University Of Michigan Engineer Says Radar Technology Could Detect Concealed Weapons At School.

A radar-based concept originally developed to detect suicide bombs abroad could be used to find people carrying concealed weapons in a crowd here at home, University of Michigan researcher Kamal Sarabandi says. The Defense Department funded Sarabandi's research for years, because his technology can detect bombs under clothes. But now, after the Newtown school shooting, Sarabandi wants to see if his research could be used to find concealed guns in crowded places, including malls, airports, stadiums, and schools. Sarabandi's technology is a fresh take on existing radar technology, such as the radar police use to trap speeders. Sarabandi's version works by bouncing radar waves off people. Radar signals bounce differently off of skin and metallic objects, so you can identify a gun--or something like a gun--by focusing the radar on a person's torso and comparing the reading to a baseline reflection generated in the lab. A torso with a large concealed metal object reflects the radar back differently, and looks slightly off when compared with a regular torso, as illustrated by the image above. While still not tested on people in crowds, the method was able to distinguish between a mannequin torso wearing a leather jacket, and a mannequin torso concealing a dummy bomb under its leather jacket. In the future, Sarabandi says radar guns based on his method could scan crowds for people concealing bombs or guns under their clothes, and those people could be quickly pulled aside and scanned more rigorously. Right now, he is working on designing a smaller system for an army robot. The most promising peacetime application? Promising a faster alternative to metal detectors. No idea how accurate it is, though.

US engineers unveil transformer-style robotic chimp

Engineers at Carnegie Mellon University’s (CMU) National Robotics Engineering Center (NERC) have developed CHIMP, a highly dexterous robot capable of tackling rough terrain. CHIMP (CMU Highly Intelligent Mobile Platform) has simian resemblance but rubberised tracks on the extremities of its four limbs give it the locomotion of a tracked vehicle. According to CMU, this configuration offers an advantage when moving over debris. CHIMP can, however, move on the treads of two limbs when needed, such as when tasked to use one or more limbs to open a valve, or to operate power tools.

CHIMP will have to perform these and other tasks during the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Robotics Challenge (DRC), in which robots will have human-like capabilities to respond to events such as the 2011 Fukushima nuclear plant disaster. Climbing ladders and driving vehicles are said to be among the obstacles robots will face in environments engineered for people. The NREC entry, Tartan Rescue Team, is one of seven selected by DARPA for DRC Track A, in which each team will develop its own hardware and software. In operation CHIMP will be able to perform complex, physically challenging tasks through supervised autonomy. On-board sensors build a texture-mapped, 3D model of the environment that CHIMP uses to maintain stability and prevent collisions. The same 3D model is said to enable an operator to visualise the location and orientation of CHIMP and evaluate possible actions. The robot will also be pre-programmed to execute tasks such as grasping a tool, stepping on a ladder rung or turning a steering wheel without step-by-step direction from the human controller, circumventing the lag between command and execution. ‘Humans provide high-level control, while the robot provides low-level reflexes and self-protective behaviours,’ said Tony Stentz, NREC director and Tartan Rescue Team leader. ‘This enables CHIMP to be highly capable without the complexity associated with a fully autonomous robot.’ The final DRC event will be held in 2014, with the winner receiving $2m. CHIMP will have to perform these and other tasks during the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Robotics Challenge (DRC), in which robots will have human-like capabilities to respond to events such as the 2011 Fukushima nuclear plant disaster. Climbing ladders and driving vehicles are said to be among the obstacles robots will face in environments engineered for people. The NREC entry, Tartan Rescue Team, is one of seven selected by DARPA for DRC Track A, in which each team will develop its own hardware and software. In operation CHIMP will be able to perform complex, physically challenging tasks through supervised autonomy. On-board sensors build a texture-mapped, 3D model of the environment that CHIMP uses to maintain stability and prevent collisions. The same 3D model is said to enable an operator to visualise the location and orientation of CHIMP and evaluate possible actions. The robot will also be pre-programmed to execute tasks such as grasping a tool, stepping on a ladder rung or turning a steering wheel without step-by-step direction from the human controller, circumventing the lag between command and execution. ‘Humans provide high-level control, while the robot provides low-level reflexes and self-protective behaviours,’ said Tony Stentz, NREC director and Tartan Rescue Team leader. ‘This enables CHIMP to be highly capable without the complexity associated with a fully autonomous robot.’

