Postal Service Geo-Fence Tech Promising, but Not Quite Ready

As reported by Fedscoop: Geo-fence technology could make the U.S. Postal Service more efficient, but it’s not quite ready for prime time, according to an August 14 report from the USPS inspector general.

Geo-fence technology leverages global positioning system signals to create virtual geographic zones that ensure delivery personnel stay on schedule and on their routes.

According to the IG, the Postal Service is currently developing and testing a delivery management system (DMS) that includes geo-fence technology to improve efficiency.  Under the system, if a delivery driver ventures from a predetermined route, a supervisor would receive an email or text message alerting them of the deviation.

With this technology, delivery supervisors will be able to analyse weather or not a driver is ahead or behind of schedule on their route.

Geo-fence technology leverages global positioning system signals to create virtual geographic zones that ensure delivery personnel stay on schedule and on their routes.
According to the IG, the Postal Service is currently developing and testing a delivery management system (DMS) that includes geo-fence technology to improve efficiency. Under the system, if a delivery driver ventures from a predetermined route, a supervisor would receive an email or text message alerting them of the deviation.
With this technology, delivery supervisors will be able to analyze whether or not a driver is ahead or behind of schedule on their route.
- See more at: http://fedscoop.com/postal-service-geo-fence-tech-promising-quite-ready/#sthash.UHPdrcMD.dpuf

The IG found, however, that the DMS contained a flaw - if a driver takes on additional stops that are not part of his or her normal route, the data obtained by DMS wasn't correct.  The system would interpret the driver's additional stops and route changes as a deviation from a planned route and deem that driver to be behind schedule even if the additional stops and changes were authorized.  The inaccuracy comes with a variance in the scan data of managed service points (MPSs) as the carrier moves through his or her route.

USPS management planned to address the problem by April; however, according to the IG, as of July the flaw still existed.

“The Postal Service’s planned use of geo-fence technology will increase carrier visibility to aid supervisors in performing street management,” the report said. “Our analysis shows that MSP scan variances would be accurate on regular routes, but inaccurate when there are authorized route deviations.”

The report recommended that the Postal Service modify DMS to capture adjustments for time and location projects if a carrier is assigned an altered route before the system goes national.


According to the report, the Postal Service management agreed with the findings and recommendations. The Postal Service plans to update the software to account for route deviation by Sept. 30.

Geo-fence technology leverages global positioning system signals to create virtual geographic zones that ensure delivery personnel stay on schedule and on their routes.
According to the IG, the Postal Service is currently developing and testing a delivery management system (DMS) that includes geo-fence technology to improve efficiency. Under the system, if a delivery driver ventures from a predetermined route, a supervisor would receive an email or text message alerting them of the deviation.
With this technology, delivery supervisors will be able to analyze whether or not a driver is ahead or behind of schedule on their route.
- See more at: http://fedscoop.com/postal-service-geo-fence-tech-promising-quite-ready/#sthash.UHPdrcMD.dpuf

Geo-fence technology leverages global positioning system signals to create virtual geographic zones that ensure delivery personnel stay on schedule and on their routes.
According to the IG, the Postal Service is currently developing and testing a delivery management system (DMS) that includes geo-fence technology to improve efficiency. Under the system, if a delivery driver ventures from a predetermined route, a supervisor would receive an email or text message alerting them of the deviation.
With this technology, delivery supervisors will be able to analyze whether or not a driver is ahead or behind of schedule on their route.
- See more at: http://fedscoop.com/postal-service-geo-fence-tech-promising-quite-ready/#sthash.UHPdrcMD.dpuf

Geo-fence technology leverages global positioning system signals to create virtual geographic zones that ensure delivery personnel stay on schedule and on their routes.
According to the IG, the Postal Service is currently developing and testing a delivery management system (DMS) that includes geo-fence technology to improve efficiency. Under the system, if a delivery driver ventures from a predetermined route, a supervisor would receive an email or text message alerting them of the deviation.
With this technology, delivery supervisors will be able to analyze whether or not a driver is ahead or behind of schedule on their route.
- See more at: http://fedscoop.com/postal-service-geo-fence-tech-promising-quite-ready/#sthash.UHPdrcMD.dpuf

Amazon Prime Air Drone Development Team Makes Notable Engineering, NASA And Aerospace Hires

As reported by TechCrunch: Something big is going on with Amazon Prime Air, the e-commerce giant’s research project focused on delivering packages in 30 minutes or less using unmanned drones. And it’s not the dubious story about drone testing in India, which frankly, doesn't pass the sniff test in terms of accuracy.

