Here’s a Perfect Example of Why We Need More Consumer Drone Regulation

As reported by Robotic Trends: Listen, I’m all for personal freedom and less government infringement on our everyday lives. But the current wildfires sweeping across California are a perfect example, unfortunately, as to why stricter consumer drone regulation might be needed.

In the last week, state and federal firefighters have fought more than 270 wildfires in California alone. One fire burned nearly 18,000 acres of land and cost more than $7 million to contain.

Here’s the problem: firefighters are seeing more unauthorized consumer drones flying over active wildfires. Maybe the drone owners don’t know or maybe they don’t care, but temporary flight restrictions are placed over wildfire areas due to the aircraft used to help contain the fires.

Aircraft is used during wildfires to knock down flames and survey the burn area. When drones are in that restricted airspace, they’re in the path of aircraft.

“A couple times yesterday we noticed some drones in our airspace,” said Cal Fire’s Steve Kaufmann (watch the KSEE video below).“I can’t encourage the public enough that when we have a fire in the area, they really need to try to have restraint.”

“Some of the hobbyist drones will get up in the air, and if their drone is in the air, we actually have to cease our air operations until we can get our arms around that,” he added.

The near-collisions between drones and commercial airplanes was enough to get the Consumer Drone Safety Act introduced, can you imagine the negative effects one crash, or one wildfire spiraling even further out of control, could have on hobbyist drones?

If you need more evidence of how some drone hobbyists are crossing the line, check out the video below, which you might have already seen, of John Thompson flying his drone over an active house fire. Eventually a firefighter sprays the drone (12 minutes into the video) and forces Thompson to fly away. Thompson took to Facebook and accused the firefighters of misconduct and said he would bill them to replace the $2,200 drone.

Thankfully, many commenters said Thompson was in the wrong. Again, I’m all for a laissez-faire system when it comes to flying consumer drones, but if we can’t police ourselves, we’re only asking for stricter regulation.

Deus ex Vehiculum: Security in the Age of Computerized Cars

As reported by the Economist: One ingenious conceit employed to great effect by science-fiction writers is the sentient machine bent on pursuing an inner mission of its own, from HAL in “2001: A Space Odyssey” to V.I.K.I. in the film version of "I Robot". Usually, humanity thwarts the rogue machine in question, but not always. In “Gridiron”, released in 1995, a computer system called Ismael—which controls the heating, lighting, lifts and everything else in a skyscraper in Los Angeles—runs amok and wreaks havoc on its occupants. The story's cataclysmic conclusion involves Ismael instructing the skyscraper’s computer-controlled hydraulic shock-absorbers (installed to damp the swaying caused by earthquakes) to shake the building, literally, to pieces. As it does so, Ismael’s cyber-spirit flees the crumbling tower by e-mailing a copy of its malevolent code to a diaspora of like-minded computers elsewhere in the world.

While vengeful cyber-spirits may not lurk inside today’s buildings or machines, malevolent humans frequently do. Taking control remotely of modern cars, for instance, has become distressingly easy for hackers, given the proliferation of wireless-connected processors now used to run everything from keyless entry and engine ignition to brakes, steering, tire pressure, throttle setting, transmission and anti-collision systems. Today’s vehicles have anything from 20 to 100 electronic control units (ECUs) managing their various electro-mechanical systems. Without adequate protection, the “connected car” can be every bit as vulnerable to attack and subversion as any computer network. 

Were that not worrisome enough, motorists can expect further cyber-mischief once vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication becomes prevalent, and cars are endowed with their own IP addresses and internet connections. Meanwhile, car makers are beginning to offer over-the-air updates, using cellular connections, for patching flaws in their vehicles’ software. This makes it easier for attackers to infiltrate not just the odd vehicle, but thousands of them at a time. BMW recently beamed an over-the-air software update to 2.2 million of its customers’ cars. The potential for fleet-wide cyber-attacks ought to have car-makers seriously concerned.

Nor is it just vehicle theft motorists have to worry about. Car hacking can threaten people’s lives, both in the vehicle and outside it. The mind shudders at the thought of malicious code being inserted remotely into the logic of a self-driving car speeding autonomously down the highway.

This is not science fiction. Land Rover recently demonstrated a smartphone app that lets an owner take wireless control of his machine while up to ten meters (33 feet) away from it. The aim, says Land Rover, is to let off-road drivers maneuver their vehicles safely over dangerous stretches of terrain, or to assist urban motorists trying to back a vehicle out of a tight parking spot. Fine, except that such a level of remote control could also make it easier for thieves to steal parked cars, or terrorists to create chaos on the road. 

