Astronaut: Min-Satellites Could Track Planes

As reported by CNN: A fleet of tiny satellites released from the International Space Station could be a tool to help solve future aviation mysteries like the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines Flight 370, said retired astronaut Chris Hadfield, who commanded the space station for five months last year.

Speaking to the media after giving a talk at the opening session of the TED2014 conference Monday, Hadfield said that the shoebox-sized satellites, once fully deployed, will cover the entire planet with frequently refreshed images at a resolution down to 4 meters and could have helped in a mystery such as the question of what happened to the Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777.

Planet Labs, a San Francisco-based company, arranged for the first group of the satellites to be released from the space station last month. Hadfield said those satellites are in initial testing.

Asked by CNN to comment, Planet Labs provided a statement by its co-founder and CEO, William Marshall, a former NASA scientist, who is due to speak later this week at TED: "Planet Labs just last month deployed a fleet of 28 satellites, Flock 1, from the International Space Station. This is the largest Earth imaging constellation in history. We are turning on each of the satellites and are now putting them into position. With this constellation, we will measure the planet on a more regular basis to enable various applications. One of those applications is disaster response, including natural and man-made disasters. Other applications range from monitoring deforestation to helping to improve agricultural yields to monitoring urban growth." Another 100 such satellites are in the works, according to the Financial Times.

Hadfield said "tracking one thin aluminum tube" like the Boeing 777, in a place that is not heavily covered by radar is very hard.

"Obviously something happened fast and deliberate, exactly what process, whether it was the crew themselves or someone forcing themselves in, we don't know," Hadfield said. He said he suspects that if the aircraft did crash, wreckage will eventually be found.


In his talk on the TED stage, Hadfield gripped the audience's attention with a message urging people to conquer irrational fears, with images of the Earth's beauty from space and with a performance on guitar of a portion of David Bowie's "Space Oddity," a song he also sang while weightless on the space station. His video, one of about 100 he shot on the space station, went viral.

Astronauts train themselves to overcome fear, and thus are willing to take considerable risks, whether being launched on a rocket or walking in space, Hadfield said. By contrast, some people will let themselves be paralyzed by unreasoning fear of spiders; the way to conquer that is to walk through spider webs (assuming the spiders aren't venomous).

"There's a difference between danger and fear," he said after the talk. And Hadfield said that, incongruously, "I'm afraid of heights," but had mostly overcome it through training.

Danny Kim Wants to Change How You Drive

As reported by SlashDot: In early March, Lit Motors founder Danny Kim hit the road to meet investors. The Portland native needed to keep the momentum growing for his small firm, which builds the two-wheeled C-1. His modest lab, located in San Francisco’s SoMa neighborhood, could accommodate another 12 employees—but he needed the money to fund them, and to build a manufacturing facility capable of turning his prototype ideas into a reality.

Like Elon Musk and other manufacturing savants, Kim is someone who enjoys the challenge of building things—whether it’s eyeglasses, chairs, or motor vehicles from scratch. He’s spent the past five years re-thinking modern transportation, and using those insights to design prototypes of two-wheeled, motor-driven vehicles that can self-balance with a dancer’s grace, thanks to an integrated software platform and a patented gyroscopic system.

Even as he traveled to New York to raise funds, Kim’s heart was back in San Francisco, and the three-story workshop that serves as a sort of DIY museum to his ambitions. Part of the space includes a storefront for the C-1, which (if everything goes well) will begin mass production at the end of this year. The attached shop features lots of space for engineers and designers to collaborate over their plans to change how people get around, especially in urban settings.

In a wide-ranging conversation, Kim discussed his plans for manufacturing the C-1, as well as the challenges in convincing consumers to try out a new kind of vehicle.

Q: How did you develop an instinct for design? Do you think this is something that comes naturally to you, given the way you perceive the world?
Danny Kim: After I dropped out of Reed College, studying physics and biology, I was interested in how to invent things. There’s a path to design and there’s a path to engineering. I started developing my own philosophy of design and engineering, where they drive each other in a simultaneous process. I think that’s what got me interested to go to Rhode Island School of Design to get a degree in Industrial Design and Sustainable Transportation.

When you are designing a car, it’s hard to hire 10 separate people [to work on the design and the engineering and expect it all to line up]. What I’ve been able to do is combine those roles by being the architect, while leading the transportation design, and acting as the mechanical designer. This way, I can come up with a reasonable solution to any problems that arise. I’m the intersection between design and engineering, and that’s why we can get so much done so quickly and cheaply. Engineers are interested in the details, and then rarely can zoom out into high-level discussions on how to integrate electrical wiring to code to dynamics and mechanical systems.

