The Paper Airplane 2.0: A Module That Turns a Paper Plane Into a Remote-Controlled Drone

As reported by TechCrunch: There's something intrinsically appealing about a choreographed blend of low and high tech. To wit, meet PowerUp 3.0: a Bluetooth 4.0 device that turns a bog-standard paper airplane into, well, a smartphone-controlled lean, mean flying machine. Or so its makers claim. And if those claims stack up pranking your teachers is about to get a whole lot more sophisticated.

What exactly is Power Up 3.0? It's a Bluetooth module that connects to a paper plane to act as both frame, propulsion/steering device, and Bluetooth communications hub - meaning the user can control the plane via their smartphone. The Micro-USB charged module is apparently good for 10 minutes of flying per charge, and has an 180 feet/55 metre comms range (i.e. between it and you, piloting it via Bluetooth link to your smartphone). Max speed is 10mph.

So far PowerUp 3.0′s aviation enthusiast makers have a working prototype and an iOS app but they've taken to Kickstarter to get the project off the ground (ho-ho). The campaign launched on Saturday and blasted past its $50,000 target in just eight hours, according to inventor Shai Goitein, so there's clearly considerable appetite for disruptions to paper-plane throwing mechanisms.

Or for a lower cost way of bagging yourself a remote-controlled airplane, which is basically what this is - albeit, not an ‘all weathers' aircraft. Soggy paper planes aren't going to go anywhere, app or no app.
At the time of writing PowerUp's Kickstarter funding total is soaring north of $135,000 (and climbing steadily) - if they reach $150,000 an Android app will also be backed.

The basic PowerUp 3.0 package costs $30 but all those pledge levels have been bagged by early backers, so the kit now costs from $40 - or more if you want extras like rechargeable power packs.

The current iOS app, which has been in the works for more than a year, includes a throttle lever for ascending/descending, and a tilt to steer function - which manipulates a small fin on the rear of the module to shift the plane's in-air trajectory. There can't be a paper-plane folding kid in the world that hasn't wished for such trajectory bending magic.

The module's frame is made of carbon fiber, so it can survive the inevitable crash landings - as well as be light enough for flight.

Backers of the PowerUp 3.0 can expect to be disrupting their lessons come May next year, when the kit is due to ship. After the Kickstarter campaign, Goitein says the plan is to sell the module via retail outlets from June next year, with an RRP of $50.

Latest SpaceX Launch Postponed

As reported by CNN: SpaceX scrapped the launch of its Falcon 9 rocket at the last minute Thursday, calling it off for the second time in three days.

"We called manual abort," tweeted Elon Musk, the private space program's founder. "Better to be paranoid and wrong."

The rocket had been set to head skyward Monday from Florida's Cape Canaveral before that launch was scrubbed. It didn't go off Thursday after exhibiting what Musk -- a storied entrepreneur (thought by some akin to a modern day Howard Hughes - the inspiration for Tony Stark, or Iron Man) -- described as "slower than expected thrust ramp."

Falcon 9 was then brought down from the launch pad so it could be inspected.

"Likely a few days before next attempt," read a post on SpaceX's website.

The mission was to be the latest foray for SpaceX, a company that itself launched in 2002 "to revolutionize space technology, with the ultimate goal of enabling people to live on other planets," according to its website.

SpaceX so far has made two of its 12 scheduled flights to the International Space Station, beginning in spring 2012 when its Dragon capsule became the first private spacecraft to successfully reach this manned orbiter.

This month's scheduled launch was not related to the space station, however.

Rather, it was to put an SES-8 -- a 7,000-pound telecommunications satellite that will focus on the South Asia and Asia Pacific regions -- into orbit 50,000 miles (80,000 kilometers) above the Earth's surface.

"SES-8 will be SpaceX's first launch to a geostationary transfer orbit ... and most challenging mission to date," the company noted.

Full Speed Ahead for Connected Cars, But Are They Going the Wrong Way?

As reported by NBC News: Why is it, Tarun Bhatnagar was wondering, that the "beautiful screen in the instrument cluster of my rental car can't provide me with a connected and safer driving experience?"