What is being done to protect vehicles from cyber-attack? Several recent events have stirred legislators into action. Last summer, for instance, during a meeting of automotive engineers and security experts, a 14-year-old schoolboy showed industry experts how to take control of a car remotely using circuitry he had lashed up overnight with $15 worth of parts bought from Radio Shack the day before. The youngster turned the windscreen wipers on and off, locked and unlocked the doors, engaged the engine-start mechanism, and had the headlamps flash to the beat of a tune on his iPhone. “It was mind-blowing,” recounted Andrew Brown, vice-president and chief technologist at Delphi Automotive, a manufacturer of auto parts.

More recently, Consumer Reports, a publication owned by a consumer advocacy and independent testing center in Yonkers, New York, got an eye-opener during a visit to a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) laboratory. The publication’s editors were surprised when a technician turned off the engine of a test car they were driving using nothing more than a mobile phone. NHTSA has found ways of tampering remotely with door locks, seat-belt tensioning, instrument panels, brakes, steering mechanisms and engines—all while the test cars were being driven. Since its laboratory visit, Consumer Reports has been urging America's Congress to legislate for the highest possible security standards for car computer systems.

The message seems to be getting through. In recent weeks, the House Committee on Energy and Commerce has questioned all 17 motor manufacturers that sell vehicles in America, as well as NHTSA itself, about their plans to thwart car hackers. For its part, NHTSA has compiled a 40-page report on how best to deal with cyber-threats on the road. The safety agency has shared its findings with car-makers, but has been understandably reluctant to publicize the counter-measures in detail. 

The problem confronting car-makers everywhere is that, as they add ever more ECUs to their vehicles, to provide more features and convenience for motorists, they unwittingly expand the “attack surface” of their on-board systems. In security terms, this attack surface—the exposure a system presents in terms of its reachable and exploitable vulnerabilities—determines the ease, or otherwise, with which hackers can take control of a system.

In a car, the remote attack surface includes such things as the vehicle’s on-board diagnostics, Bluetooth and WiFi ports, telematic devices like GPS navigation and cellular radios, plus radio-frequency chips in remote entry keys, tire pressure sensors and the like that communicate wirelessly with transponders connected to the vehicle’s Controller Area Network (CAN).

By functioning as a common communications bus, the CAN’s two-wire network for transmitting digital messages around a vehicle allows manufacturers to add features and accessories to a vehicle simply by plugging the additional components into the bus, instead of having to run fresh wires or install additional networks. That makes wiring the innards of cars easier and cheaper.

But by multiplexing signals from different devices on the CAN’s common communications channel, it is possible for vulnerabilities associated with an attack surface to talk to components that perform actual driving functions. For instance, it is not far-fetched to imagine an on-board cellular connection (such as GM’s OnStar network) being tricked into allowing hackers to inject malicious code into ECUs managing, say, the steering, braking or engine controls—courtesy of the shared CAN bus.

By far the best study to date of vehicle security is a survey carried out by Charlie Miller, formerly with the National Security Agency and now at Twitter, and Chris Valasek of IOActive, a security services company based in Seattle. The two researchers examined the remote attack surfaces of 20 popular models on American roads. In each case, they traced the network architecture along with all the computer-controlled features of the vehicles involved. In doing so, they were able to draw conclusions about how vulnerable, in principle, the various vehicles were to remote attack.

Of the half dozen attack surfaces Dr Miller and Mr Valasek analysed in detail for each vehicle, the most vulnerable in all instances turned out to be the on-board Bluetooth feature (“a very reliable entry point for attackers”), a car’s cellular radio service (“the holy grail of automotive attack”), and any browser-based internet connection available (“widely understood by attackers”).

The three most hackable vehicles—in terms of how their network architectures permitted attack surfaces to talk to components performing physical actions—were the 2014 Jeep Cherokee, the 2015 Cadillac Escalade and the 2014 Infiniti Q50. This being litigious America, the automakers concerned quickly found themselves in the legal cross-hairs, as owners sought financial compensation for their vehicles’ perceived vulnerabilities.

One conclusion of the study is that, like computer networks, vehicles need layered defenses, so that penetrating to the heart of the system, though not impossible, becomes increasingly tedious and costly for an attacker. Another obvious suggestion is that automotive networks like the CAN bus, along with its local interconnections, should be designed in a way that isolates ECUs that talk to the outside world from those that control critical functions within the vehicle.

Ultimately, of course, cars are going to need some method of detecting cyber-attacks, and to have the means to neutralize them. In one important way, threat detection is easier in cars than in the networks used in offices. On a CAN bus, for instance, only ECUs are engaged in swapping messages with one another; no gullible humans are involved—as they are in offices—to open back doors unwittingly to phishing attacks from cyber-crooks masquerading as colleagues or customers.

