Facebook Looks To Drone Technology To Connect The World To The Web

As reported by Tech Week Europe: Social networking giant Facebook is reportedly looking to unmanned drones to boost its Internet.org connectivity project with the $60m purchase of pioneering firm Titan Aerospace.  

A report from TechCrunch has revealed that the two companies are in discussion regarding an acquisition, which would see Titan build around 11,000 of its Solara 60 drones to help Facebook further its campaign to spread global web connectivity.

Wide-range

Titan’s solar powered drones, classified as “atmospheric satellites”, can remain in flight for up to five years without needing to land and be recharged, and are capable of travelling 4 million kilometers running on its solar power supply.

Designed initially for weather monitoring and disaster recovery, the drones fly at a near-orbital altitude above 60,000 feet, meaning they are outside of the airspace of most countries and can effectively operate like satellites with far lower operating costs, which the company calls “atmospheric parking”.

The drones weigh 160kg and can carry a payload of 32kg, which means they could well carry cameras, GPS monitors or web connectivity equipment. A drone can be piloted from a control facility on the ground, and have a mean speed of 64mph, meaning it should be able to move and focus on any area easily.

Getting connected

Aiming to connect ‘the next five billion users’, Facebook’s Internet.org project looks to spread web access across the developing world. It was a major theme in Mark Zuckerberg’s press event at Mobile World Congress, where he described the project as ‘an on-ramp to the Internet’.

The company has so far signed up companies including Nokia, Opera, Samsung and Qualcomm to form a collective working on making internet access cheaper for people around the world when using their smartphones and mobile devices. Following its recent $16bn acquisition of WhatsApp, Facebook is also looking at how best to incorporate the messaging service into Internet.org, with IM and SMS services already a commonplace way of keeping in contact in markets such as Africa.

At Mobile World Congress, Facebook announced a range of projects related to Internet.org, including a pilot project for testing mobile technologies in Rwanda, a study from Deloitte into connectivity issues in developing countries, a Unilever research project into Internet connectivity in rural India and a GSM Association (GSMA) initiative to reduce mobile connectivity costs in developing countries.

The company also announced a joint project with Ericsson called the Internet.org Innovation Lab, which looks to simulate networking conditions in various developing countries around the world in order to allow engineers to optimize applications, networks, devices and services for particular markets. It is expected to open in the second half of this year.

Bringing Internet access to the developing world is one of the major challenges facing the technology industry, with Google also developing a similar project called Project Loon. This campaign, currently being trialed, looks at using balloons to spread Internet connectivity over remote areas.

“We believe that it might actually be possible to build a ring of balloons, flying around the globe on the stratospheric winds, that provides Internet access to the earth below,” Google project lead Mike Cassidy said of the project.

Is Walmart's WAVE Concept Truck The Fuel-Efficient Future Of Semis?

As reported by GCR: Heavy-duty trucks spend more time on the road than passenger vehicles, so improving their efficiency can have a major effect on emissions--and their owners' bottom lines.  

That's why Walmart is getting into the truck-design business with the WAVE--Walmart Advanced Vehicle Experience--concept.

With its aerodynamic cab, the WAVE certainly doesn't look like any other large truck currently on U.S. roads.

The design was achieved in part by placing the driver in the center of the cab. The steering wheel is flanked by LCD screens--in place of conventional gauges--and there is a sleeping compartment directly behind the driver's pod.

The WAVE features a range-extended electric power-train, consisting of a Capstone micro-turbine and an electric motor.

To reduce weight, the entire truck is made of carbon fiber--including the trailer.

Walmart says this is the first example of a carbon-fiber trailer ever produced, and that its 53-foot side panels are the first single pieces of carbon fiber that large that have ever been manufactured.

Like the tractor, the trailer was also designed for optimum aerodynamic efficiency. It features a convex nose, which not only reduces aerodynamic drag but has the added of benefit of increasing cargo space in the trailer.

Walmart says the carbon-fiber trailer is around 4,000 pounds lighter than a conventional one, allowing a truck to carry more freight without the need for increased power or fuel consumption.

The retail giant did not reveal any plans to produce the WAVE, and in fact it would be highly unlikely to get into the truck business.

But it's far from the only company encouraging ways to make big trucks more efficient.

