The Future of Photography: Drones

As reported by The Atlantic: Drones are being used to film ski and snowboarding events at the Winter Olympics in Sochi, as you may have noticed. But the use of unmanned aerial vehicles for sports photography is far from a passing gimmick. In fact, you should expect more and more athletic events to be filmed by drone.

Remo Masina isn't involved in shooting the Olympics, but he's already familiar with drones' finesse for filming winter sports: He uses them to film skiers for commercials. The drones are quieter and cheaper than a manned helicopter (though they can still cost up to $40,000), he told the Associated Press, and they allow the filmmaker to get much closer to his subject.

Drones are also more flexible than cable-suspended camera systems, which are also present at the Winter Olympics. While live transmission is tricky—it requires an extra transmitter, which weighs on the drone—Masina says he's flown such devices at over 40 mph while delivering live, high-definition video.

Masina says that drones are "for sure" the future of sports broadcasting. UK company HeliPOV, which provides drones on which to mount existing cameras, has some great examples of just how cool the resulting video can be:

It won't take long for drones to be fully integrated into broadcasting: One company is already prototyping drones that automatically follow a person from a few feet away—perfect, they say, for downhill skiing. And drones are also making appearances at events smaller than the Olympics.

There are limitations: In many countries, drone regulations are still lagging behind the times, and it might not be clear to a broadcaster that they can be used legally. Then there are concerns about crashes. But with the risks low and potential benefits high, it could be that sports photography will be one of the first uses of drones to go mainstream.

Expect similar kinds of photography drones to be used for near-real-time GIS street level mapping, and for aerial maps typically provided by Earth satellite systems:  Drone generated street views for both indoor, and outdoor applications are not far away.

Delta 4 Rocket Boosts GPS Navigation Satellite Into Space

As reported by CBS News: A towering United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket thundered to life and climbed into space Thursday evening, boosting an upgraded Global Positioning System navigation satellite into orbit.

Under a clear, moonless sky, the 205-foot-tall rocket's hydrogen-fueled RS-68 main engine throttled up at 8:59 p.m. EST, followed five seconds later by ignition of two strap-on solid-fuel boosters.

Trailing a brilliant plume of fiery exhaust visible for miles around, the Delta 4 quickly vaulted away from launch complex 37 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, accelerating to the east with 1.2 million pounds of thrust. 

The launching was delayed 19 minutes because of concern about higher-than-allowable levels of solar radiation. But the readings dropped back within limits before the launch window closed, and mission managers cleared the rocket for flight. 

The climb out went smoothly, and the solid-fuel boosters burned out and fell away about a minute and 40 seconds after liftoff. The first stage followed suit 2 1/2 minutes later and the rocket continued toward space under the power of a single hydrogen-fueled Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne RL10B-2 engine.

The second stage engine shut down as expected about 12 minutes and 14 seconds after launch, putting the rocket and its GPS payload into an initial orbit with a high point of around 215 miles and a low point of just 100 miles or so.

Two subsequent engine firings were planned to boost the satellite into the desired 12,500-mile-high circular orbit tilted 55 degrees to the equator.

The Boeing-built Global Positioning System 2F-5 satellite was expected to be released from the Delta 4 second stage three hours and 33 minutes into the mission. 

The satellite is the first of three GPS navigation beacons scheduled for launch through July to replace older spacecraft in the constellation. The 2F-5 satellite is the fifth of 12 planned "block 2" spacecraft that make up the core of the current GPS fleet.

Equipped with ultra-accurate atomic clocks, Global Positioning System satellites circle the globe in six orbital planes. Using an active constellation of more than two dozen satellites, at least four GPS spacecraft are visible in the sky from any point on the Earth's surface, transmitting location and timing signals that allow compact receivers to compute position, altitude and velocity. 

An encrypted band gives military users position accuracy to within a few feet while an unencrypted public channel provides slightly less precise data to a wide variety of devices, from smart phones to automobile-mounted GPS mapping units.