Q: You talk a lot about engineering. But I want to know more about how you think about design.
DK: Besides the technical aspects of vehicle design, how do you create a product that feels amazing? How do you make a product with natural and intuitive human experience? That’s where design sets in. It ensures that products’ exterior, interior, and experience evokes an emotional relationship with of the driver/user.
I have these conversations in my head: What does the exterior need to look like? How does the UX make you feel? Are we within the confines of the H-point?

To support that with the engineering and have a robust platform, I manage or lead all those fronts. I could not have done that without the previous experience I had. I dropped out of college, traveled the world, worked as a Land Rover mechanic and built two custom SUVs from the ground up and went to design school.

There’s no real education or academic track of how to start your own car company, you just have to do it.

Q: Why did you drop out of Reed College?
DK: It was a pretty academically rigid institution… it was really fun. You go there to get a PhD, or become a lawyer or professor. It didn't fit me really well. I learned quite a bit. I told my parents that I was doing the Steve Jobs thing by dropping out. My parents said: “What, who is Steve Jobs?”

Q: How did you settle on a 2-wheeled vehicle as the way you want to solve the transportation problem?
DK: Well, 72 percent of commuters drive alone, so it just made sense to cut the car in half. You have to think about this two-wheeled car as a robot because of its stability. It purely uses our AI/stability algorithm so it can balance and you don’t have to. We had to develop our own firmware for our own dynamic system. It is code heavy. We have four people writing the firmware on it for the last four months. It’s relatively complex; it’s not something you can hack. I’m thinking about opening it up to Android so someone could create their own skin for the interface or design the interior display. Right now, however, it’s our own platform that uses ARM processors. It would be easy to open it up to Android.


Q: What made you think about transportation as the thing you want to devote your life to?
DK: I had an accident that almost killed me when I was rebuilding one of the two Land Rover Range Rovers. It made me ask myself, why am I building big SUVs? It’s more efficient to build a motorcycle.
I began to ask questions such as, why don’t people use motorcycles more? It’s inconvenient because of rain. But it is dangerous on the highway.

Why couldn’t you have something in between a car and a motorcycle? Why don’t we just cut the car in half? Could it be a two-wheeled car? It’s impossible to keep a fully enclosed motorcycle in balance. It makes sense to put a gyroscope in the vehicle.

I did a quick calculation to see if it would make sense to have a gyroscope in a bicycle. So it made sense to do it in a motorcycle too. I wrote a provisional patent, and signed up to attend Rhode Island School of Design to learn how to build a product and manage engineers.

Q: From when you started Lit Motors to now, how has your philosophy about design and engineering changed?
DK: My philosophy hasn’t changed too much. It has been substantiated with other technologist and validated with adjacent industries. We need a sustainable vehicle. The field of robotics is becoming more commonplace for aspiring entrepreneurs. Sustainable vehicles are the future and if you can make it affordable and safe you have a recipe for the Model T of the 21st century.

Q: What’s practically necessary when thinking about mass producing a vehicle?
DK: We established a production process: a sequence of assembly and bill of materials: two things that are essential to producing anything. You have to know what your sequence of assembly is and your bill of materials. Besides your supply chain and having an actual factory, there are the four big things that you have to worry about. Some people call them the four Ps: Product, Process. Plant. People.

I've been working on those four Ps… the last one we don’t have: people. I’m looking for a manufacturing plant. We have our product. The product is going to get better over time. We are on prototype number four-and-a-half.

We are building an awesome team of diverse skill sets. I’m a pretty hands-on type, I learn and synthesize predominantly through the empirical processes. Sometimes the best thing to do is to just do it. It’s hardware, so you need all hands-on deck, the ability to iterate quickly, learn on the fly, and have a peer review. I ask smart people who have 10-20 years experience or so, and have been able to learn a lot from them.

Q: How do you know if you should actually listen to their advice?
DK: I have been compiling a rather large dataset of advice; I can usually tell when someone is [expletive] me. I know a lot of people who have done production for larger runs. Depending on scale, there’s a pretty consistent language and processes involved and a level of concern of which to mitigate failure. You are going to be making mistakes. The difference between a smart founder and one that isn’t is, the smart founder when making a complex decision might pick a somewhat logical direction without all the correct information, moving the company forward. Carefully monitoring the progress and change directions quickly if needed to mitigate the damage. It is about staying on your toes, and I have been doing that somewhat well over the last four years on a really small budget.

We've raised $2.2 million, with almost $1 million in pre-earned sales of our first production run (around 890 pre-orders). It cost half a million dollars to build a high-speed prototype. That will be something that we will have finished over the next few months. Right now, we have 5 patents that have been granted. Our team has grown from 6 to 18 people. We are very well poised to get further funding and go into production.

Q: Are you working hard?
DK: Yes, I work 14-hour days and usually work until I go to sleep. We are developing a rather large product so it takes time to build. Regardless, you have to put in the time to make it happen; my entire team knows this. We are here to make change and eventually make some money in the process.

