Amazon Is Joining, Not Starting, The Drone-Delivery Revolution

As reported by TechCrunch: Jeff Bezos shocked Middle America during a CBS “60 Minutes” segment with Charlie Rose: 30-minute Amazon deliveries by drones. Whether it's a real product or genius PR stunt on the eve of the biggest online shopping day of the year, it doesn't matter. The idea of a sky full of drones just hit the mainstream.

Amazon isn't the first company to experiment delivery by drones. In fact, over the last year, several companies beat Amazon to the punch with very similar services testing carrying tacos, pizzas and packages by multi-rotor crafts.

Skycatch demonstrated its aptly-named Tacocopter at Disrupt SF 2013. It flew past attendees, delivering a warm taco feet from the panel of robotics experts.

But what about a pizza? A UK franchise of the U.S.-based Domino's demonstrated over the summer a drone carrying two pizzas, forcing career pizza delivery men and women to question the longevity of their profession.

China-based SF Express started limited live trials of package deliveries earlier this year. And SF Express' reveal wasn't helped along with a prominent news agency like in Amazon's case. Drones carrying packages were simply spotted in Dongguang, in southern China

As reported by Quartz at the time, local companies are not bound by rigid government regulations and restrictions in China. Forget the black hole that is the FCC, apparently Chinese businesses that want to use drones must be granted approval from the local civil aviation authorities first. There's a certain appeal to delivery drones in China. Heavily populated areas are fighting a losing battle against smog and traffic congestion. Drones could be part of the answer.

Amazon's program would offer 30 minute deliveries of small items - that would cover 86% of Amazon's orders, Bezos indicated during the 60 Minutes interview. In theory, this would completely eliminate the lack of instant gratification currently lacking from shopping online. In its place would be the fact that your order would be delivered by a drone. A drone! I would order a pack of pencils just to have them dropped on my front door by a robot. But this revolution will not happen anytime soon. At least not in the States.

Bezos is a marketing genius. Amazon Prime Air is unquestionably more marketing gimmick than service in the pipeline. Even Bezos cautioned on 60 Minutes that drone deliveries are still years out. The air regulations are not in place, and the drone technology still needs to mature.

Amazon is currently under fire for working and hiring practices. They are fighting a losing battle against making customers pay taxes in certain states. The Guardian discovered the retail behemoth skirted paying the UK's corporation tax despite £7 billion in local sales. And there's always talk about Amazon's lack of substantial revenues. But now the company has drones!

If any company in the U.S. could pull this off, it would be Amazon. The retailer has demonstrated its knack for modernization time and time again. Of course there is a list of potential issues including regulations, scaling, and people with Airsoft guns. Innovation will overcome obstacles. However, the slope here is rather slippery. If Amazon can do this, why can't Walmart? Will this solution to decongest roads simply result in congestion 30 meters above the ground?

Library books on demand. Inter-industrial complex deliveries. Even the delivery of a drone by a drone. The sky is the limit (sorry) for drone deliveries.

Sony Patents a New Form of 'Wearable' With Lasers and GPS

As reported by Mashable: A recent Sony patent shows plans for a wearable computing device in the form of — wait for it — a wig.

This "Smartwig" contains all the features you'd expect from a computerized toupee, including GPS, camera and a laser pointer system, all of which also help control your other gadgets. The patent states that the wig is built to connect wirelessly to a second computing device.

The wig would be controlled by the wearer's head movement. The tech, hidden beneath the hairpiece itself, would communicate to the wearer by targeted vibrations to specific parts of the head.

Sony insists in the patent that the wig offers several advantages when compared to wearable competitors one being "significantly increased user comfort" as well as more discretion than a smartwatch or Google Glass. In fact, the device isn't visible at all, but is instead hidden by the hairpiece.

Sony adds, “Wigs are useful to enhance a user’s appearance and change other’s impressions because different hairstyles give different impressions. Thus many people use wigs. Especially bald people that usually wear wigs in their daily life.”

We'll see if Sony can make the wig the go-to accessory for anything other than covering a bald spot. The patent, which was filed in May, was made public last Friday.

SpaceX Flight with SES-8 Satellite Makes It Safely Into Orbit

As reported by Thomas Grounds with additional information from NBC News: After several days of delays, the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched the SES-8 communications satellite into orbit today.

The launch was broadcast live over the Internet.  I've included several shots of the live broadcast.

