Police in California and Texas Test Networked Guns

As reported by MIT Technology Review: When a police officer draws a firearm he or she often doesn’t have an opportunity to radio for backup.

YardArm, a California-based company, is building technology that will automatically alert headquarters in such situations. The company makes a chip that goes into the handle of a regular firearm and transmits data over a cell-phone network connection. The data transmitted includes the location of a gun and whether it has been unholstered or discharged. The company is also working to track the direction in which a gun is pointing. The data can be fed to a police dispatch system or viewed on a smartphone.

Founded in 2013, YardArm started out making a consumer product for monitoring a firearm’s location. But since many American gun owners object to technology or policies aimed at regulating firearms, it did not find many customers.

“You have a social demand for smart gun technology, but not necessarily a market demand,” says Jim Schaff, YardArm’s vice president of marketing. “As a consumer product, it’s going to be a long road.”

Gun owners didn’t flock to YardArm, but law enforcement remained interested. Technology that tracks officers’ action is slowly gaining acceptance as police chiefs and officers realize that the data can help clear them of wrongdoing and save litigation costs. Meanwhile, it is becoming increasingly common for many ordinary objects and devices to come with Internet connectivity.

The gun industry is gradually taking notice of these trends. The gunmaker Beretta already offers the i-Protect, a sensor that goes on the front of the gun and captures data on the weapon’s use. Meanwhile Taser, which makes a gun that delivers a nonlethal electric shock, also sells head-worn cameras to help police and security workers document events in the field.

“Dash-cams really set precedent,” Schaff says. “When it comes down to it, monitoring technology helps more than it hurts.”

YardArm is holding tests to hone the tracking accuracy with police departments in Santa Cruz, California, and Carrollton, Texas. The technology has been tested at firing ranges, but not during active police duty.

“It is going so well we don’t even know it’s there,” says Santa Cruz sheriff Phil Wowak. “The product brings so much data that we’re going to have to figure out how to respond to every element.”

Yardarm plans to start selling the hardware and tracking service in mid-2015. The next goal is to capture the direction in which a gun was fired, but Schaff says this aspect of the technology needs to be improved. And despite the rebuff, YardArm has not given up on consumers. “We absolutely believe there’s a market of consumers perfectly happy deploying the technology,” Schaff says.

ESA Will Attempt to Improve Orbits of Errant Galileo Satellites

As reported by Inside GNSS: The European Space Agency (ESA) announced plans to implement a series of maneuvers to reposition one of two Galileo full operational capability (FOC) satellites left in the wrong orbit this summer, as a prelude to its health being confirmed.

The aim is to raise the lowest point of the satellite’s orbit — its perigee — to reduce the radiation exposure from the Van Allen radiation belts surrounding Earth, as well as to put it into a more useful orbit for navigation purposes.

Should the two-week operation prove successful, then the sixth Galileo satellite will follow the same route.

The Galileo pair, launched together on a Soyuz rocket on 22 August, ended up in an elongated orbit travelling out to to its apogee, a point of 25,900 kilometers (16,058 miles) above Earth, and back down to 13,713 kilometers (about 8,500 miles).

The target orbit was a purely circular one at an altitude of 23,222 kilometers (14,400 miles). In addition, the orbits are angled relative to the equator less than originally planned.

The two satellites have only enough fuel to lift their altitude by about 4000 kilometers — not enough to correct their orbits entirely. But the move will take the fifth satellite into a more circular orbit than before, with a higher perigee of 17,339 kilometers.

“The new orbit will fly over the same location every 20 days,” explains Daniel Navarro-Reyes, an ESA Galileo mission analyst.

“The standard Galileo repeat pattern is every 10 days; so, achieving this will synchronize the ground track with the rest of the Galileo satellites” he said. “In addition, from a user receiver point of view, the revised orbit will reduce the variation in signal levels, reduce the Doppler shift of the signal, and increase the satellite’s visibility.”

The orbit will also allow Galileo’s Earth sensor to hold a stable direction for the satellite’s main antenna to point at Earth, according to Navarro-Reyes.

“Right now, when the satellite dips to its lowest point, Earth appears so large that the sensor is unusable. The satellite relies on gyroscopes alone, degrading its attitude precision.”

The recovery is being overseen from the Galileo Control Center in Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany, with the assistance of ESA’s Space Operations Center, ESOC, in Darmstadt, Germany.

France’s CNES space agency is providing additional ground stations so that contact can be maintained with the satellite as needed.

The two satellites were previously Sun-pointing. On 3 November that changed for the fifth satellite, as it transitioned to normal Earth-pointing mode.