Volvo Designs Magnetic Roads For Cheaper, Simpler Self-Driving Cars

As reported by Extreme Tech: There are myriad visions for a future filled with self-driving cars. For example, there’s Google’s experimental driverless car bristling with sensors, as well as more modest systems that would only take over from drivers for short periods. The problem with more ambitious self-driving car technologies is the considerably higher cost, whether in public infrastructure (networked roads) or the smarts built into the vehicles themselves. Volvo thinks it has an idea that could make self-driving cars work with much less hassle. All we need is a bunch of magnets embedded in the road.

Volvo began developing its magnet-based smart car system after looking long and hard at the other proposals on the table. It’s not just the cost of advanced sensors, cameras, GPS, and LIDAR that make self-driving cars tricky, the reliability is also questionable. Electronic solutions are more prone to failure in general, but even more so when inclement weather strikes. A magnet? Well, that’s always a magnet, and it can be paired with other automated technologies to make a fully driverless car.

In order to test the idea of using magnetic roadways, Volvo actually built a 100-meter test track in Hällered, Sweden and raced a specially modified S60 down it at over 90 mph. Engineers lined the road with neodymium magnets (20mm x 10mm) and ferrite magnets (30mm x 5mm) in lines down the edges and middle of the lane. The company tested both embedded and surface installation, finding that magnets on the surface would be effective and easier to install. Although, either option is sure to cause headaches in the case of roadwork.

Magnetic sensors are nothing new, but at the speeds we busy humans often need to drive, existing hardware wasn’t sensitive or fast enough. Volvo engineers calculated a car would require at least 400 magnetic samples per second to remain on the straight and narrow — a regular magnetic sensor can only do about three readings per second, and even then only when it is within a few centimeters of the magnet. So Volvo decided to roll its own magnetic sensor rig with five sensor modules, each with 15 smaller Honeywell magnetic sensor pods. This rig was attached to the bottom of the car and was able to pull in 500 readings per second.

The system was able to monitor the car’s location to within 10 cm at 45 mph when telemetry factors such as speed and acceleration were figured in. You’d probably want the precision to be a little higher before taking your hands off the wheel, but you get a lot for your money here. The advanced sensor package on Google’s self-driving car has about $150,000 worth of sensors, but Volvo estimates its magnetic sensor package will add only $109 to the cost of a car when produced in large quantities. Volvo also claims installing magnets in typical two-lane roadways would cost an average of $24,405 per kilometer. If that sounds like a lot, it’s not actually bad in the context of self-driving technology. Of course, you could only use this system where the magnets had been laid down — Google’s car works almost anywhere right now.

As the technology for self-driving cars becomes a reality, we need to ask ourselves how smart the cars should be. Expensive sensor packages are great for completely controlling a vehicle so you can take a nap, but only in good conditions. A bit of ice or some fog could make things awfully sketchy. If we rely on magnets in the road (or some other passive tech) everything is more reliable, but possibly not as convenient. A networked on-board system can respond to traffic dynamically and provide detailed analytics. Magnets — they just keep you on the road. However, it might end up being more important to focus on what’s feasible than what’s clever in the end. Magnets could end up as part of a more advanced system that at least has a basic fallback mode when things go wrong.

Truckers Reviewing Proposed ELD Rule

The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association issued the following statement on the proposed rule by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration that would mandate electronic on board recorders, or electronic logging devices (ELD).

“The Association is currently reviewing the proposed rule. Congress and the courts have set the standard of requirements high for FMCSA. The agency must address the serious safety issue of how EOBRs are used to harass and coerce truck drivers into continuing to drive regardless of driving conditions, such as bad weather, congested traffic or simply if the driver is too tired (or sick) to drive. 

Plus, there is no known device that is capable of automatically recording a driver’s duty status throughout a work day, not just when they are driving, and this is also a requirement from Congress.  We will examine the proposal in detail to see how the agency has attempted to meet these requirements, especially considering that an important study on the harassment issue is still listed as “ongoing” on the FMCSA website.  Further, the issue of cost to truckers and what specific technical requirements are called for, especially when FMCSA has yet to show any direct safety benefit between ELD/EOBR use and reduced crashes, will be a critical focus of our review of the proposal.  

This is the first stage in the regulatory process for the agency’s latest attempt to craft a rule on this topic, and OOIDA and small business truckers will certainly be weighing in and providing comments.”

The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association is the largest national trade association representing the interests of small-business trucking professionals and professional truck drivers. The Association currently has more than 150,000 members nationwide. OOIDA was established in 1973 and is headquartered in the Greater Kansas City, Mo., area.

Paris Pollution Leads To Gasoline Engine Car Ban

As reported by KRDO: The air pollution in Paris has become so bad that the French government has introduced a temporary driving ban.  