Today's launch marked SpaceX's third attempt to launch the SES-8 spacecraft for satellite communications provider SES World Skies. SpaceX aborted the two earlier launch attempts last week, first on Monday and again on Thursday, because of technical glitches. [Mission Photos: SpaceX Falcon 9 Rocket Launching Landmark Satellite Flight]

"All known rocket anomalies have been resolved," SpaceX officials wrote in a status update Monday.

SpaceX had much riding on a successful launch Tuesday. Sending the 6,918-pound (3,138 kilograms) SES-8 satellite into its intended orbit, which ranges from 183 miles (295 kilometers) above Earth at its nearest point and 49,709 miles (80,000 km) at its highest point, will mark the company's entry into the commercial satellite market. The SES-8 satellite is a hybrid Ku- and Ka-band spacecraft built to provide high-definition telecommunications services to customers across the South Asia and Pacific region.

"The entry of SpaceX into the commercial market is a game-changer," SES chief technology officer Martin Halliwell told reporters in a Nov. 24 teleconference before SpaceX's first launch attempt. "It's going to really shake the industry to its roots."

SpaceX has launched six Falcon 9 rocket missions since the booster's debut in 2010, but most of those were either test flights or missions for NASA to deliver cargo to the International Space Station using the company's unmanned Dragon spacecraft. SpaceX has a $1.6 billion contract to fly 12 cargo missions to the space station for NASA. Two of those delivery flights have already been launched.

The two-stage upgraded Falcon 9 rocket, called the Falcon 9 V1.1, stands 224.4 feet (68.4 meters) tall and is designed to loft both satellites and the Dragon spacecraft into orbit. Its protective payload fairing is 17 feet (5.1 m) wide, large enough to fit a bus inside. The rocket made its first test flight on Sept. 29 to launch a space weather monitoring satellite for the Canadian Space Agency from SpaceX's pad at California's Vandenberg Air Force Base.

That mission successfully tested several major upgrades to the Falcon 9 rocket, including more powerful Merlin 1D rocket engines (also made by SpaceX), a triple redundant avionics system and enhancements made as part of the company's reusable rocket program. Unlike early Falcon 9 rockets, which arranged their nine first-stage engines in a three-by-three block, the Merlin 1D engines on the upgraded booster are placed in a circular "Octaweb" pattern for better performance, SpaceX officials have said.

The only glitch on the September test flight was the failure of the Falcon 9's second stage to restart in orbit, a capability it must perform to make today's launch a success.

SpaceX founder and Chief Executive Officer  Elon Musk has said the glitch was traced the cause to a frozen igniter fluid line. The affected system has been shored up with additional insulation to prevent freezing on the SES-8 satellite launch, he added.

Musk founded SpaceX in 2002 with the goal of developing affordable and reliable rockets and spacecraft. SpaceX currently advertises standard Falcon 9 rocket launches for $56.7 million.

GPS Technology Helping Police Fight Theft

As reported by rtv6-ABC: It is becoming more common for police officers to use GPS systems to find cars that have been stolen. Police are using the tracking technology to quickly solve cases and fight theft.

In Indianapolis the technology helped track a car that was stolen by a 14-year-old boy on Monday. The car was equipped with a tracking device and officers were behind the suspect within minutes.

"One of the things that was integral in this particular pursuit was the fact that GPS was involved. The vehicle had a GPS tracking system. We are finding that it can be a benefit," Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department Officer Chris Wilburn said.

Many cars come standard with GPS tracking devices that can easily be activated to locate a car in an emergency.

Several insurance companies offer GPS services, but it can be purchased online for as little as $25.

"We’re even finding too that some of the technologies in your iPhone like Track my iPhone can be of aid to us," Wilburn said.

By simply downloading an app or calling a tracking company, law enforcement officials are able to fight auto theft and quickly find what has been stolen.

GPS tracking devices can also help save money on auto insurance. Many companies look at GPS trackers as a form of asset protection and recovery and offer discounts of up to 30 percent.

Marines Test Real-Time Intelligence Dissemination via Smartphones

As reported by the Federal News Radio: Over the past decade, the military has exponentially increased the amount of battlefield intelligence data it collects via unmanned aerial systems and other platforms. Unfortunately, it hasn't developed all of the processes it needs to turn that fire hose of data into real-time, actionable information for small units of war-fighters on the ground.