During November, some 15 maneuvers will take the satellite into its new orbit. Once there, it can formally begin in-orbit testing. The host satellite’s health is checked first, followed by more detailed navigation payload testing.

Orion Capsule Moves to NASA Launch Pad for Test Flight

As reported by the Denver Post: NASA's new Colorado-made Orion spacecraft is now at the launch pad for next month's test flight.  

The spacecraft, built by Lockheed Martin Space Systems, was moved 22 miles overnight at Cape Canaveral, Fla., and reached the launch pad early Wednesday.

It was then hoisted into place on top of a Delta IV heavy rocket, made by Colorado-based United Launch Alliance, for the Dec. 4 launch.

In the next few weeks, the rocket and spacecraft will be integrated and powered up, and engineers will test and verify interfaces between the two in preparation for the test flight.

The test flight will last slightly more than four hours and will propel the unmanned capsule 3,600 miles from Earth, before returning it for a splashdown in the Pacific.  

Data collected during the flight will provide engineers insight into the performance of systems, including the massive Colorado-built heat shield, as well as avionics, parachute deployment and recovery operations, Lockheed said in a news release.

The information will be used to validate the spacecraft's design before it begins carrying human astronauts on deep-space exploration missions, including trips to Mars. Astronauts are expected to start flying on Orion in 2021. The capsules are built for four passengers, one more than the old Apollo spacecraft.

Carmakers Unite Around Privacy Protections

As reported by AP News: Nineteen automakers accounting for most of the passenger cars and trucks sold in the U.S. have signed onto a set of principles they say will protect motorists' privacy in an era when computerized cars pass along more information about their drivers than many motorists realize.

The principles were delivered in a letter Wednesday to the Federal Trade Commission, which has the authority to force corporations to live up to their promises to consumers. Industry officials say they want to assure their customers that the information that their cars stream back to automakers or that is downloaded from the vehicle's computers won't be handed over to authorities without a court order, sold to insurance companies or used to bombard them with ads for pizza parlors, gas stations or other businesses they drive past, without their permission.

The principles also commit automakers to "implement reasonable measures" to protect personal information from unauthorized access.

Many recent-model cars and light trucks have GPS and mobile communications technology integrated into the vehicle's computers and navigation systems. Information on where drivers have been and where they're going is continually sent to manufacturers when the systems are in use. Consumers benefit from alerts sent by automakers about traffic conditions and concierge services that are able to unlock car doors and route drivers around the path of a storm.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is also working with automakers on regulations that will clear the way for vehicle-to-vehicle communications. The technology uses a radio signal to continually transmit a vehicle's position, heading, speed and other information. Similarly equipped cars and trucks would receive the same information, and their computers would alert drivers to an impending collision.

"As modern cars not only share the road but will in the not too distant future communicate with one another, vigilance over the privacy of our customers and the security of vehicle systems is an imperative," said John Bozzella, president of Global Automakers, an industry trade association.

The automakers' principles leave open the possibility of deals with advertisers who want to target motorists based on their location and other personal data, but only if customers agree ahead of time that they want to receive such information, industry officials said in a briefing with reporters.

"Google may want to become an automaker, but we don't want to become Google," said Mitch Bainwol, president of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers.

The possibility of ads popping up on the computer screens in cars while drivers are behind the wheel worries some safety advocates.

"There is going to be a huge amount of metadata that companies would like to mine to send advertisements to you in your vehicle," said Henry Jasny of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety. "We don't want pop-up ads to become a distraction."

Industry officials say they oppose federal legislation to require privacy protections, saying that would be too "prescriptive." But Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said legislation is needed to ensure automakers don't back off the principles when they become inconvenient.

"You just don't want your car spying on you," he said. "That's the practical consequence of a lot of the new technologies that are being built into cars."

The automakers signing on to the principles are Aston Martin, BMW, Chrysler, Ferrari, Ford, General Motors, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, Maserati, Mazda, Mercedes-Benz, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Porsche, Subaru, Toyota, Volkswagen and Volvo.

Why Nearby Phones May Soon Be Borrowing Your Bandwidth - and Your Battery

As reported by MIT Technology Review: The Chinese Internet giant 21Vianet will launch a cell-phone network in Hong Kong early next year that will use a new trick to offer fast data downloads. When a phone on the network has a poor data signal, it will borrow the connection of a nearby handset with a stronger signal by linking with it over Wi-Fi. The technology, an implementation of a technique known as mesh networking, may come to other countries, including the United States, soon after.