The streamlined AirFlow BulletTruck achieved 13.4 mpg on a recent cross-country trip, while Peterbilt and Cummins' "SuperTruck" achieved 9.9 mpg last year.

Those numbers may not sound impressive, but they're significant improvements for vehicles that typically get 5 or 6 mpg.

They'll also be necessary in the near future: President Barack Obama has directed the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to draft a new set of fuel-economy rules for medium and heavy-duty trucks.

These standards will take effect in 2019 and run through 2025, picking up where the current standards--which date to 2011--leave off.

Apple IOS Software To Drive Smart Ferrari

As reported by CNBC: First the mobile phone, now the car. Having revolutionized personal communication Apple now wants to change the way we drive.  

The technology group will next week launch its first in-car operating system with Ferrari, Mercedes-Benz and Volvo as it attempts to take the lead in a fierce race to dominate tomorrow's smart cars.

The breakthrough comes amid a swirl of market rumors that Apple could be eyeing a bid for electric car maker Tesla Motors. Google and other technology companies are already working on plans to develop their own car models alongside traditional automotive manufacturers.

The deal marks the first time that Apple is embedding its software in devices other than its own branded products. The choice of the Ferrari, Volvo and Mercedes-Benz is seen to be in keeping with the US tech group's high-end phones.

Apple's head of internet software and services, Eddy Cue, joined the Ferrari board in 2012, saying at the time that he had "personally dreamed of owning a Ferrari since I was 8 years old and have been lucky to be an owner for the past 5 years."

Cars connected to the internet and seamlessly integrated with personal communication devices are seen as the harbingers of vehicles that can drive themselves, mobile offices and "mobility solutions" for cities where all vehicles are controlled or monitored from a central database.

Car makers are engaged in a fierce battle for control of car dashboards as incumbents fight with technology companies such as Microsoft and IBM to develop the software systems that will power the connected cars of tomorrow.

Rupert Stadler, chairman of Audi, used his keynote speech at January's Consumer Electronics Forum, the technology industry's annual symposium, to herald a new era of "connected cars" that would see automobiles become "the largest social mobile devices we own."

The official announcement of Apple's deal will be made at this week's Geneva Motor Show, sources told the Financial Times. A number of other manufacturers are expected to incorporate it into models in 2014. Apple, and the car makers declined to comment

Drivers will be able to use Apple Maps as in-car navigation, as well as listen to music and watch films. Calls can be made through the system, which will tie into the Siri voice recognition platform so that messages can be read to the driver who can respond by dictating a reply.

An Apple powered car has been expected since the launch of its updated iOS 7 software. Cars can already play music through Apple devices but this allows the iOS software on the screen to be built into the car.

Apple showed the first images of the "iOS in the Car" platform at a developer conference last year, which in effect mirrors the iPhone on the in-car display.

The Next Wave of Cars May Use Ethernet

As reported by ComputerWorld: The most ubiquitous local area networking technology used by big business may be packing its bags for a road trip.

As in-vehicle electronics become more sophisticated to support autonomous driving, cameras, and infotainment systems, Ethernet has become a top contender for connecting them.

For example, the BMW X5 automobile, released last year, used single-pair twisted wire, 100Mbps Ethernet to connect its driver-assistance cameras.

Paris-based Parrot, which supplies mobile accessories to automakers BMW, Hyundai and others, has developed in-car Ethernet. Its first Ethernet-connected systems could hit the market as soon as 2015, says Eric Riyahi, executive vice president of global operations.

Parrot's new Ethernet-based Audio Video Bridging (AVB) technology uses Broadcom's BroadR-Reach automotive Ethernet controller chips.

The AVB technology's network management capabilities allows automakers to control the timing of data streams between specific network nodes in a vehicle and controls the bandwidth in order to manage competing data traffic.

Ethernet's greater bandwidth could provide drivers with turn-by-turn navigation while a front-seat passenger streams music from the Internet, and each back-seat passenger watches streaming videos on separate displays.

"In-car Ethernet is seen as a very promising way to provide the needed bandwidth for coming new applications within the fields of connectivity, infotainment and safety," said Hans Alminger, senior manager for Diagnostics & ECU Platform at Volvo, in a statement.

Automotive Ethernet

Ethernet was initially used by automakers only for on-board diagnostics. But as automotive electronics advanced, the technology has found a place in advanced driver assistance systems and infotainment platforms.