The block 2F satellites are more accurate than earlier spacecraft and feature new channels to support commercial and civil aviation, more easily upgradeable flight computers and beefed up anti-jamming hardware.

The satellite being replaced by the GPS 2F-5 spacecraft was launched in 1997 and is well past its design life.

"The satellite we are replacing is over 16 years old and its design life was 7.5 years," Col. William Cooley, Global Positioning Systems director, told reporters before launch.

"Sometimes we joke those are getting old enough to vote and some are old enough to drink, and they're well past their design life. The oldest is 23 years. We've gotten remarkable performance out of them, but they are aging."

Why Your Car Won’t Get Remote Software Updates Anytime Soon

As reported by MIT Technology Review: When Toyota recalled over two million cars last week because of flaws with antilock braking systems and other problems, the fix was simple—a few software updates.

The implementation of that fix is far from simple. Every one of those cars has to be taken into a dealership to have the new software installed, an expensive process that can take months. Cars that haven’t been fixed could, in some cases, suddenly stall and crash.

There is an alternative—the same sort of remote software updates used for PCs and smart phones. Indeed, one automaker, Tesla Motors, already provides what it calls “over-the-air updates,” which allowed it to execute a recent software fix without requiring anybody to bring in their cars (see “Tesla Motors’ Over-the-Air Repairs Are the Way Forward”).

Increasingly, many cars have wireless connections, for infotainment and communications; and some automakers already use wireless connections to add software to their cars at the factory. Even so, it will take some time for major automakers to implement over-the-air updates, both because they’re worried about security and because they might face resistance from dealers.

Software is rapidly taking over not only the entertainment console in cars, but also basic functions such as steering, braking, and acceleration, as more cars come with features such as adaptive cruise control and automated parallel parking. This can make it easier to diagnose and fix problems, but it also increases the risk for software bugs or even malicious attacks that might cause serious injury.

Software-focused recalls are increasingly common. In Toyota’s case, its software updates were designed to fix a computer problem that could disable antilock braking and other safety systems, or cause the hybrid propulsion system on its Prius vehicles to shut down. Last month, GM recalled 370,000 trucks at risk of overheating and catching fire, a problem it’s solving with a dealer-installed software patch.

In addition to potentially improving safety by delivering fixes faster, remote updates could save automakers money. “It’s very expensive to update the software when you have to bring it into the dealership,” says Andre Weimerskirch, a research scientist at the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute.
Greg Schroeder, a senior research engineer at the Center for Automotive Research, says there’s “considerable interest” in the auto industry in developing remote updates. But he says most automakers are still in the early stage of testing the technology.

Toyota, in fact, says it recognizes that remote updates are technically possible, and could be convenient. But despite the inconvenience of the current approach, it’s decided not to do them for now because of “security challenges.”

These challenges are not small. Researchers have shown that existing wireless connections can allow them to hack into cars and take control of car locks and brakes; and this summer hackers demonstrated how to take over a car and steer it, slam on the brakes, or tell drivers that a nearly empty gas tank is full. Charlie Miller, a computer security expert for Twitter, is one of the hackers who took control of two cars this summer to uncover vulnerabilities. He says that remote updates will add a new target for hackers. But he downplays the risk, noting that no malicious hackers have taken over cars, in part because there’s no economic reason to do so. And he says remote updating systems can be made secure—“It’s possible to screw it up. But it’s certainly possible to do it right,” he says.

There is another reason automakers are moving slowly. Unlike Tesla, most automakers depend on independent dealers to sell their cars, and dealers have good reason to oppose automatic updates that would take them out of the loop. They get much of their revenue from servicing cars, says Joachim Taiber, a research professor in automotive engineering at Clemson University. And having drivers come into the dealership also helps dealers sell more cars.  He says Tesla may have been more willing to do automatic updates in part because it doesn't work with independent dealers.

