    The blood, it turns out, was coming from a meat-packing plant that was discharging into the river. The facility was soon under investigation by Texas environmental authorities.

    Source: Live Science
    Posted by Mr. M
    Labels: cool Drones civil

  8. Residents of Auvergne, a province in south central France, may soon receive their daily paper by drone.
    According to a blog post published yesterday, local postal service La Poste Groupe has been working for several years to modernize its delivery processes. A plan has been hatched to implement paper delivery by drone in early May with the help of local volunteers, and tests are already underway.
    parrot-ar-drone-la-poste-3-1
    The drone is a quadricopter, which can be controlled by iPod touch, iPhone, iPad and Android devices, and costs over $300. It is manufactured by Parrot.com, a French wireless devices maker that also announced a partnership with La Poste this morning.

    Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are increasingly used in private markets — not just in covert government operations. In 2010, the Wall Street Journal reported that drones would prove useful for nonmilitary tasks, such as wildlife-tracking or emergency rescue efforts.

     via LaPoste


    Posted by Mr. M
    Labels: AR.drone

  9. A model of a previously unseen Russian unmanned air vehicle potentially capable of performing strike missions has been inadvertently revealed, with the regional republic of Tatarstan's government having posted images of the design online following a ministerial visit.





    Pictures showing the Altius UAV were briefly published on the website after a visit to Tatarstan by Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu on 5 February. They were subsequently removed, but had already been reproduced by the business daily Vedomosti.
    One image taken from the rear of the model shows a high-winged aircraft apparently powered by two turboprop engines, with the design also featuring a slab-sided rear fuselage and a V-shaped tail. Sokol also later posted a graphic of the type on its website showing its streamlined forward fuselage, but without a representative sensor payload or communications equipment depicted.



    Tatarstan-based Sokol and St Petersburg-based Tranzas won a 1 billion rouble ($33 million) contract in 2011 to develop a 5t-class medium-altitude, long-endurance UAV provisionally named Altius and a 1t-class system called Inokhodyets (Wanderer).

    Speaking at the time of the award, Tranzas vice-president Viktor Godunov told ARMS-TASS that the new systems would be competitive with their foreign counterparts, have "colossal range and endurance" and be capable of "all missions, including strike".

    Sokol is responsible for aircraft construction and the supply of ground systems, with Tranzas developing control systems and electronics for the Altius and Inokhodyets. Both should make their flight debuts during 2014, and enter detailed testing in 2015, according to Russian media reports.

    Source: Fligthglobal

    Posted by Mr. M
    Labels: Drones pics russia


  10. Posted by Mr. M
    Labels: Airbus
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