Many manufacturers also use Ethernet to connect rear vision cameras to a car's infotainment or safety system, said Patrick Popp, chief technology officer of Automotive at TE Connectivity, a maker of car antennas and other automobile communications parts.

Currently, however, there are as many as nine proprietary auto networking specifications, including LIN, CAN/CAN-FD, MOST and FlexRay.

FlexRay, for example, has a 10Mbps transmission rate. Ethernet could increase that 10 fold or more.

The effort to create a single vehicle Ethernet standard is being lead by Open Alliance and the IEEE 802.3 working group. The groups are working to establish 100Mbps and 1Gbps Ethernet as de facto standards.

The first automotive Ethernet standard draft is expected this year.

The Open Alliance claims more than 200 members, including General Motors, Ford, Daimler, Honda, Hyundai, BMW, Toyota, Volkswagen. Jaguar Land Rover, Renault, Volvo, Bosch, Freescale and Harman.

Broadcom, which makes electronic control unit chips for automobiles, is a member of the Open Alliance and is working on the effort to standardize automotive Ethernet.

High-End GPS May Give Airline Passengers Smoother Flights

As reported by Forbes: Anyone who’s flown can attest to atmospheric turbulence. My worst was one late December in the North Pacific, some 400 miles south of the Aleutians. The plane started shuddering and bucking so badly that even the flight attendants looked spooked.

But moderate to severe turbulence can cause more than just a racing heart.

Passengers aboard two recent flights encountered severe, if not extreme, clear air turbulence. The first incident, in which five United passengers and crew were injured, took place earlier last month as a Boeing 737 was making its approach into Billings, Montana.

The second, a day later, took place aboard a Cathay Pacific Boeing 747 en route from San Francisco to Hong Kong. Several passengers and crew were injured in some thirty seconds of severe turbulence over the Japanese Island of Hokkaido, which at least one passenger described as nothing short of a “roller coaster.”

In fact, the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) reports that there are more than 1000 turbulence-related injuries on commercial aircraft each year. In the last decade alone, Robert Sharman, an atmospheric scientist at NCAR (National Center for Atmospheric Research) in Boulder, Colorado, says there have even been a handful of turbulence-related deaths.

But atmospheric weather at a range of altitudes is inherently harder to predict than surface weather.

“The difficulty is that turbulence is highly spatially dependent and can change in ten minutes’ time,” said Sharman. As a result, he says, most turbulence alerts still originate from the pilots themselves.

However, Seth Gutman, an atmospheric scientist at NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) in Boulder, and colleagues, has proposed using the existing Global Positioning System (GPS) as a real time probe for atmospheric turbulence.

GPS signals, Gutman explains, are refracted and delayed by water vapor as they travel through earth’s lower atmosphere.

“We take that signal delay info and provide that to weather models,” said Gutman. “But instead of averaging this out over half an hour, we propose doing it over timescales of about a second.”

The key is tapping into existing state-of-the-art GPS receivers that are typically used for high-accuracy applications; including emergency response; engineering; road construction; even geophysics monitoring.

Gutman says there are already thousands of such GPS receiving stations across the U.S. maintained mostly by state and local governments.

The idea is to use arrays of these systems at fixed locations on the ground to directly detect turbulence within the GPS antennas’ field of view.

The same principle would also apply for use with Russia’s Glonass system; Europe’s forthcoming Galileo system; China’s Compass; and Japan’s QZSS.

Such a turbulence warning system could even cover the polar routes, says Gutman.

One potential shortfall of Gutman’s proposal, however, is that although GPS signals can point out turbulence within a specific vertical column, knowing at which altitude in that column is likely to cause problems for passing aircraft would still be difficult to determine.

Although mountains, jet streams, weather fronts and atmospheric convection can all cause clear air turbulence, fortunately, most turbulence is rarely severe.

What does Sharman classify as severe turbulence?

“Either momentary loss of control of the aircraft or a one ‘g’ acceleration,” said Sharman. “That means if you’re not buckled in, you’re flying out of your seat.”

Still, most commercial pilots would argue that severe turbulence rarely lasts more than a few seconds and even though the cockpit may momentarily lose control of the aircraft, once the incident is over, the plane automatically regains its flying composure.

Is a commercial airliner structurally at risk during severe turbulence?