Even if the change is slow, Miller says, remote software updates for cars are inevitable. As the amount of software in a car—and the potential for bugs—increases, remote updates “are going to have to happen,” he says. With the current approach of bringing cars into dealerships, “It can be months before software gets updated. It might never get updated,” he says. “That leaves a lot of cars in a vulnerable state.”

GPS Upgrade Set To Launch On Replacement Mission

As reported by USA Today: Leaders of the Air Force's Global Positioning System program joke that some of their 36 orbiting satellites have nearly reached voting age, and others are old enough to drink.

"We have a lot of satellites that are well past their design life," said Col. William Cooley, head of the GPS directorate at the Air Force's Space and Missile Systems Center in Los Angeles. "We're trying to prevent any sort of outage and (have) some backup capability on orbit."

With that in mind, the Air Force plans to launch three new GPS satellites from Cape Canaveral during the next five months to replace some of the constellation's more senior members.

The youth infusion starts with Thursday's planned 8:40 p.m. liftoff of a United Launch Alliance Delta IV rocket from Launch Complex 37. There's an 80 percent chance of favorable weather during the 19-minute launch window.

The 3,600-pound, Boeing-built satellite atop the rocket is the fifth of 12 in a new generation known as "IIF" (Two-F).

It is slated to replace a spacecraft old enough to drive in Florida, having reached its Sweet 16 — more than double its expected seven-and-a-half-year lifetime.

Of the 36 GPS satellites orbiting roughly 11,000 miles high, 31 are part of an active constellation providing precision position, navigation and timing information used for everything from guiding weapons to getting driving directions.

The remainder are in "residual" status, able to be called into service if necessary, until they finally peter out.

Eight of the active group are part of the oldest "IIA" batch. Launched between 1990 and 1997, the oldest IIA satellite is 23.

"We've really gotten remarkable performance out of them, but they are aging, and there are some components that simply wear out," said Cooley. "Those are the most fragile."

Thursday's launch was delayed from October while the Air Force and ULA continued to investigate a fuel leak that resulted in low thrust by a Delta IV upper stage engine during the successful October 2012 launch of another GPS satellite.

"These additional investigation activities have confirmed that there is not a systemic issue with the Delta IV second stage (Aerojet Rocketdyne) RL 10B-2 engine," said Jim Sponnick, ULA's Atlas and Delta programs vice president.

The investigation — expected to formally wrap up in April — also validated steps already taken to ensure the engine system and related rocket systems are "pristine and very clean," Sponnick said.

Those steps included more inspections and adjustments to how the upper stage engine system is operated early in the flight, including the way it is purged and chilled in preparation for the first ignition.

After the engine problem, three Delta IV rockets flew last year without incident.

The 206-foot, liquid-fueled Delta IV about to launch is in its "Medium-plus" configuration, with two ATK solid rocket motors assisting the first-stage booster.

The rocket is scheduled to deploy the GPS satellite more than three-and-a-half hours after launch.

Government Drops Plan To Collect License Tag Data

As reported by Yahoo News: The Homeland Security Department abruptly reversed course Wednesday and dropped plans to ask a private company to give the government access to a nationwide database of license plate tracking information.

Secretary Jeh Johnson directed that a contract proposal issued last week be canceled.

The proposal said Immigration and Customs Enforcement was planning to use the license plate data in pursuit of criminal immigrants and others sought by authorities.

Gillian Christensen, an ICE spokeswoman, said the contract solicitation was posted "without the awareness of ICE leadership."

"While we continue to support a range of technologies to help meet our law enforcement mission, this solicitation will be reviewed to ensure the path forward appropriately meets our operational needs," Christensen said.

The department said Johnson has ordered a review of the proposal.

The contract notice came amid growing concerns about government surveillance of U.S. citizens but didn't address potential privacy consequences.

Before the notice was canceled, Christensen said the database "could only be accessed in conjunction with ongoing criminal investigations or to locate wanted individuals."

