A new Internet protocol designed for interplanetary transmissions is bringing its delay-tolerant magic to Earth
Vint Cerf worked with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory on the TCP/IP protocol that all netizens rely upon today, and tried adapting the old reliable for NASA's interplanetary communications with distant spacecraft. But complicating issues such as planetary rotation and the long distances involved -- 40 minutes roundtrip for data traveling at light speed between Earth and Mars -- led Cerf to design a new Internet protocol that does not require a continuous connection.
The Disruption-Tolerant Networking (DTN) protocol works pretty much as advertised. It deals with delays in interplanetary communication by forcing its nodes to hold onto data packets until connection has been restored, and then resumes transmission. The Register reports that Cerf's team is testing the new protocol on outbound space platforms headed for destinations 80 or 90 light-seconds away from Earth.
Now Cerf has also added DTN to Google's Android as an application platform for the open-source operating system. His team has already tested the protocol in northern Sweden on laptops speeding away from each other in all-terrain vehicles.
This is just the latest example of Android's usefulness beyond the mobile market. E-readers ranging from Spring Design's Alex to the multi-touch Barnes & Noble hybrid known as the Nook also use Android. Even the military has seized upon Android as the platform for keeping warfighters connected with their drone buddies high in the sky.
At the very least, the space-faring DTN protocol shows that not even the sky's the limit for Android.
[via The Register]
]]>Simulating the brain with traditional chips would require impractical megawatts of power. One scientist has an alternative
Discover Magazine has the story on how the Neurogrid computer could completely overhaul the traditional approach to computers. It trades the extreme precision of digital transistors for the brain's chaos of many neurons firing, with misfires 30 percent to 90 percent of the time. Yet the brain works with this messy system by relying on crowds of neurons to shout over the noise of misfires and competing signals.
That willingness to give up precision for chaos could lead to a new era of creative computing that simulates the unpredictable patterns of brain activity. It could also represent a far more energy-efficient era -- the Neurogrid fits in a briefcase and runs on what amounts to a few D batteries, or less than a watt. Rather than transistors, it uses capacitors that get the same voltage of neurons.
Boahen has so far managed to squeeze a million neurons onto his new supercomputer, compared to just 45,000 silicon neurons on previous neural machines. A next-generation Neurogrid may host as many as 64 million silicon neurons by 2011, or approximately the brain of a mouse.
This new type of supercomputer will not replace the precise calculations of current machines. But its energy efficiency could provide the necessary breakthrough to continue upholding Moore's Law, which suggests that the number of transistors on a silicon chip can double about every two years. Perhaps equally exciting, the creative chaos from a chaotic supercomputer system could ultimately lay the foundation for the processing power necessary to raise artificial intelligence to human levels.
]]>Airbags could prevent RPGs from exploding and neutralize the blast of improvised explosives
Textron's Tactical RPG Airbag Protection (TRAP) system uses radar to detect incoming warheads and deploy airbags on the threatened side of a vehicle. The airbags prevent the RPGs from exploding at all, and thereby avoids any cloud of shrapnel that could harm nearby infantry or civilians. TRAPS is currently undergoing tests on Humvees, and could also work with the Abrams tank, the Bradley, the Stryker and MRAPs.
The military has focused on countering roadside bombs with drones capable of sniffing out improvised explosives, and painfully realistic virtual simulators for training soldiers on detecting the threats. But DOD Buzz notes that counters to RPGs remain more elusive -- the U.S. military has so far relied on welding steel cages to high-value, lightly armored vehicles such as MRAP minesweepers.
We here at PopSci previously honored a different RPG counter for helicopters that fires nets to neutralize incoming rockets -- a chopper shield that won one of our Invention Awards in 2007.
Defense Tech points to another airbag concept that can deploy at light speed upon detecting blasts from improvised explosives on the road. That concept remains on paper only, despite an illustrative video.
[DOD Buzz via Defense Tech]
]]>A transparent glass display adds touchless gestures and eye-tracking to human-computer interaction
Pen and voice input for computers is so early-millennium. Now Microsoft has created a next-gen computer concept that includes touchless gestures and eye-tracking, and has taken the device on a college tour with chief research and strategy officer Craig Mundie.
The computer comes complete with a transparent glass display that evokes either Minority Report or Iron Man, depending on your movie preference. Mundie circles objects without touching the screen and vocally orders the computer to organize and zoom during the demo. Even more impressive, the computer automatically enlarges documents based on where Mundie looks -- an example of how eye-tracking can make browsing even more effortless.
People not attending Cornell, Harvard, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign or the University of Washington can still catch a glimpse of the next-gen marvel in action in these videos.
Researchers are also developing touchless gesture interfaces that replace cameras with muscle sensors, and have tested such gestures with both Microsoft's Surface Table and the rocking game Guitar Hero.
We're all for more natural interaction with our gadgets. But for the love of Arthur C. Clarke, please don't give eye-tracking to any computer named HAL.
[iStartedSomething via Gizmodo]
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While an MIT study last year eventually led to the overturn of the original IAAF decision, no one had done a systematic study of amputee racers in general. Now, the MIT researchers that investigated Pistorius have released the results of a wider trial, and it turns out that specially designed prostheses don't actually help sprinters.
The researchers came to this conclusion by measuring the amount of force generated against the ground by these specially designed false limbs. In all the cases, the fake limbs produced less energy than a regular human leg. Hard to believe that it wouldn't be obvious that someone with no legs couldn't run as fast as someone with two of them.