“It can be,” said Sharman. “I've seen pictures of parts of a composite wing coating being ripped off. If you start bending or twisting a wing surface, some of that material can come off.”

In 1992, a DC 8 cargo aircraft suffered turbulence so severe over the Front Range of Colorado’s Rocky Mountains that its left outboard engine was completely ripped off as well as some 12 feet of its left wing’s leading edge. Mercifully, the pilot was able to limp into Denver International.

What can be done to avoid such incidents?

To a large degree, Gutman says it all comes down to national priorities. Gutman asks, do we as a nation want to use such systems to improve our ability to forecast and warn of severe aviation turbulence?

If so, Gutman says the proof of concept for this GPS-related turbulence avoidance system is ripe for the financing.

“If we had resources,” said Gutman, “we could do a demo this summer. Implementation is not difficult. What takes time is verifying that what we’re seeing corresponds to real events, so that false notifications of turbulence are low.”

Google Announces Project Ara Development Plans

As reported by The Guardian: Google announced its intention to move forward with the development of Project Ara, a $ 50 customizable module smartphone with interchangeable component blocks.

The concept is designed to give users unlimited ability to upgrade the device by swapping components. Despite its small staff size, the company’s Advanced Technology and Projects group (ATAP) is expected to have a working prototype within the next few weeks and will prepare a version for the consumer market for early 2015.

Project Ara was originally the brainchild of Motorola, whose parent company Google sold to Lenovo in January 2014. However, when the internet giant struck the Motorola deal with Lenovo, it retained the ambitious Ara project that was first announced by Motorola in Fall 2013. Project Ara will continue to be headed by ATAP, which is another Motorola-created company component that Google will retain post-sale.

The driving forces behind ATAP and Project Ara are Regina Dugan and Paul Eremenko, both of whom are veterans of the U.S. government’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Ms. Dugan serves as head of ATAP, while Mr. Eremenko is the project head for Ara. The design of Project Ara is meant to be very user-friendly. It allows the user to upgrade a smartphone as easily as erecting a set of building blocks. For instance, if a user wanted a faster CPU or stronger battery, they could acquire the individual components and switch out old for new. Both developers and users would benefit from this platform that allows for tons of creative options. Many experts believe that if Project Ara lives up to its potential, it could become the Android of hardware by creating unlimited opportunities for developers and users to construct unique consumer modules.

Another feature of Project Ara that has Google very excited is the development of a new high-speed 3D printer that can manufacture modules in mass quantities. This new technology allows the smartphones to be mass-produced and customized in a way that is unheard of for any consumer product. Additionally, the technology could ultimately lead to the printing of electrical elements, such as antennas and adapters, as opposed to conventional manufactured means.


The platform of Ara will support three sizes of smartphone–mini, medium, and jumbo-sized.

Specific measurement information is being kept under wraps. However, Google has released some general details to whet consumer appetites. The mini will have a very compact build similar to a razor phone, the medium will follow a more mainstream design like the iPhone, and the jumbo will resemble a phablet (phone tablet) format. The size of each phone offered will depend on its endoskelton, which also serves as the one component of Ara that is Google-devised and branded. This component of Ara has an aluminum frame with a small amount of network circuitry so the modules can communicate and a tiny battery. Every component of Ara comes in the form of a module and slide into place to form the phone. The larger the size of the phone, the more modules it can contain. In the initial prototype, pins were used to connect the modules to the endoskelton. However, Google has plans later in the year to modify that aspect of Ara and utilize more space-saving, capacitive connections.

Additional development features of Project Ara that have the internet giant and public anxiously awaiting its consumer debut include the ability to hot-swap modules without powering down, interchange any individual components of similar size no matter its function, wi-fi connectivity, and of course, the exceptional value of $50 for the basic phone that users can customize to one’s specific needs and desires. Google could be on the brink of the next technological phenomenon and consumers will reap the benefits no matter what the outcome.

First Outdoor Flocks of Drones Demonstrated in the EU

As reported by The Physics arXiv: If you've ever watched huge flocks of starlings wheel and pulsate in the early evening sky, you’ll know how spectacular this phenomenon can be. Starlings probably flock to reduce their chances of attack by predators such as peregrine falcons.