Law enforcement has been using license plate readers for several years, but privacy advocates have raised concerns that the unchecked collection of such information could allow for the tracking of an average citizen's every movement. Lawmakers around the country, meanwhile, have been wrestling with whether or how to control the collection and use of license plate data.

At least 14 states are considering measures that would curb surveillance efforts, including the use of license plate readers.

License plate readers — essentially cameras that snap rapid-fire pictures of license plates and vehicles as they pass — are in use in a host of locations, by private companies and law enforcement. But it's not just the license plate number that gets recorded. The readers — whether they are mounted to police cars, traffic lights or toll booths — record the date, time and location of the vehicle when the picture was taken.

According to the contract proposal, the government wanted "a close-up of the plate and a zoomed out image of the vehicle."

The Homeland Security Department also wanted instant and around-the-clock access to the records and is asking for whoever wins the contract to make the information available through a smartphone app. It is not clear from the contract notice how long individual records would be kept or what other government agencies may have access to the trove of records.

Jennifer Lynch, a senior staff attorney with the San Francisco-based civil liberties group Electronic Frontier Foundation, said those unknowns represented serious privacy concerns.

"The base level concern is that license plate data is location data, and location data is very revealing," Lynch said. "It can tell you a lot about a person's life: where they go, who they associate with, what kind of religion they practice, what doctors they visit."

In 2012, the American Civil Liberties Union criticized the collection of license plate scanner data and warned that millions of records were being collected with little or no safeguards for people's privacy.

Catherine Crump, an ACLU lawyer, said Wednesday she was pleased to hear that the department has canceled the contract proposal but still worried about that it might be brought back to life at some point.

"While we are heartened that it looks as though the plan is off the table for now; it is still unexplained why the proposal was put forward and why it has been withdrawn," Crump said.

The government's contract proposal was published amid revelations of surveillance programs run by the National Security Agency. Privacy advocates have argued that NSA phone data collection programs and other surveillance programs are gobbling up massive amounts of information about U.S. citizens who have no ties to criminals or terrorists, which the government has said the programs are designed to target.

Classified NSA documents, leaked to news organizations, showed the NSA was collecting telephone records, emails and video chats of millions of Americans who were not suspected of a crime.

5G Service On Your 4G Phone?

As reported by IEEE Spectrum:
A new San Francisco-based start-up, Artemis Networks, announced today that it plans to commercialize its “pCell” technology, a novel wireless transmission scheme that could eliminate network congestion and provide faster, more reliable data connections. And the best part? It could work on your existing 4G LTE phone.

If it proves capable of scaling, pCell could radically change the way wireless networks operate, essentially replacing today’s congested cellular systems with an entirely new architecture that combines signals from multiple distributed antennas to create a tiny pocket of reception around every wireless device. Each pocket could use the full bandwidth of spectrum available to the network, making the capacity of the system “effectively unlimited,” says Steve Perlman, Artemis’s CEO.

First introduced in 2011 under the name DIDO (for distributed input, distributed output), pCell seems almost too fantastic to believe. And no doubt Artemis will have plenty of critics to pacify and kinks to smooth out before operators like Verizon or AT&T pay serious attention. But there are at least a couple reasons why the idea might have some real legs.

First, it’s an elegant solution to a persistent global problem. Wireless traffic is more than doubling each year and cellular operators are struggling to keep up with that growth. “Demand for spectrum has outpaced our ability to innovate,” says Perlman, whose past entrepreneurial ventures include the cloud-based gaming service OnLive and WebTV (now MSN TV), which he sold to Microsoft in 1997.

The reason isn’t for a lack of ideas. The wireless industry is pursuing plenty of them, including small cells, millimeter-wave spectrum, fancy interference coordination, and multiple antenna schemes such as MIMO. But Perlman thinks many of these fixes are just clever kludges for an outdated system. The real bottleneck, he argues, is the fundamental design of the cellular network. “There is no solution if you stick with cells,” he says.