Bhatnagar, Google's director of Maps for Business, was describing how he used his phone's navigation app to get to the Los Angeles Auto Show last week. For the whole drive, he said, he had to balance the phone on his lap.

"That needs to change," Bhatnagar said in a keynote address at the show, which prominently featured a pavilion devoted to car tech.

Finding ways for drivers to safely use their cherished electronics is big business: What's called the connected car industry is projected to grow at a rate of 35 percent through 2019, to $132 billion, Transparency Market Research, an international market analytics firm, calculated last month.

The idea is to keep drivers' hands on the wheel and their eyes on the road. But safety experts insist that's beside the point — your brain simply isn't built to concentrate on two (or more) activities at once, so it's impossible to make electronics safe to use behind the wheel, no matter how much money and technology you throw at it.

"All this creates a dilemma for automakers," acknowledged Derek Kuhn, vice president of QNX Software, which makes an operating system used in many of the leading car systems. "How do they place a bet on the future?"

The challenge, according to Kuhn, is to develop "a balanced environment where smartphones bring apps into the car, consumers enjoy the integration they desire, and automakers deliver a consistent, branded experience."

Scores of companies are spending a lot of money to meet that challenge:

• Ford Motor Co.'s Sync technology — which lets drivers make calls, play music, get directions and even send and receive texts, all by voice — will be available in more than 90 percent of Ford's 2014 vehicles, the company said at the L.A. Auto Show, where Jim Farley, the company's global vice president for marketing, called your car "the ultimate mobile device."

• General Motors Co.'s OnStar embedded system, which does many of the same things, will connect with your smartphone so you can run apps by voice at the wheel.

• Apple Inc. is already putting "eyes-free" versions of Siri and iTunes in some cars, designed to let drivers control them with buttons on the steering wheel. But Apple has far grander plans — it hopes to turn your car into a full four-wheeled Apple computer by embedding iOS 7 beginning next year.

Other in-the-works or planned technologies could turn your car into something out of "The Matrix" or "Minority Report".

• A startup called The NeXt Co. is raising money to produce Heads UP — which wirelessly projects your smartphone's screen onto your windshield, where you can use it by voice and gestures:

• Mitsubishi Electric is already on the second generation of its EMIRAI concept car, which senses your surroundings and biometrics and can pop up any of 18 function buttons on the steering wheel as it determines you need them. It even includes an armrest touch screen where you're supposed to write out commands with your finger.

• Government-funded researchers at Germany's Free University of Berlin are working on the "BrainDriver" — a soft head covering that reads your brain waves and translates them into driving commands. It's still in the demonstration phase; unfortunately, in road tests there's still "a slight delay between the intended command and the actual reaction of the car," the researchers say.

It's exciting stuff, but skeptics point to more than a decade of research that establishes that dividing your concentration on anything but the task of driving creates too much competition for mental processing.

This is true not just when you take eyes off the road to deal with a beeping, brightly lighted screen, they argue, but even when you listen to information without diverting your gaze. That means wearable tech like BrainDriver and Google Glass likely won't solve things.

Researchers call it "inattention blindness": You may be looking where you're going, but you don't really see it because your brain is crunching different data. That's true for simply listening to the radio, which can delay your reaction time by a half-second, researchers at the University of Utah concluded in June in a report for AAA's Foundation for Traffic Safety (.pdf).

(Half a second might seem trivial, but "a fraction-of-a-second delay would make the car travel several additional car lengths," the congressionally chartered National Safety Council found in a 2010 survey of data on distracted driving (.pdf). "When a driver needs to react immediately, there is no margin for error.")

Talking on the phone hands-free and using devices through speech recognition further lengthen that delay, the Utah report found. What makes the new data especially alarming is that the study controlled for manual distraction; that is, all of the tests specifically recorded tasks that drivers could perform without taking their hands off the wheel.

"This clearly suggests that the adoption of voice-based systems in the vehicle may have unintended consequences that adversely affect traffic safety," the report concluded.

Research like that is why the National Transportation Safety Board is pushing Congress and state legislatures to ban all drivers from using electronics, including phones — even if they use hands-free technology.

If anything, said Robert Rosenberger, an assistant professor at the School of Public Policy at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, whizbang tech like iOS in the car and BrainDriver makes things worse because "it encourages people not to be cautious."