But their are many other reasons why this kind of group behavior is useful—more effectively navigation and foraging, for example. So it’s no surprise that various teams want to reproduce the same kind of behavior in artificial systems.

That’s turned out to be harder than it sounds, particularly for aerial flocking. So while various groups have created semi-autonomous flocks, and one group created a flock of slow-moving blimps in a gymnasium, nobody has successfully demonstrated a fully autonomous flock of robotic flyers that can fly outdoors.

Until now. Today, Gabor Vásárhelyi and pals from Eötvös University in Budapest, Hungary, reveal that they have successfully demonstrated the first autonomous flying robots capable of flockin

g outdoors, just as starlings do.

Flocking is hard because of each member of the flock has to be able to sense its environment and respond to changes quickly and accurately. That means each flyer has to measure its own velocity and position, the position and velocity of those around it, and use this information to calculate what to do next.

Even then, it must be capable of carrying out the necessary flight adjustments quickly. These machines must be able to hover, to fly in a specific direction at a specific speed and to change tack rapidly.

And they must be able to do all this using their own own on-board decision making process.

That’s a big ask but it has looked increasingly possible in recent years given that stable flying machines such as helicopters and quadcopters are now commercially available.

Vásárhelyi start with a commercially available quadcopter known as the MK Basicset L4-ME from the German company MikroKopter. This is capable of self-stabilized flight and is controlled using a handheld remote.

An example of the navigation module used to help provide the
flocking, formation, target tracking, and obstacle avoidance features.

The team’s first step was to modify these machines to make them autonomous. They did this by attaching an extension board carrying a variety of navigational devices such as a gyroscope, accelerometer, GPS receiver and so on as well as a wireless communications unit and a minicomputer.

During flight, each flyer constantly broadcasts its position and velocity to the others which then determine their own actions using the team’s flocking algorithm. This essentially implements two rules, a short range repulsion that prevents adjacent flyers from colliding, and a rule that aligns their velocity and keeps adjacent flyers going in roughly the same direction at the same speed.

Simulation of actual data generated from target tracking exercises.

Two reduce the amount of calculating each flyer has to do, the quadcopters all fly at the same altitude so that the flocking problem becomes a 2 dimensional one.

There is also a ground-based PC monitoring what’s going on and this can make real time changes to the algorithms controlling each flyer. But crucially, the flock does not rely on any centralized control for its behavior.

The results are impressive. These guys have successfully flown flocks with up to ten quadcopters in the air simultaneously. “We successfully established the first decentralized, autonomous multi-copter flock in an outdoor environment, with swarms of up to 10 flying robots, flying stably for up to 20 minutes,” they say.

They also find a number of interesting behaviors. One of the key problems these guys have to handle is the inevitable delay each flyer experiences between receiving information, processing it and then performing the necessary changes in flight.

Target tracking a moving vehicle.

This kind of delay can lead to all kinds of interesting oscillations within the flock. But it can also destroy the flock if it gets out of control. So the flight algorithms must be carefully fine-tuned to damp out the destructive effects.

But with this in hand, Vásárhelyi and co say they were able to fly their copters in various formations such as ring shapes and in lines. They've also observed self-organised behavior in which the quadcopters fly in lines and circles within pre-determined boundaries, just as locusts do in a similar circumstances.

Obstruction avoidance simulation - the flock is attempting to
reach the large geofenced area, while staying out of the smaller
obstacle areas.

There are limits on the behavior of the flocks, of course. The speed of he flyers determines the required braking distance between them to prevent collisions. And in any case, the average distance between the flyers is between 6 and 10 meters. This is determined by the positional accuracy of the GPS sensors which is to within 2 meters or so. Tighter formations will require better positioning accuracy.

Nevertheless, this is an exciting first step in this area. The potential applications for flocks are numerous. The researchers imagine using them for large-scale, redundant observations over wide areas, perhaps for farming, traffic monitoring and, of course, military purposes. And equipped with sensors, flocks could monitor large volumes of the atmosphere for signs of pollution. A real advantage in all this is the redundancy that a flock offers if one unit malfunctions.

With the first success in outdoor autonomous flocks, it shouldn't be long before we see more of these in the real world. Perhaps one day we’ll even be able to watch them gather at dusk and demonstrate their own spectacular aerial displays.

Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1402.3588 : Outdoor Flocking And Formation Flight With Autonomous Aerial Robots