Prime Air is shaping up to be more than a marketing stunt, it seems. The company recently scored a few notable hires for this project, including former aerospace engineers, a NASA astronaut, a number of Microsoft researchers and Bing engineers, and even the co-founder of Keyhole, the original developer of Google Earth (prior to the Google acquisition.)

Prime Air’s more notable hires may not be household names, but are indicative of a project Amazon is taking seriously, after all.

Why “after all?”

Well, because many people didn't buy into the Prime Air hype at first.

In case you missed it back then, Amazon made a splashy announcement about its drone project, Prime Air, just before the Christmas holiday in the U.S. On the biggest online shopping day of the year, Cyber Monday, CBS’s 60 Minutes aired an interview with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, which uncritically, we might add, saw veteran reporter Charlie Rose, smiling, exclaim “oh my God!” as he viewed the Prime Air drones for the first time.

Pundits soon were questioning CBS’ credibility, while some in developer community Hacker News scoffed that Prime Air was “vaporware,” – meaning a nice idea, sure, but one that’s a long time from ever being a reality.

That still may be true, of course, despite all the recent hires.

CBS was simply playing a part in Amazon’s agenda to garner public support for Prime Air, some had said, hoping to force the Federal Aviation Administration’s hand. Also possibly true. The FAA is anti-Prime Air to be sure. This June, it grounded Amazon’s plans, banning package-delivering drones using language aimed at Amazon’s Prime Air program directly.

But with the hires Prime Air has been making, the project seems at least somewhat less vaporous today than in the past, despite the FAA’s decision.


Speeding Things Up?
In July, Amazon hired Prime Air VP of Science Paul Viola, an MIT Ph.D. and former Microsoft researcher who led an engineering group at Bing which used machine learning to make dramatic improvements to Bing’s accuracy and precision. As one source told TechCrunch, under Viola’s supervision from 2010-2011, Bing made several jumps in precision both by its own metrics and Google’s. In fact, the source added, Google even started “war rooms” and ran several emergency sessions devoted to the sudden rise of Bing’s precision at this time.

According to his own LinkedIn page, Viola also led a turnaround of the Bing Ads team, which led to increased revenue.  

Another interesting new hire: Avi Bar-Zeev, now a senior manager at Prime Air. Bar-Zeev co-founded Keyhole, Inc., which Google bought and turned into Google Earth. He also previously worked at Microsoft on a variety of VR/AR, 3D and other hardware and software projects, including what became the Bing iPhone app, Kinect and Xbox, and more.

He also did a brief stint at Amazon, helping the company prototype and sell a new tablet computer in late 2012 to spring 2013, before returning to the company in April of this year to join Prime Air.

Prime Air has also been staffing up with hires from the aerospace industry, with recent additions starting this spring and summer who have aerodynamics and aerospace backgrounds from Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and MIT’s Space Propulsion Lab. Twenty or so interns hail from MIT with backgrounds in engineering or robotics.

And NASA astronaut Neil Woodward joined as a Technical Program Manager, responsible for Flight Test, Safety, Risk Management and Certification efforts in April.

This is in addition to those we already knew about, like Prime Air VP Gur Kimchi, who also served on Waze’s board before the Google acquisition, and Daniel Buchmueller, profiled by Fast Company. And Prime Air director of software development, Severan Rault, hired back in February 2013, who was also previously an architect at Bing, and describes himself as a Prime Air “co-founder.”

His bio says he’s managing a team of 76 engineers, research scientists, and technical product and program managers. Not too shabby for vaporware.

While it will likely be many years before drone delivery is legalized in the U.S., if at all, that hasn't stopped Amazon from investing in the project for when and if that day arrives.