The new rules, which went into effect Monday morning, aim to cut back Parisian traffic by roughly 50% in order to help clear the air.  

Drivers with license plates ending in even numbers are banned from the roads Monday, while cars bearing odd-numbered license plates will be banned Tuesday.

Pollution levels in Paris have reportedly intensified in recent days due to a combination of warm, sunny days and cold nights, which keeps pollutants from dissipating.

According to some reports, parts of Paris at certain times of the day have had worse air quality than Beijing. But environmental data from the European Union and other online tracking systems show the air quality in Paris is generally significantly better than Beijing and other Chinese cities that have recently reported high levels of pollution.

The French government said the alternating car ban was agreed upon after Prime Minister Francois Hollande consulted with ministers responsible for the interior, environment, health and transportation.

"The Prime Minister is aware of the difficulties this could create for Parisians, but this extra step is required," the government said in a release.

Public transport in the city has been free over the last few days as officials try to encourage environmentally friendly travel.

Canadian tourist Jon Ward visited Paris over the weekend and said the city looked smoggy and hazy, but he didn't notice any problems with his breathing. "Then again I'm from Toronto so I'm used to terrible air quality and smog!" he said.

Ignoring the car ban will cost Parisians, who could face a fine of €75 ($104) and possibly have their vehicle impounded.

The alternating car ban also applies to scooters and motorcycles, though electric and hybrid vehicles won't be affected. Carpool cars containing at least three people will be exempt.

Government officials said they will evaluate on Monday evening how long the traffic ban could be in effect.

Harsh Wireless Conditions? Send In The Drone Hot Spot

As reported by Network World: The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has moved along a project it says would use hot-spot enabled drones to bring bring wireless communications to even the most distant and harsh  environment.

The project known as Fixed Wireless at a Distance is designed specifically to overcome the challenge inherent with cell communication in remote areas and this week the agency awarded L-3 $16.4 million to support the next iteration of the system.

The award announcement states: If successful, the phase 2 effort is expected to deliver a package consisting of radio and router pods that can be mounted on Shadow unmanned aerial vehicles, with all mobile hotspots subsystems wholly contained within the pods.

According to DARPA, the program looks to address the challenge of data transmission in remote areas and envisions a gigabit-per-second tactical backbone network extending to all soldiers in a hostile location.

"To achieve this, the program seeks to develop advanced pointing, acquisition and tracking (PAT) technologies, not commercially available, needed to provide high connectivity to the forward-located mobile hotspots. Advanced PAT technology is key for connectivity to small UAVs, for example, enabling them to serve as flying nodes on the mobile high-speed backbone."

"While some advanced commercial millimeter-wave components can be leveraged for this program, the technical challenge is more complex given the infrastructure and terrain challenges of a forward-operating locations," DARPA stated. "Mobile Hotspots will require the development of steerable antennas, efficient millimeter-wave power amplifiers, and dynamic networking to establish and maintain the mobile data backhaul network. We anticipate using commercial radio protocols, such as WiFi, WiMax or LTE [Long Term Evolution], as a cost-effective demonstration of the high-capacity backbone.  However, the millimeter-wave mobile backbone developed during this program will be compatible with other military radios and protocols."

Could The Next Presidential Limo Be A Tesla?

As reported by Motor Authority: The Secret Service is gearing up for an all-new presidential limo, to replace the venerable but sometimes challenged Beast. 

There are a number of requirements placed on those wishing to build the next limo, not least of which is that it must be an American company. Tesla Motors is an American company--but could it, should it, supply the next limo for the President?

While there's no indication that Elon Musk has any such desire, we think it's an interesting idea--one that would fit with government incentives for electric cars, give a nice green image to whomever might hold the office next time around, and conveniently side-step the issue of the automotive bailouts.

So what might a Tesla presidential limo (the Model P, perhaps?) look like? It might look something like this, based loosely on the Model X, just as the Beast is based on a GM heavy truck platform, but styled to look like a car.

Features you might find in a Tesla designed to protect the (nominally, at least) most powerful person in the world?

• Better armor plating under the battery pack, for one, to prevent any chance of a road-debris- (or IED-) induced battery pack fire.

• The Model X's upcoming all-wheel-drive system might also find use, enabling better traction and handling for the large, heavy vehicle.

• An air suspension system adapted from Tesla's production design could prevent any future high-centering issues like those faced by the Beast's predecessor.

• Tesla's always-on 4G internet connection could also be used, but would have to be upgraded to presidential status, including heavy encryption and firewalling.

• A charge-on-the-fly port at the nose and tail to hook up to a battery-extending black SUV, a la in-flight refueling, could help make sure the president can escape from emergencies without having to exit the car--or find a Supercharger.

Okay, so this is mostly in jest, but the core idea itself may have merit--if not now, then in a decade's time.