That makes it easier to spot anomalies caused by an attacker’s injected code. To capture the attention of a targeted ECU, a bogus message has to be sent at a much higher rate—anything up to 100 times normal—in order to swamp legitimate messages being received by the processor. A simple device that plugs into a car’s diagnostic port can easily detect such exceptional traffic and instruct the CAN bus to ditch it.

That is a good start. But it does not mean cars can be made immune to cyber-attack. There is no such thing as absolute security. As Dr Miller and Mr Valasek note, even firms like Microsoft and Google have been unable to make a web browser that cannot go a few months without needing some critical security patch. Cars are no different. All the more so once they start communicating with one another, as well as with traffic signs and other roadside equipment.

Consumers Spend 85% Of Time On Smartphones In Apps, But Only 5 Apps See Heavy Use

As reported by TechCrunch: New research on mobile behavior released today points to the growing struggle that app businesses face in establishing themselves as a must-have download on users’ smartphones. Today’s consumers are spending over 85 percent of their time on their smartphones using native applications, but the majority of their time – 84 percent – is spent using just five non-native apps they’ve installed from the App Store.

Those five apps will vary from person to person. For some, their top five could include social media or gaming, while others may spend more time in instant messaging.

This data further supports a study Nielsen released earlier this month which also reiterated that there does appear to be an upper limit to how many apps consumers use on a monthly basis. While this new study from Forrester Research examines where consumers spent the majority of their time, Nielsen’s report noted that users would only use 26 to 27 apps per month in total.

The new data on app usage comes from a Forrester Research study that analyzed 2,000 U.S. smartphone owners to better determine how users engage with the apps they have on their phones. According to the findings, communication and social apps account for the most usage – with a combined 21 percent of all smartphone minutes. Text messaging and voice calls were not counted, but would add to this total if they had been.

This trend also means that a small handful of companies are now dominating app usage. Facebook, for example, accounts for 13 percent of U.S. minutes spent on apps, followed closely by Google at 12 percent. Other big-name tech companies also see heavy usage, including Amazon (3 percent), Apple (3 percent), Yahoo (2 percent), Microsoft (1 percent) and eBay (1 percent.)

As a category, social networks claim 14 percent of all smartphone usage – or more than 25 minutes per day. Facebook is the leader here, with 1.25 billion mobile monthly active users.

[Note on the above chart: the large grouping referred to as “major category leader” includes the other leading apps that do not fall within the 6 companies evaluated for the research, such as Twitter, Firefox, The Weather Channel, etc.]

Meanwhile, U.S. users spend 4.8 percent of their smartphone minutes in instant messaging apps like WhatsApp, but globally, this figure is even higher. Worldwide, apps like WeChat, KakaoTalk, Line and others are seeing users spending 50 to 200 minutes with them per week. In the U.S., however, the phone’s native messaging application sees higher usage than IM’ing apps, accounting for 8 percent of minutes spent on smartphones.

Media is another popular category of apps with weather, news and sports accounting for 3 percent of all usage minutes. News leads here with a median of 11 minutes, 51 seconds per day. Mobile users’ interest and heavy use of news apps is likely why Apple decided to enter the space itself with the launch of the forthcoming “News” app which will be installed by default with iOS 9.

Games and Music account for 6 percent of smartphone usage minutes, while streaming video represents 9 percent of minutes. Here, YouTube leads with 43 percent adoption, but Netflix has the highest median use at 31 minutes, 33 seconds. Books and magazines represent 2 percent of smartphone usage minutes, which is actually fairly high given their long-form nature. Other categories like Shopping (5 percent), Maps/Navigation (6 percent), Email (non-native, 4 percent), Productivity (3 percent) are also popular.

Based on this data and other findings in the new report, Forrester advises businesses to design their apps only for their best and most loyal or frequent customers – because those are the only one who will bother to download, configure and use the application regularly. For instance, most retailers say their mobile web sales outweigh their app sales, the report says. Meanwhile, outside of these larger players, many customers will use mobile websites instead of a business’ native app.

Cambridge Brings the Internet of Things (IoT) to Livestock

As reported by Business Weekly: Cambridge Industrial Design (CID) has created the ‘udderly’ exceptional device for Irish client True North Technologies and it is now being trialed.

Packed with an array of sensors it tracks a cow’s every movement and is able to match this to particular behavior – such as grazing, socializing or simply lying down, chewing the cud. This information is then sent in real-time through mobile GSM networks to a central hub.