However, this only holds true for the current generation of replacement limbs, and the MIT study doesn't preclude a future where cyborg athletes smoke the merely human, across a range of sports.
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The Scottish artists have perfected a system of laser scanning giant monuments, ensuring the digital preservation of even their finest nooks and crannies. They have already completely digitized Scottish landmarks like Rosslyn Church and Stirling Castle. The team is also working in conjunction with CyArk, a non-profit dedicated to laser scanning 500 UNESCO world heritage sites.
The artists use a specialized laser scanner that records 50,000 points per second. They simply sweep the laser across the monument they're looking to digitize, and a receiver records the minute changes in range as points in 3-D space.
An inventor, and co-founder of CyArk, created the process in the wake of the Taliban's destruction of the giant Buddha statues in Bamiyan, Afghanistan. Armed with precise measurements of monuments taken with the laser device, engineers could reconstruct an exact replica of any site that suffers destruction similar to the Buddhas.
Of course, these scans do more than just provide a blueprint for future restoration. When combined with high-def 3-D graphics, the library of images created with laser scanning could one create a basis for virtual tours of the world's most impressive monuments.
Additionally, the scanning of regular buildings with this technology would allow the construction of incredibly detailed virtual cities. Placed on the Internet, users could roam these virtual cities or model the effects of new construction projects.
[via The New York Times]
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The electromagnetic radiation reflected by farmland contains within it vast amounts of information about the chemical competition of the soil. By measuring the reflected radiation of entire fields, satellites now provide a cheaper, and more comprehensive, alternative to the testing of soil samples.
The service costs about $15 per 2.5 acres for a couple of scans a year, and the information imparted by the satellite scans has already proven to increase crop yield by as much as 10 percent.
In France, a grain-grower's co-op has even automated the process, linking GPS carrying farm equipment to the satellites. The farm vehicles carry about 50 different mixes of fertilizer formula, each one customized to particular soil characteristics. The satellite data links to the GPS system, and the vehicles automatically distribute the optimal fertilizer mix for the different soil quality regions identified by the satellites.
Beyond the industrialized world, non-profits and government organizations have already booked satellite overflights of the world's most impoverished farmlands in Africa. The readings from the satellites provide cheap and easy recommendations for increasing yield in a continent continually plagued by drought and famine. Farmer's Almanac, meet the space age.
[via The Economist]
]]>The team's robot stands to win $900,000 from NASA for climbing a ribbon nearly a kilometer long
Funded by NASA and the Spaceward Foundation, the yearly contest offers a $2 million first prize to any group whose machine can quickly climb a kilometer-long ribbon tethered to a helicopter, while receiving power remotely from the ground. On Tuesday, LaserMotive became the first team in competition history to qualify for the $900,000 second prize.
The LaserMotive machine consists of a motor that pulls the device up the 2,953-foot-long ribbon, photovoltaic cells that power the motor, and a ground-based laser that provides the light for the cells. LaserMotive set a new record for the competition, and became the first team to ever reach the top of the ribbon. However, they had to settle for the $900,000 second prize, as securing the $2 million first prize requires not only reaching the top of the ribbon, but doing so at an average speed of 11 miles per hour. Sadly, the LaserMotive machine ran slightly slower than that mark.
Encouragingly, the laser that powered the ascent utilized half the energy of LaserMotive's previous laser, and to far better results. At this rate, next year's team might actually have a chance to bring home the gold. The competition continues today, and if another team matches LaserMotive's achievement, they might have to split the prize money. In the meanwhile, you can check out LaserMotive's award-winning trial in the rather slow-moving video below.
[via The Associated Press]
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The systems would entail an AI system known as a Hopfield neural network that uses processes closely mimicking human thought to weigh evidence and make decisions based on previously known facts and patterns. Using digital eyes incorporated into astronauts' suits, the AI system would collect data from the environment and analyze it in the Hopfield networks located on the hips of the suits.
Preloaded data as well as data collected as the astronauts go about their Martian surface walks would be turned over in the AI systems much in the same way a human brain would crunch it. For instance, the Hopfield's algorithm can learn colors from a single image, then relate it to previously observed instances of that color, making connections between the two. Recent tests of a complete, wearable prototype suit at the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah found that the AI could tell the difference between lichen and the rock surrounding it.
But that's just scratching the surface; next, researchers plan to teach the Hopfield to differentiate between textures, and ultimately to engineer the system to work at scales ranging from wide landscapes to the minuscule. They have plenty of time to do so, as no one plans to send a manned mission to Mars any time soon. But the data the algorithm is already learning on Earth could ride with robotic missions to Mars in the more immediate future.
[PhysOrg]
]]>A company aiming to open the first space hotel already has 43 paying customers at $4.4 million a pop
Space customers would spend three nights in their orbital pod room, where they could crawl around like Spiderman (or Venom) in Velcro suits. Reuters reports that guests would also enjoy an eight-week training course set on a tropical island.
The space hotel, which PopSci covered when it was first announced in 2007, would start out as a single pod capable of holding four guests and two pilots. But critics remain dubious -- just as Gregory Mone was in our 2007 article -- that the company can meet its scheduled launch date.
Still, the price tag falls far below the $35 million paid by first repeat space tourist Charles Simonyi, or the same higher amount required to book an orbital vacation aboard a surplus Soviet-era military spacecraft.
Hopeful customers might also look forward to Bigelow Aerospace's long-planned inflatable space hotel. But the space hotel visionary behind that company seems a bit busy also helping out NASA at the moment.
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