The Marine Corps started to tackle that problem in a technology demonstration last month in Hawaii. Dubbed "Agile Bloodhound," the project, a cooperative effort between the Marines, the Office of Naval Research, the Naval Research Laboratory and others, offers the promise of delivering vital real-time data that front-line Marines have never had on the battlefield before, officials say.

"We want to be able to deliver relevant content quickly to lower-echelon operators, and at the same time we want to prevent the information overload problem by not providing them information they're not interested in while they're fighting," John Moniz, the Agile Bloodhound program manager at ONR said in an interview with Federal News Radio. "Another big difference is at the higher echelons they're very well connected, similar to what you might expect from the commercial Internet. When you get to the company-level and below, we're doing everything wireless, and it's not with the robust infrastructure we have in the cellular phone system."

So the Marine Corps and ONR are experimenting with ways to deliver autonomously-generated intelligence reports and imagery that don't need to be handled by a human intelligence analyst at a higher headquarters.

In the demonstration, officials showed they could push the data to commercial smartphones connected to the Marines' existing tactical radio system.

"It can be things like alerts as events unfold and we learn more, or the adversary does something unexpected that can quickly flow down to these warfighters," Moniz said. "We're trying to tailor the product to the need of the user and the capacity of the network. So if a relevant video feed becomes available, maybe we could send the entire video depending on the condition of the network. But maybe the user's need is embodied just in a screenshot of that video. Or an automated system that can analyze the object in that video and generate a quick message that says there's been a tank spotted at this distance in this direction."

The capabilities that would make up such an automated intelligence delivery system for small units are not mature enough to deploy thus far however, Moniz said. The Marine Corps' acquisition community could begin procurement work on some elements within a year or two, but others still are perhaps six years away, he said.

At the same time, officials are expanding the bandwidth that small groups of marines would have available to them on the battlefield, Moniz said, including perhaps making use of the commercial cellular data transmission technologies that smartphones already use.

"We're working on those types of capabilities, but the problem with the cellular system is that the Marine Corps is not going to be able to bring in the infrastructure with the towers and the fiber connections between the towers to give us a viable extended cell phone network in the battlespace. It's just not viable," he said. "So we have to rely on other technologies to try to deliver information, be it networks of tactical radios or in some cases just delivering higher capacity radios that allow us to push more information."

Hyderabad Officials Ready Draft Plan for Intelligent Transport System

As reported by the New Indian Express: The master plan for an intelligent transportation system for the Hyderabad metropolitan area, a first of its kind in the country, will be implemented in in three phases spread over 10 years at a cost of Rs 1,180 crore ($189.3 million USD).

The draft master plan for ITS is ready and has been put up for public review by the Hyderabad Metropolitan Development Authority (HMDA) for suggestions and objections.

For the first time, HMDA has initiated the ITS master plan for HMA, with an aim to reduce risk in transportation and traffic accidents, enhancing communication and response in emergency, reducing energy consumption and increasing efficiency with regard to reaching a particular destination.

Also they plan to increase national and regional economic output through better utilization of their transport facilities, reducing travel time and travel costs by providing reliable real time information through ITS, investing efficiently in traffic related infrastructure and road use, reduce cost of road management and enhance appropriate management of ITS data.

For implementation of the ITS pilot project, HMDA entered into a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) in April 2011. JICA’s consultants submitted the final draft master plan last month.

HMDA officials told Express that JICA’s study team, after conducting several surveys and traffic studies and collection of data, has identified issues and causes, and suggested measures to enhance safety, improve road environment, comfort in road usage and formulated the ITS master plan.

For implementing the project, JICA proposed 10 User Service Bundles that include traffic management and operation, public transport emergency, transport related electronic payment, road transport-related personal safety, weather and environmental conditions monitoring, disaster response management and coordination, ITS Data management, maintenance and construction management and law enforcement to be implemented in three phases at a cost of about `1,180 crore.

The first phase will cost about `150 crore ($24 million USD), the second phase (6 to 10 years) nearly `425 crore ($68 million USD)and the third phase (after 10 years) around `605 crore ($96.8 million USD).

As per the plan, the ITS will have 692 Automatic Traffic Counter-cum-Classifiers (ATCC) at 346 locations have been proposed, CCTVs (879 locations), Variable Messaging System (213), Traffic Signals (622), Pedestrian Signals (1,500), Flood Sensors (125), Weather Stations (63), Pollution Sensors (21), a Probe Car System that include buses, taxis and auto-rickshaws (3,750), electronic road pricing (10), lane control (20) and parking systems at 20 locations in HMR.

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.