Amazon, of course, wants to speed things up as best it can. Next month, it will flesh out its public policy team with Ben Gielow, previously general counsel for the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, a non-profit technology advocacy group.
The Prime Air team this month also added its own communications lead, previously of Microsoft PR firm Waggener Edstrom, and has its own general counsel.

And as of today, Prime Air is hiring in Seattle, Cambridge, and London, with job listings for research scientists, program managers, flight operations engineers, and more. If Prime Air is vaporware like many claimed following CBS’s original report, it certainly will have been expensive.

Soyuz ST-B Launches with Galileo GNSS Mission

As reported by NASA Spaceflight: An Arianespace Soyuz ST-B has launched two Galileo satellites from the European Spaceport “Centre Spatial Guyanais (CSG)” in Kourou, French Guiana. Following a 24 hour turnaround due to unacceptable weather, the lofting of the two FOC-M1 (FM01 and FM02) satellites took place at 12:27 UTC on Friday, ahead of several hours of flight to the separation of the duo.  

Galileo Launch:
This launch marked the business end of Europe’s Global Satellite Navigation System‘s constellation build up.

Following the launch of four satellites Galileo In-Orbit Validation (IOV) satellites, forming the operational nucleus of the full 30-satellite constellation – FM01 and FM02 will be the first two “Full Operational Capability (FOC) birds to head into orbit.

Named “Doresa” and “Milena”, the satellites were built in Bremen, Germany by FOC prime contractor OHB System, and are named for children who were among those winning a European Commission-organized painting competition in 2011.

The 700 kgs birds sport two Passive Hydrogen Maser atomic clocks; two Rubidium atomic clocks; Clock monitoring and control unit; Navigation signal generator unit; L-band antenna for navigation signal transmission, C-band antenna for up-link signal detection, two S-band antennas for telemetry and tele-commands and a search and rescue antenna.

Galileo’s highly-accurate atomic clocks will provide the accuracy of the system. Each satellite emits a signal containing the time it was transmitted and the satellite’s orbital position.

The Galileo program is Europe’s initiative for satellite navigation, providing a highly accurate global positioning system under civilian control – consisting of 30 satellites, along with European control centers and a worldwide network of sensor and up-link stations.

The complete Galileo constellation is to be composed of 27 operational satellites and three reserves, distributed along three circular medium Earth orbit planes at an altitude of 23,222 km, inclined 56 deg. to the equator.

Arianespace was chosen to deploy the entire Galileo constellation of 30 satellites. This began with the launch of the first two experimental satellites,Giove-A and Giove-B, orbited by Arianespace’s Starsem affiliate on Soyuz launchers from Baikonur Cosmodrome in 2005 and 2007.
The remaining 24 Galileo constellation satellites will be orbited over the next year or so, using six additional Soyuz vehicles carrying two spacecraft each, along with three Ariane 5s configured with four per launch.

Designated Soyuz Flight VS09 in Arianespace’s numbering system, this mission – the medium-lift vehicle’s ninth liftoff from French Guiana – joined the company’s record 2014 launch manifest.

The more powerful Soyuz-ST configuration is the standard version launched from French Guiana, with the additional performance provided by the Soyuz ST-B variant – including a Fregat-MT upper stage.

The Soyuz-2 was developed from the older Soyuz models, and features digital flight control systems and modernized engines. It first flew in 2004.

Two variants are currently in service; the Soyuz-2-1a, and the Soyuz-2-1b which features an RD-0124 third stage engine which provides additional thrust. The RD-0124 was declared operational on 3 May 2011.

A third configuration, the Soyuz-2-1v, debuted at the end of last year. It features an NK-33 engine in place of the RD-108A used on the core stages of the other configurations, and does not include the strap-on boosters used by other configurations.

The Soyuz-2 forms the basis for the Soyuz-ST rocket, which is optimized to fly from Kourou, and also incorporates a flight termination system and a modified telemetry system.

With the Soyuz ST-B utilizing the RD-0124 third stage engine, an additional 34 seconds of specific impulse (Isp) significantly increases the vehicle’s overall launch performance.

The RD-0124 is a staged-combustion engine powered by a multi-stage turbo-pump, which is spun by gas from combustion of the main propellants in a gas generator. These oxygen-rich combustion gases are recovered to feed the four main combustion chambers where kerosene – coming from the regenerative cooling circuit – is injected.