"They send the wrong message to drivers," Rosenberger told NBC News. "It implies to drivers that these things are safe."

David L. Strayer of the University of Utah, a lead researcher on the AAA study, put it more simply: "Just because you can do it doesn't mean you should do it," he said.

Want a Futuristic Navigation HUD on Your Windshield? Check Out Sygic’s GPS App

As reported by Venture Beat: Sure, most smartphones offer free GPS navigation these days. But unless you have a smartphone mount on your dashboard, looking down at your phone for navigation can be awkward — and potentially dangerous — while driving.

Popular GPS navigation app Sygic has a solution: Just bring the navigation data to your windshield. Sygic is today launching a heads-up display (HUD) interface on its iPhone and Android apps — no extra gadgets required.

You just need to place your smartphone under your windshield and Sygic’s high-contrast HUD interface will be reflected on it, making it appear as if your car has a futuristic smart windshield. The interface highlights the most important navigation information, like the distance to your next turn, and it works in conjunction with the app’s voice navigation.

Garmin recently released a $150 gadget to enable a similar HUD feature on its $50 mobile app. Sygic’s HUD, in comparison, costs just $5 (plus more for other navigation features).

With 33 million users and $18 million in revenue this year, Sygic is one of the most popular navigation apps in the world. But while it has 3 million users in the U.S., it isn’t as well known in this country as other GPS solutions from Garmin, TomTom, or the free offerings from Google and Apple.

Unlike most GPS apps, Sygic downloads its maps to your phone so you can use its navigation features even without a cellular connection (in those cases, it just relies on your phone’s GPS). The company also differs from many of its competitors by taking a freemium approach: Basic navigation is free, but you have to shell out $29 for voice guidance and other premium features.

“We have a different strategy [from competitors], our business model is very transparent,” said Michal Stencl, Sygic’s founder and CEO, in an interview with VentureBeat. “We don’t want to collect info about the users, that’s why we ask for micropayments.”

Stencl tells me the HUD feature was developed as part of one of the company’s “Innovation Days” just a few weeks ago. That fast turnaround is telling: Sygic has just 15 employees, which makes it far more nimble than navigation giants.


The Bratislava, Slovakia-based company has been around since 2004 and is entirely bootstrapped by Stencl.

Thanksgiving Special: Raspberry Pi Modified Microwave Automates Cooking...Raspberry Pie Using Your Smartphone (or Tablet)

As reported by Reviewed.com: With all this talk about smart appliances and the “internet of things,” (IoT) you’d think we’d have a microwave smart enough to follow elaborate cooking commands—or, at the very least, keep accurate time.

Nokia recently unveiled a nifty “smart” microwave with a touchscreen and...eye-tracking technology? That’s all well and good, but it doesn't address the basic problems of most microwaves, such as the fact that so many foods require several stages of cooking, cooling, and sitting. Not to mention, few—if any—offer voice command or mobile control.

Enter: Nathan Broadbent, a young software engineer from New Zealand who recently took this matter upon himself. Nathan was inspired by a Reddit post fittingly titled, “Food items should have QR codes that instruct the microwave exactly what to do...”

So, Nathan used a single-board computer called Raspberry Pi to develop a program that interacts with his home microwave, and which can be controlled remotely. Here are some of the features of Nathan’s brilliant home-mod microwave:

• Internet-synced clock
• Voice command control
• Barcode scanner for looking up cooking instructions from online database, which Broadbent created himself
• Mobile app phone for setting up cooking instructions for specific products
• Tweets after the timer is up

As for Samsung, Whirlpool, LG, and all the other big microwave manufacturers, what gives? You should've come up with this product years ago. Hire this man.

Check out Broadbent’s extensive blog post for a complete rundown of how he did it, and instructions for how you can do it—some technical skills required.

SpaceX Launch Delayed Until Thanksgiving

As reported by USA Today: A rocket launch could spice up Thanksgiving Day traditions this year on the Space Coast.

SpaceX is targeting a 5:38 p.m. Thursday launch of a commercial communications satellite, after Monday evening's first attempt was scrubbed.

Weather cooperated, but a series of technical issues cropped up with the 224-foot Falcon 9 rocket, delaying and then twice aborting the countdown at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla.