What’s wrong with cells? In a word: interference. Base stations and wireless devices must carefully coordinate their transmission power and spectrum use so that they don’t jam one another’s signals. This ability to divide spectrum resources among many users has been at the heart of mobile systems pretty much since they emerged in the 1980s. It’s also the reason why data rates tend to plummet when many users try to use the same cells, such as in New York City’s Times Square.

Artemis is approaching wireless transmission in a completely new way. Basically, its pCell technology could allow each wireless device to use the full bandwidth of the network regardless of how many users join and how tightly they’re packed together. It’s as if your phone were continuously the sole user of its own personal cell. Hence the name pCell.

To understand how such a system would work, let’s start with the basic set-up. To deploy the technology, an operator would first need a cloud-based data center—a rack or many racks of connected servers that would do all the heavy computation for the system. The operator would then need to install radio antennas where its customers are located, such as in homes, businesses, and city streets. Although these access points might look like small cells (Artemis’s, pictured below, are about the size of a hat box), they’re unlike ordinary base stations. “They’re dumb devices,” Perlman says, serving merely as waypoints for relaying and deciphering signals. Each one could be placed anywhere that’s convenient and would link back to the data center through a fiber or wireless line-of-site Internet connection.

Now suppose that your phone wants to connect with this pCell network. It would simply send out an access request as it normally does. And all of the “dumb” antennas in your vicinity—let’s say there are 10 of them—would pick up those signals and relay them to the data center.

That’s where things get interesting. Say, for example, you play a YouTube video. The pCell data center would request the video from Google’s servers, and then stream it to your phone through those 10 antennas. But here’s the key innovation: No one antenna would send the complete stream or even part of the stream.

Instead, the data center would use the positions of the antennas and the channel characteristics of the system, such as multipath and fading, to calculate 10 unique waveforms, each transmitted by a different antenna.

Although illegible when they leave the antennas, these waveforms would add up to the desired signal at your phone, exploiting interference rather than trying to avoid it.

And as you move about, and as other devices connect to and drop off the network, the data center would continuously recalculate new waveforms so that each device receives the correct aggregate signal. “There’s no handoffs and one has to take turns,” Perlman says. “You could literally light up a whole city using all the same spectrum.”

If pCell technology does take off in the next few years, it will likely be because it’s compatible with 4G LTE phones. It does this by simulating LTE base stations in software. The data center would use these virtual radios to inform its waveform calculations, essentially tricking an LTE phone into believing it’s connected to a physical base station. “Your phone thinks its the only phone in the cell and is sitting right next to the tower,” Perlman says. The same technique could also work for other wireless standards, such as 3G and Wi-Fi, he says.

So will operators adopt pCell? It’s unlikely that LTE carriers would replace their networks any time soon, even if Artemis’s technology proves to be the “seed change” Perelman believes it is. But its compatibility with LTE changes the game. For instance, operators could deploy pCell antennas in congested hot spots such as airports, sports stadiums, and city centers—places where they’re already investing in new infrastructure.

Users could roam seamlessly between the two networks without having to buy new phones or switch service plans.

Artemis says it plans to license pCell to wireless carriers and Internet service providers. The company is now beginning large-scale trials in San Francisco and expects the technology will be ready for commercial rollouts by the end of 2014. It will be fascinating to see how its ambitions pan out.

An App That Promises To Help Get You Out of Parking Tickets

As reported by The Atlantic Cities: David Hegarty insists that parking regulations are not what they seem, if you believe they dictate indisputable prohibitions: No parking during Monday morning street cleaning. No parking after 6 p.m. without a residential parking permit. Two-hour parking only during stadium events.

Chances are, the law actually says much more than that, with room for error and interpretation. In reality, you cannot park on the street during Monday morning street cleaning, assuming that your car is within 100 feet of a mandated sign informing you of said street cleaning, assuming that sign isn't blocked by an overgrown oak, assuming the ticket recorded your VIN correctly, assuming the officer who gave it to you was right that it was, in fact, Monday morning.