Having devices share bandwidth can boost the download speeds by 50 percent or more, according to M87, the Austin, Texas, startup behind the technology. This could be especially useful in situations where cellular signals are weakened—for example, when someone is using a phone indoors, or in the shadow of a skyscraper. M87 says two U.S. mobile carriers looking for ways to improve their mobile data coverage are also evaluating the technology.

The company raised $3 million in investment earlier this year, including from its Hong Kong partner 21Vianet and from leading mobile chip company Qualcomm.

There’s just one catch to this altruistic sharing of bandwidth: a device that donates its connectivity to another uses some of its battery life doing so. M87 CEO David Hampton says the penalty is small, and that a device will likely be configured to only share its connection if it has more than 60 percent of its battery life remaining. (See a video of M87’s software boosting data rates in a Texas mall.)

A common scenario in which the technology could help would be a person at the back of a coffee shop, says Hampton. His or her phone could improve its data downloads by linking to the device of someone near the window, with a better signal from the nearest cell tower. Inside a building, devices can link up over distances of around 30 to 50 feet; outside that jumps to as much as 180 feet, says Hampton.

M87’s technology requires a mobile carrier to pre-install software onto handsets sold for use on its network. That software runs in the background and constantly monitors a device’s data signal while looking for nearby devices with the same software.

Carriers can tune the exact rules for when a device will link up with another. Hampton says that M87’s recommended settings would mean that on average devices expended 10 percent or less of their battery helping others in a given day. The company also recommends that carriers offer a way for people to opt out of their device participating. M87’s software is currently only available for Android devices.

Pan Hui, a computer science professor at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, says the technology looks feasible but will come with challenges. One is ensuring that one person’s data remains secure as it passes through other devices, something M87 says it can do using encryption.

Another perhaps bigger challenge is making people comfortable with the idea of their personal device being recruited to help out their service provider and its other customers. People may ask themselves, “Why would I spend my battery and bandwidth to relay your traffic?” says Hui.

Hampton acknowledges that users will have to adjust, but says mobile carriers who adopt the technology will be strongly motivated to find ways to make the technology appealing to their customers, whether through marketing or perhaps offering benefits to people that stay opted in.

Lighter, Cheaper Radio Wave Device Could Transform Telecommunications

As reported by Phys.org: Researchers at the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin have achieved a milestone in modern wireless and cellular telecommunications, creating a radically smaller, more efficient radio wave circulator that could be used in cellphones and other wireless devices, as reported in the latest issue of Nature Physics. 

The new circulator has the potential to double the useful bandwidth in wireless communications by enabling full-duplex functionality, meaning devices can transmit and receive signals on the same frequency band at the same time.

The key innovation is the creation of a magnetic-free radio wave circulator.

Since the advent of wireless technology 60 years ago, magnetic-based circulators have been in principle able to provide two-way communications on the same frequency channel, but they are not widely adopted because of the large size, weight and cost associated with using magnets and magnetic materials.

Freed from a reliance on magnetic effects, the new circulator has a much smaller footprint while also using less expensive and more common materials. These cost and size efficiencies could lead to the integration of circulators within cellphones and other microelectronic systems, resulting in substantially faster downloads, fewer dropped calls and significantly clearer communications.

The team of researchers, led by Associate Professor Andrea Alu, has developed a prototype circulator that is 2 centimeters in size—more than 75 times smaller than the wavelength of operation. The circulator may be further scaled down to as small as a few microns, according to the researchers. The design is based on materials widely used in integrated circuits such as gold, copper and silicon, making it easier to integrate in the circuit boards of modern communication devices.

"We are changing the paradigm with which isolation and two-way transmission on the same frequency channel can be achieved. We have built a circulator that does not need magnets or magnetic materials," Alu said.

The researchers' device works by mimicking the way magnetic materials break the symmetry in wave transmission between two points in space, a critical function that allows magnetic circulators to selectively route radio waves. With the new circulator, the researchers accomplish the same effect, but they replace the magnetic bias with a traveling wave spinning around the device.

Another unique feature is that the new circulator can be tuned in real time over a broad range of frequencies, a major advantage over conventional circulators.

"With this technology, we can incorporate tunable nonreciprocal components in mobile platforms," said Nicholas Estep, lead researcher and a doctoral student in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. "In doing so, we may pave the way to simultaneous two-way communication in the same frequency band, which can free up chunks of bandwidth for more effective use."

For telecommunications companies, which pay for licenses to use frequencies allotted by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, a more efficient use of the limited available bandwidth means significant cost advantages.