Attitude control is provided by main engine activation along one axis in two planes. Liquid oxygen (LOX) and kerosene tanks are pressurized by the heating and evaporation of helium coming from storage vessels located in the LOX tank.
Avionics for the Soyuz launcher are carried in the vehicle’s third stage, and are located in an intermediate bay between the oxidizer and fuel tanks.

As part of the Soyuz’ upgrades for its operations from the Spaceport, the launcher’s flight control system is modernized with a digital control system.

This system incorporates a digital computer and inertial measurement unit that are based on proven technology – giving the Soyuz improved navigation accuracy and control capability.
The new digital control system provides a more flexible and efficient attitude control system, and it gives the additional flight control authority required for the new, enlarged Soyuz ST payload fairing.

See Also

• UPDATES Soyuz ST-B Launch
• L2 Russian Section
• 65 Launch Vehicle Manuals (L2)
• Click here to Join L2

In addition, it improves flight accuracy for the Soyuz’ first three stages, and provides the ability to perform in-flight roll maneuvers as well as in-plane yaw steering (dog-leg) maneuvers.

The Fregat upper stage is an autonomous and flexible upper stage designed to operate as an orbital vehicle.  Flight qualified in 2000, it extends the Soyuz launcher’s capability to provide access to a full range of orbits (medium-Earth orbit, Sun-synchronous orbit, geostationary transfer orbit, and Earth escape trajectories).

Fregat consists of six spherical tanks arrayed in a circle (four for propellant, two containing the avionics), with trusses passing through the tanks to provide structural support. The stage is independent from the Soyuz’ lower three stages, having its own guidance, navigation, control, tracking, and telemetry systems.

The Fregat uses storable propellants (UDMH/NTO) and can be restarted up to 20 times in flight – enabling it to carry out complex mission profiles. It can provide 3-axis stabilization or perform a spin-up of the spacecraft payload.

The Fregat first flew in 2000, and has been used on Soyuz-U, Soyuz-FG, Soyuz-2 and Zenit rockets.

The launch was performed from the purpose-built ZLS launch facility for Soyuz – located in the Spaceport’s northern sector near the city of Sinnamary.

Construction of the launch site began in 2007, as Arianespace advanced their plans to add two launch vehicles to their family. (See large set of construction photos in L2).

The Spaceport’s Soyuz launch site combines the proven design elements from the long-existing site at Baikonur Cosmodrome with satellite integration procedures that are in concert with the spacecraft processing used for Ariane missions.

Located 12 kilometers northwest from the existing Ariane 5 launch complex, the new Soyuz facility extends the Spaceport’s operational zone further up the French Guiana coastline.

The launch vehicle’s assembly building is 92 meters long, 41 meters wide, and 22 meters tall, allowing the vehicle to be assembles horizontally, prior to rolling out to the launch site, which is configured after the Russian Baikonur and Plesetsk Cosmodromes, albeit with a new mobile launch service tower.

The Soyuz’ transfer to the Spaceport’s launch zone is performed with the launcher riding horizontally atop a transporter/erector rail car.

Soyuz was then raised into position on the pad, and in contrast with the Baikonur Cosmodrome processing flow, is protected by a gantry that moves into place for payload integration.

Tesla Model S Software Update Brings iPhone Unlocking and Ignition Start

As reported by TechCrunch: Tesla owners have been looking forward to OS 6.0, a software update for their vehicles, for a while now, but it’s finally rolling out to vehicle owners, reports Electrek. The system adds a bunch of new features for Model S vehicles, including a new Calendar app for in-car use, and big improvements to the Maps/Navigation software. What’s amazing (and surprising) for iPhone users is that they can now unlock and start their car from their devices if they forget their physical key fob at home.

The update is yet another indication of Tesla’s commitment not only to future customers, but also to existing vehicle owners. Musk announced just last week that the Model S would get a warranty extension for its drive train of infinite miles for up to eight years. Bringing major changes to the in-car software system post-purchase is another deviation for the standard operating procedure for vehicle owners, and letting them use their smartphones as remote access and remote starters is ordinarily an expensive aftermarket upgrade.  