The countdown got within 4 minutes before the final abort for reasons SpaceX did not detail on a webcast. The 66-minute launch window closed at 6:43 p.m.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said later on Twitter that engineers saw pressure fluctuations in the rocket's first-stage liquid oxygen tank.

"Want to be super careful, so pushing launch to Thurs.," he said.

Musk had said before Monday's try that launch attempts were not possible Tuesday or Wednesday.

They are two of the busiest travel days of the year, and the Federal Aviation Administration would not close the air space because too much air traffic would need to be rerouted.

"So if it doesn't happen (Monday), it's probably going to happen maybe at the end of the week," he said. "Thanksgiving is a possibility."

The mission is an important one for SpaceX and Luxembourg-based SES, which operates a fleet of 54 satellites.

It is SpaceX's first launch from Florida of its upgraded Falcon 9 rocket and its first launch of a commercial communications satellite headed for a geostationary orbit 22,300 miles over the equator.

SES wants to get its SES-8 spacecraft in service to help beam high-definition TV channels to homes in India and Southeast Asia, a fast-growing market.

Voice Controls Can Be Surprisingly Distracting to Drivers

Voice controls can help drivers to keep their eyes on the road
and hands on the wheel, but new research shows they can also
divert their attention.

As reported by MIT Technology Review: Voice interfaces make it easier for drivers to tune the radio, adjust the air-conditioning, or send a text while speeding down the road. But even though these systems are advertised as allowing drivers to keep their hands on the wheel and eyes on the road, new evidence suggests that they might be more distracting than previously realized.

A study conducted by researchers at MIT with support from Toyota’s Collaborative Safety Research Center found that using voice commands for simple tasks, like finding a radio station or changing the climate settings, is quicker and less taxing for a driver. But using voice controls to perform more complex tasks—such as tuning the radio—often takes longer than doing those things manually. It can also cause drivers to glance away from the road to select from a menu or confirm that the system has recognized their speech correctly.

There’s a “great role for voice” in cars, says Bryan Reimer, a research scientist at MIT’s Age Lab who carried out the research with colleagues. “But now we understand it’s not cost-free.”

The study involved asking research subjects to drive a 2010 Lincoln MKS with voice-activated controls. Reimer stressed that the car’s voice interface is not unsafe and that the results do not reflect a problem with this specific interface; they are more likely representative of issues with voice-command interfaces across the industry. However, the results could help automakers refine their designs as car interfaces become increasingly computerized, connected, and complex.

The study “shows that voice interfaces can be visually distracting, so drivers may underestimate what they can safely do while driving,” says Paul Green, a research professor in the Driver Interface Group at the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute.

Studying driver attention is already a very important part of road safety research. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that more than 90 percent of all road accidents in the United States involve some form of driver error, and that texting and driving played a role in 18 percent of fatal accidents in 2010.

Carmakers have added voice controls to address concerns over distraction, and to address the increasing complexity of more capable in-car entertainment, navigation, and communication systems. “A large part of the industry has focused on voice as a hands-free, eyes-free mode of interaction, and it’s more complicated,” Reimer says.

Another study, published in June by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, concluded that voice interfaces can be mentally distracting even when they don’t require drivers to look away from the road or fiddle with manual controls.

Thomas Dingus, director of the Transportation Institute at Virginia Tech and an expert on vehicle interfaces, says the MIT study backs up previous research on voice interfaces. But he says further research—involving people driving their own cars for extended periods—is needed to determine how drivers adapt to such interfaces over time. “The belief is that there’s not really a safety risk if [the voice interface] is well-designed,” Dingus says. “But we’re trying to figure out what that means.”

The relationship between interfaces and drivers will become more complicated as new autonomous driving capabilities appear in cars. The issue will be how to best turn a driver’s attention back to the road when an autonomous system needs to hand back control (see “Proceed with Caution to the Self-Driving Car”).

The MIT study is being announced today at the LA Motor Show, where Toyota will demonstrate a research vehicle designed to measure driver distraction. Another study conducted by Toyota and researchers at Stanford, also being released at the show, highlights a new kind of driving simulator, one designed to help explore behavior in autonomous vehicles.