There it is analysed in conjunction with other data such as milk yields and grass length, which is monitored by the Grass Hopper measuring device, also designed by CID. enabling farmers to ensure that cows are grazing in the best area by creating location-based virtual electric fences using the cow bell collars, which confine them to specific pastures.

These geo-fences can be easily and remotely changed depending on grazing conditions – further increasing efficiency as they remove the time and manpower needed to manually put up and take down physical electric fences.

The collar is part of a pan-European project that also involves Teagasc (the Irish government agricultural research agency), Institute d’Laval in France and Agroscope, Switzerland.

Tim Evans, design director at CID, explained how Heidi met hi-tech.  He said: “Wearables, such as the Apple Watch, may be stealing the headlines, but tracking the behavior of cows is equally vital to farmers who want to best manage their grazing.

“In creating this sensor we took our inspiration from the traditional alpine cow bell, using a rounded shape to minimize the size and maximize strength. This ensures it is rugged enough to cope with being bashed against fences and feeding troughs, and simple enough for farmers to remove for cleaning and recharging.

The result moves wearable technology forward – and the cows think it is "udderly brilliant.”

Cambridge Industrial Design was also responsible for the manufacture of the cow bells, using one of its network of trusted suppliers. Created from super tough glass-filled nylon, they were manufactured using the Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) 3D printing process to enable fast prototyping and revisions during the field trial phase of the project.

“Contrary to popular belief, agriculture is increasingly reliant on technology to maximize yields and ensure the highest standards of animal welfare,” said Patrick Halton, managing and technology director, True North Technologies. “By combining our strengths in GPS and location technology with Cambridge Industrial Design’s skills we have been able to create an innovative, tough product that will help dairy farmers to optimize their operations.”

The cow bell is one example of Cambridge Industrial Design’s growing portfolio of wearable/location based designs. These also include the SureFlap pet door, which opens when triggered by the animal’s microchip, and the compact xNAV navigation module for drones.

The number of dairy cows in the EU 28 in 2013 stood at 23.475 million.  The UK had an estimated 1.84 million dairy cows as of June 2014.

There are over 65,000 dairy farms in the United States with an average herd size of about 100 per farm, with a median size of about 900 cows.  Pennsylvania for example, has 8,500 dairy farms with an estimated 555,000 dairy cows.  Milk produced in Pennsylvania yields an annual revenue of about US$1.5 billion.  

World wide the number of dairy cows in 2012 was estimated to be over 269 million, India having the largest number at an estimated 45.2 million.  Total world milk production is estimated to grow from 692 million tons in 2010 to 827 million tons in 2020, a 19% increase.

eLoran Signal Tests Start, Could Demonstrate GPS Backup Alternative

As reported by InsideGNSS: With worries mounting about jamming and other disruptions of GPS signals, officials took a step Friday (June 19, 2015) toward possibly establishing a backup for satellite navigation users in the U.S.

Congressman Frank LoBiondo, R-N.J., flipped a switch at a decommissioned Loran-C station in Wildwood, New Jersey, to begin transmission of an enhanced Loran or eLoran signal. The signal, which is part of a year long test, will be receivable up to a 1,000 miles away and will help establish whether the old facilities can become the foundation foe a reliable eLoran network to provide positioning, navigation, and, perhaps most importantly, timing (PNT) information in the United States.

Signals from the GPS constellation currently provide precise timing information essential to a wide range of critical infrastructure including the power grid, cell phone network, financial systems, and the Internet. Because of this and other GPS dependencies, U.S. officials are weighing a proposal to upgrade the now idle Loran-C installations to broadcast eLoran signals across the country.

Last month, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) signed a cooperative research and development agreement (CRADA) with Harris Corporation and UrsaNav to evaluate and demonstrate such a network. The Wildwood signal is part of that effort.

The powerful signals from an eLoran ground-based radio navigation system are widely seen as a cost effective backup for GPS and have been endorsed by leading PNT experts including the National Space-Based PNT Advisory Board. ELoran signals would be very difficult to jam and are able to reach underground, underwater, through buildings and into other obscured areas where the GPS cannot penetrate. GPS and eLoran operate on different frequencies and share no common failure points.

“eLoran is an ideal technology to complement GPS for critical, resilient and assured PNT,” said Ed Sayadian, then-vice president of Civil & Aerospace Systems at Exelis, which signed the CRADA in May and has since been acquired by Harris. “ELoran is a difficult to disrupt technology that offers PNT and wide area broadcast data capabilities indoors, in underground locations and other GPS-denied environments.”