Basically Tesla needs to make these cars affordable for ink-stained hacks like myself stat. The new $35,000 Tesla Model 3 is now official, but its limited range makes it less appealing (unless they switch to Sakti3 solid state batteries), and we have to wait until 2017 for it to go on sale. Until then, I guess I’ll just have to stick with envy.

Startup Sakti3 Says its Battery Could Double the Range of a Tesla Model S

As reported by GigaOM: It’s been quite awhile since we’ve heard anything from battery startup Sakti3. The seven-year-old University of Michigan spin-out has been heads down working on a high performance “solid-state” lithium ion battery and on Wednesday announced that it’s produced a battery that can double the range of an electric car (like a Tesla Model S) or double the usage time of a gadget like a wearable device.

On top of that, Sakti3 said its batteries are safer to operate than the current standard ones, and that down the road the batteries could be produced commercially for around $100 per kilowatt hour, Sakti3 CEO Ann Marie Sastry said in a statement on Wednesday. For comparison’s sake, Tesla has said at one point that it’s currently buying lithium ion batteries for its cars for somewhere between $200 and $300 per kilowatt hour.

Solid state batteries have solid electrodes and electrolytes, compared to traditional lithium ion batteries that use a liquid electrolyte. That means solid state batteries are less flammable and can be safer to operate. The Sakti3 team made this video of an engineer dropping hot soldering material onto the cell, and it continues to operate in a safe temperature range.

Solid state batteries also can have a higher energy density (the amount of energy stored for a set volume). Sakti3 said the energy density for this latest battery cell is 1100 watt hours per liter, which translates into a 9-hour usage time for something like a smartwatch (from 3.5 hours) or a 480 mile electric car range (from the 256 mile range of a Tesla).

Yeah, imagine an almost 500-mile range Tesla car. Crain’s Detroit Business called the company one of the top 10 most innovative partly because it received four patents last year around battery manufacturing, a solid-state propulsion systems and automotive hybrid tech. MIT Tech Review named them one of their top 50 most disruptive companies of 2012.

Sakti3 is still in the pilot stage and isn’t yet producing these batteries commercially at scale. But the company says it made its breakthrough energy dense battery on “fully scalable equipment.” The company is backed by $30 million in venture funding from Khosla Ventures, GM Ventures, Itochu, and a grant from the State of Michigan.

Google's Driverless Cars Designed to Exceed the Speed Limit

As reported by BBC News: Dmitri Dolgov told Reuters that when surrounding vehicles were breaking the speed limit, going more slowly could actually present a danger, and the Google car would accelerate to keep up.

Google's driverless prototypes have been widely tested on roads in selected areas of the US.   The UK will allow driverless cars on public roads in 2015.

Google first announced its driverless car division in 2010, and has been testing its technology in modified cars built by other manufacturers.

The cars have traveled on more than 300,000 miles of open road, mostly in California.

In May, the US tech firm said it would start building its own self-driving cars.

The bubble-shaped vehicles will seat two people, propulsion will be electric, and to begin with they will be limited to 25mph (40km/h) to help ensure safety.

In July, the UK government announced that driverless cars will be allowed on public roads from January next year.

In addition, ministers ordered a review of the UK's road regulations to provide appropriate guidelines.

This will cover the need for self-drive vehicles to comply with safety and traffic laws, and involve changes to the Highway Code, which applies to England, Scotland and Wales.

Commenting on Google self-drive cars' ability to exceed the speed limit, a Department for Transport spokesman said: "There are no plans to change speed limits, which will still apply to driverless cars".

In a separate development on Monday, the White House said it wanted all cars and light trucks to be equipped with technology that could prevent collisions.

Radio signals emitted by the vehicles would allow them to "talk" to each other, and alert drivers to potential accidents.

 

Nissan is one of many companies developing self-drive vehicles

How do driverless cars work?

The label "driverless vehicle" actually covers a lot of different concepts.

Indeed, the cruise control, automatic braking, anti-lane drift and self-parking functions already built into many vehicles offer a certain degree of autonomy.

But the term is generally used to refer to vehicles that take charge of steering, accelerating, indicating and braking during most if not all of a journey between two points, much in the same way airplanes can be set to autopilot.