"What I always tell people is that the parking regulations aren’t black-and-white," says Hegarty, the co-creator of a shrewd new app that aims to help users wrangle out of parking tickets (seemingly unjust parking tickets, that is). "There’s not like a manual in City Hall that says 'these are the parking violations.' Ordinances get passed, statutes get passed." Regulations pile up on top of each other. They come down from the city and the state. "It’s actually ferociously complicated. Each ordinance has 30 to 40 lines of fine print, written in non-clear legalese."

The app – simply called Fixed – navigates all that fine print for you, with the help of legal researchers (mostly law students on contract). It's so far in beta in San Francisco with fewer than 1,000 users. Hegarty and co-creators David Sanghera and DJ Burdick are hoping to have it in the iPhone app store by the end of the month, where it will gradually become available to a wait list of some 25,000 San Franciscans. From there, Fixed is angling to move to other cities, where the idea at its core – leveraging technology to lower the burden of accessing laws and interacting with government – will test public agencies that field these appeals.

Cities, after all, love this kind of innovation when it helps small businesses to apply for a permit, or neighbors to plan a block party. But when it helps drivers outsmart their parking citations?

The app works like this: Users snap a photo of their parking ticket. Based on the type of citation (street cleaning, expired meter, etc.), the app responds with several suggested errors commonly associated with the violation. Was the street cleaning sign visible? Did the parking officer record your VIN number correctly? Was the meter broken? Based on the answers, the app prompts users to collect additional photographic evidence from the scene. Then it compiles a letter contesting the citation. Users digitally sign the document, and Fixed (snail)mails it to the city on their behalf.

The appeals process in San Francisco can have up to three rounds, all of which Fixed can handle for you, save the last-ditch confrontation in court if users are still unhappy with the decision (Hegarty hasn't figured out yet if that step requires a licensed attorney). Fixed handles all of the correspondence. The app only charges users if it successfully contests a citation, taking 25 percent of the original fine.

According to the city's own data, San Francisco issued about 1.5 million parking citations last year. About 5 percent of them were contested, and 34 percent of those were thrown out. Hegarty figures that's the low end for the app's success rate, given that it will use more in-depth research on parking regulations than most people marshal on their own.

For now, Fixed largely relies on human eyes to assess the tickets. But the more citations Fixed processes, the better it will become at automatically triaging them and handicapping the errors common to each citation type. Eventually, Hegarty hopes the app will be able to predict the errors and citation types most common to individual streets.

Already, the app flags contested tickets into four categories of protest. There are factual errors – maybe the officer misinterpreted the day on the sign. There are legal errors, perhaps when a car is parked more than 100 feet from an applicable sign. There are procedural errors (maybe the officer wrote you a ticket before the street cleaner came through instead of afterward). And then there are what Hegarty calls "appeals to fairness." He got a ticket once for having no residential parking permit, despite the fact that he had demonstrably applied for one two months earlier.

No matter how sophisticated the app becomes, it will always require local contractors in new cities to pour through parking regulations. 

"It’s not as much work as you'd think it is," Hegarty says. "We've found that a legal researcher with about 20 hours of work can cover the top 10 citations for a city, which account for about 95 percent of tickets."

Fixed also wants to make that legal research open-source, so that any determined private citizen can contribute to it. In that way, the app may tap into a deeper angst over parking tickets – not simply that most of us hate to pay them, but that in many places they've come to feel like a municipal racket.

"The city has been treating parking funds as a revenue source, and we don’t think that’s right," Hegarty says. "Parking fines are meant to be a deterrent so people don’t do adverse behavior that effects everyone. The reason people feel so unfairly treated by them is that they become a revenue source for the city, that they jack up the price of them every year."

He insists that the app isn't meant to be adversarial to City Hall, although it could clearly drive up the case load of municipal employees who field contested tickets. It's tough to argue, though, that the public shouldn't get to leverage the fine print in city regulations with the same ease that bureaucrats can.