“From international commerce to simple driving directions, GPS has transformed the way we live our lives and conduct business. Yet disruptions are increasing as demand skyrockets,” LoBiondo told Inside GNSS in a statement. “From my perspective on the House Coast Guard & Maritime Transportation Subcommittee and the Armed Services Committee, eLoran is the perfect complement to GPS with significant benefits and opportunities in both commercial and private applications, including unmanned aerial systems, which are currently being tested in my South Jersey district. It is clear the U.S. will continue to be the leader in global positioning technology with the deployment of eLoran.”

Harris and UrsaNav, a leading supplier of eLoran technology, equipment, and services, will work to assess the capabilities and potential utilization methods of the enhanced system — identifying strengths, capacities, and potential vulnerabilities of the technology.  The Wildwood signal will be turned on and off over the next year as part of the testing process.

“The recently released 2014 Federal Radionavigation Plan states that it is a policy objective of the U.S. government not to be critically dependent upon a single system for PNT,” said UrsaNav President Chuck Schue.

“The new Cooperative Research and Development Agreement between the DHS, USCG, Harris, and UrsaNav allows us to demonstrate a second, complementary system for PNT: eLoran,” Schue continued. “It was an honor to be here today as Congressman LoBiondo threw the switch that put eLoran signals back on air in the United States for the first time in several years. Although these signals today are only for test purposes, they are a testament to our government’s desire to make PNT an assured service.”

Plasma Resonance Could Overcome Radio Silence for Returning Spacecraft

As reported by GizMag: Returning spacecraft hit the atmosphere at over five times the speed of sound, generating a sheath of superheated ionized plasma that blocks radio communications during the critical minutes of reentry. It's a problem that's vexed space agencies for decades, but researchers at China's Harbin Institute of Technology are developing a new method of piercing the plasma and maintaining communications.

According to physicists Xiaotian Gao and Binhao Jiang of the Habin Institute, by redesigning the spacecraft antenna, it may be possible to maintain communications by setting up resonance in the plasma sheath. Essentially, this involves turning the layer between the spacecraft and the sheath into a capacitor in the antenna circuit. This causes the sheath to act as an inductor. Together, they create a resonant circuit.  

"Once the resonance is reached, the energy can be exchanged between them steadily and losslessly, like real capacitance and inductance do in a circuit," says Gao. "As a result, the electromagnetic radiation can propagate through the matched layer and the plasma sheath like they do not exist."

According to the researchers, the tricky bit is to keep the matched layer and the plasma sheath smaller than the length of the radio waves. However, Gao believes that it's possible to tune the craft's antenna to compensate

"We don't need to know exactly the properties of the plasma layer, but we need to know the ranges for these properties," says Gao. "The matched layer will be adjusted by an automatic control system, so we only need to know the ranges to make sure this whole system can work appropriately."

This isn't the first attempt to solve the blackout problem, but the team says that this is a lighter and simpler method that doesn't rely on the shape of the spacecraft to work. The researchers also say that the method could be applied not only to returning spacecraft, but also future hypersonic passenger aircraft, missiles, and ICBMs

Source: Journal of Applied Physics

Samsung Makes Big Trucks Transparent in the Name of Road Safety

As reported by The Verge: Back in 2009, Russian design house Art Lebedev introduced the dramatically titled Transparentius concept for improving road safety. It was remarkably simple: put a camera on the front of large, slow-moving trucks and connect it to video displays on the back, thereby informing trailing drivers whether it's safe to overtake the big rig. That's the exact same idea that Samsung is now pursuing with a new prototype truck. Making use of its abundance of outdoor displays, the Korean company has stitched together a video wall of four displays at the rear of the truck, which transmits video captured by a wireless camera at the front.

Samsung says it's now working to obtain regulatory approval for the deployment of its so-called Safety Truck, however the idea doesn't appear economically practical at large scale. The camera might be cheap and simple enough to install, but four displays per truck would be a major investment for any transport company to make, especially since it wouldn't lead to any direct financial benefit. Still, it's impressive that Samsung has managed to overcome the technical challenges (like solar glare) of realizing this otherwise laudable idea.

A more realistic solution to improving information while driving will be provided by Vehicle-to-Vehicle Communication (V2V) systems, which are expected to arrive in US cars next year. This is a form of networked intelligence whereby your car transmits data about its position, direction, and speed, and receives the same about cars around it. It can thus issue alerts about unsafe driving by others or notify of any collisions ahead even before any other drivers have had the time to react. In that way, V2V does even more than just give you vision the way Samsung's Safety Truck would, though making big trucks transparent is undoubtedly a much cooler application of technology.