Additionally, because the design of the circulator is scalable and capable of circuit integration, it can potentially be placed in wireless devices.

"We envision micron-sized circulators embedded in cellphone technology. When you consider cellphone traffic during high demand events such as a football game or a concert, there are enormous implications opened by our technology, including fewer dropped calls and clearer communications," Estep said.

The circulator also could benefit other industries that currently use magnetic-based circulators. For instance, circulators used in phased arrays and radar systems for aircraft, ships and satellites can be extremely heavy and large, so minimizing the size of these systems could provide significant savings.

"We are also bringing this paradigm to other areas of science and technology," Alu said. "Our research team is working on using this concept to protect lasers and to create integrated nano-photonic circuits that route light signals instead of radio waves in preferred directions."

Elon Musk’s Next Mission: Internet Satellites

As reported by the Wall Street Journal: Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk shook up the automotive and aerospace industries with electric cars and cheap rockets. Now, he is focused on satellites, looking at ways to make smaller, less-expensive models that can deliver Internet access across the globe, according to people familiar with the matter.

Mr. Musk is working with Greg Wyler, a satellite-industry veteran and former Google Inc. executive, these people said. Mr. Wyler founded WorldVu Satellites Ltd., which controls a large block of radio spectrum.

In talks with industry executives, Messrs. Musk and Wyler have discussed launching around 700 satellites, each weighing less than 250 pounds, the people said. That is about half the size of the smallest communications satellites now in commercial use. The satellite constellation would be 10 times the size of the largest current fleet, managed by Iridium Communications Inc.

To be sure, the venture would face large financial, technical and regulatory hurdles, and industry officials estimate that it would cost $1 billion or more to develop the project. The people familiar with the matter cautioned the venture is in its formative stages, and Mr. Musk’s participation isn’t certain.

Messrs. Musk and Wyler are considering building a factory to make satellites, the people said. One of the people said initial talks have been held with state officials in Florida and Colorado about locating the factory.

In addition to Mr. Musk, WorldVu is seeking a satellite industry partner to lend expertise to the project, this person said.

Mr. Musk’s closely held Space Exploration Technologies Corp., or SpaceX, likely would launch the satellites, those people said, though no agreement is in place. SpaceX has launched a dozen of its Falcon 9 rockets in the past five years and plans more than four dozen launches through 2018. In September, the company won a $2.6 billion NASA contract to develop, test and fly space taxis to carry U.S. astronauts into orbit.

Building a plant and testing satellites is a lengthy process, and WorldVu needs to clear the use of spectrum with other operators. SpaceX may not have capacity to launch the satellites until the end of the decade, by which time WorldVu risks losing its spectrum.

A previous satellite Internet startup founded by Mr. Wyler, O3b Networks, has faced technical problems with the first four satellites it launched, which likely will shorten their lifespans. Today, O3b serves large areas on either side of the equator with a constellation of eight satellites and is planning to launch four more by the end of the year. Mr. Wyler has left the company, though he remains a significant shareholder.

One indicator of the challenge: Mr. Wyler brought a similar plan to Google, which prides itself on tackling big problems. Yet he stayed only about a year before leaving to work with Mr. Musk.

Two people familiar with the matter said Mr. Wyler’s relationship with Google soured in part because he wasn’t sure the search giant had sufficient manufacturing expertise.

Google declined to comment.

If Messrs. Musk and Wyler choose to build the satellites, they would face competition from other makers of small satellites, such as Nevada-based Sierra Nevada Corp. and Britain’s Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd.

Messrs. Musk and Wyler share an interest in reducing the cost of satellites.

WorldVu needs a lot of satellites, and could be the anchor customer for a high-volume, low-cost satellite maker. Mr. Musk changed the economics of launching rockets by simplifying designs while building engines and other components in-house.

The smallest communications satellites now weigh under 500 pounds and cost several million dollars each. WorldVu hopes to bring the cost of manufacturing smaller models under $1 million, according to two people familiar with its plans.

High costs and limited users have hobbled past efforts to deliver telephone and Internet service from space. Iridium filed for bankruptcy protection nine months after it launched in 1998, after attracting few users willing to pay $3,000 for a phone and up to $7 a minute for calls. Rival Globalstar Inc. sought bankruptcy protection in 2002. Both re-emerged as mobile-data providers.

Messrs. Musk and Wyler also may also be able to find willing investors among technology giants. Both Google and FacebookInc. are working to extend Internet access to unwired parts of the globe, through drones, balloons and other means.