Unlike the skies, however, the roads are much more crowded, and a range of technologies is being developed to tackle the problem.

One of the leading innovations is Lidar (light detection and ranging), a system that measures how lasers bounce off reflective surfaces to capture information about millions of small points surrounding the vehicle every second. The technology is already used to create the online maps used by Google and Nokia.

Another complementary technique is "computer vision" - the use of software to make sense of 360-degree images captured by cameras attached to the vehicle, which can warn of pedestrians, cyclists, roadworks and other objects that might be in the vehicle's path.

Autonomous vehicles can also make use of global-positioning system (GPS) location data from satellites, radar, ultrasonic sensors to detect objects close to the car and further sensors to accurately measure the vehicle's orientation and the rotation of its wheels, to help it understand its exact location.

The debate now is whether to allow cars, like the prototype unveiled by Google in May, to abandon controls including a steering wheel and pedals and rely on the vehicle's computer.

Or whether, instead, to allow the machine to drive, but insist a passenger be ready to wrest back control at a moment's notice.

Researchers Hack Into Michigan's Traffic Lights

As reported by MIT Technology Review: Ever get lucky enough to hit three or four green lights in a row on your way home from work? It turns out it might not be so hard to make that happen all the time.

With permission from a local road agency, researchers in Michigan hacked into nearly 100 wirelessly networked traffic lights, highlighting security issues that they say are likely to pervade networked traffic infrastructure around the country. More than 40 states currently use such systems to keep traffic flowing as efficiently as possible, helping to reduce emissions and delays.

The team, led by University of Michigan computer scientist J. Alex Halderman, found three major weaknesses in the traffic light system: unencrypted wireless connections, the use of default usernames and passwords that could be found online, and a debugging port that is easy to attack.

“The vulnerabilities we discover in the infrastructure are not a fault of any one device or design choice, but rather show a systemic lack of security consciousness,” the researchers report in a paper they’re presenting this week at a computer security conference. They did not disclose exactly where in Michigan they did the research.

Although the road agency responsible for implementing the system has never faced serious computer security threats, the possibility will become more worrisome as transportation authorities and car makers test new ways for infrastructure and vehicles to communicate in order to reduce congestion and accidents (see “The Internet of Cars Is Approaching a Crossroads”).

“They need to be worrying about this and think about security—it needs to be one of their top priorities,” says Branden Ghena, a graduate student who worked on the project. “It’s hard to get people to care about these things in the same way that it’s hard to get people to change their passwords.”

Wirelessly networked traffic lights have four key components. There are sensors that detect cars, controllers that use the sensor data to control the lights at a given intersection, radios for wireless communication among intersections, and malfunction management units (MMUs), which return lights to safe fallback configurations if an “invalid” configuration occurs. For example, if somehow every light at an intersection is green, the system might fall back to having them all become flashing red lights.

The Michigan researchers found that anyone with a computer that can communicate at the same frequency as the intersection radios—in this case, 5.8 gigahertz—could access the entire unencrypted network. It takes just one point of access to get into the whole system.

After gaining access to one of the controllers in their target network, the researchers were able to turn all lights red or alter the timing of neighboring intersections—for example, to make sure someone hit all green lights on a given route. They could also trigger the lights’ MMUs by attempting invalid configurations.

At the end of their report, Halderman and his group propose simple recommendations for improving the security of traffic infrastructure. First and foremost, traffic-system administrators should not use default usernames and passwords. Also, they should stop broadcasting communications unencrypted for “casual observers and curious teenagers” to see.

The researchers note that their study has implications beyond traffic lights. More and more devices like voting machines (see “Why You Can’t Vote Online”), cars, and medical devices are computer controlled and will ultimately be networked. This “phase change,” as they call it, comes with “potential for catastrophic security failures.”

Another researcher who has investigated traffic infrastructure, Cesar Cerrudo, the chief technology officer of the computer security company IOActive Labs, says he was not surprised by the Michigan group’s findings.

“We have been finding vulnerabilities for a long time, but hardware vendors still don’t seem to ‘get it,’” Cerrudo wrote in an e-mail. “They continue doing the same mistakes that software vendors did 10 years ago.”