New self-driving car system tested on UK roads

 The self-driving car halts for pedestrians and could

 take over tedious parts of driving. Photograph:

 Oxford University Department of Engineering Science

 Move over into the slow lane, Google. Scientists at Oxford University have developed a self-driving car that can cope with snow, rain and other weather conditions not found in the search giant's home in California. The system can be fitted to existing cars and could one day cost just £100. Developed by a team led by professor Paul Newman at Oxford University, the new system has been installed in a Nissan Leaf electric car and tested on private roads around the university, will halt for pedestrians, and could take over the tedious parts of driving such as negotiating traffic jams or regular commutes. The car alerts the driver when it is ready to take over - and by pressing a button on a screen, the driver can let the computer take the strain. The search giant Google has been working on self-driving cars for years, and has now won approval for their use in the US states of Nevada and California. But so far it hasn't shown them off in the UK. By contrast, the Oxford system has been demonstrated on public roads – and as long as there is a licensed driver in the driver's seat, "there's no obvious legal barrier to using it on roads now," Professor Newman told the Guardian. "It's essentially an advanced driver assistance system." Dr. Martin Spring from Lancaster University, who co-authored a paper on the potential of driverless cars, said that in time they could radically transform how we think of road transport: "As with many technologies, the early implementation will try to mimic what has gone before. But once you shake off the constraint of it having to look like a car, you can envisage a very different vehicle: it could look like a small room where people do what they want while the car is moving. And if you don't need lights to navigate, you don't need streetlights. Or headlights." Newman thinks that it could be only 15 years before self-driving systems become commonplace in cities as the price of installing the systems drops: "At present it costs about £5,000, but we're working to reduce that to £100," he said. The car has been tested running at up to 40mph, said Newman. Rather than using the GPS navigation system, which can be unreliable in cities where "urban canyons" caused by buildings block signals, and only accurate to a few metres, the British-developed system uses 3D laser scanning allied to computer storage to build up a map of its surroundings – which is accurate to a few centimeters. The auto-drive system works by recognizing where it is, based on a laser scanner on the front of the car, comparing its surroundings to its stored data. That's different from Google's system, which uses a combination of GPS, laser guidance – from a roof-mounted laser – and mapping to determine its location and route. The Oxford system, developed through funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, could be extended so that each car downloads data from passing cars, or over the internet via 3G and 4G connections to a central system. That would mean that the car wouldn't have to store data for the entire country at any time: "You don't go from London to Glasgow in a single hop. So as you're driving along, the car could download the new maps from the internet for the journey ahead." Larry Page, Google's chief executive, believes self-driving cars have enormous economic and health implications: they should cut the number of road deaths, either through drivers' attention wandering, or through driving too close to other cars and being unable to react. Traffic would flow with fewer interruptions – people might even prefer to send their car to drive around for a while rather than trying to find a parking place. The technology giant already uses a self-driving car to impress guests: last year when Martin Sorrell of WPP Group was visiting the company, he was picked up from his hotel and delivered to Google's Mountain View headquarters 20 miles away by one of the cars. "It was pretty incredible," Sorrell told Fortune. By contrast Newman's team has only been working on the scheme for two years, and only received the Nissan Leaf car in September. Yet it has been able to connect the computer control systems to its steering wheel, brakes and other systems. "Cars these days are pretty much fly-by-wire – the computer controls it all," Newman said. The computational power required to navigate is already cheaply available, as is the storage for the 3D maps that the car would use to figure out its location. "Our cities don't change very much, so robotic vehicles will see familiar structures and say 'I know this route - want me to drive?'" But he emphasises that "it's not total autonomy for the car. It knows when things are good, and when the risks are reasonable, and then it will offer to take over." If the car can't make a match, it won't offer to drive – and the decision is always the driver's, Newman emphasised. "What I'm really proud of is that this is British technology and British intellectual property," he said. "It shows what a British university group can do when we put our minds to it." Self-driving cars could save thousands of lives per year: in the UK, more than 2,000 people and in the US more than 30,000 people died in vehicle accidents last year.

Charles Arthur from The Guardian  

Science centers face threatening budget cuts

 

Starbase Deputy Director Jonathan Loyd, Director Chris Treadway

and Program Instructor Kayla Jusko show off some of their laboratory

equipment. Starbase, the science and engineering program run by

the Department of Defense, has some high-tech gear that instructors

use to get young students interested in science.

Starbase is in danger. It sounds like something from science fiction, but it's serious. The science, technology, engineering and math camp, administered by the United States Department of Defense on 76 military bases nationwide, is facing down threats to its federal funding. That could close two Starbase camps in West Virginia - one in Charleston and another in Martinsburg. The Charleston camp, hosted by the 130th Airlift Wing, has served more than 14,000 Kanawha County school children since it opened in 2001. Starbase's threats are on a national level, and are on all sides: an amendment to the Department of Defense budget that eliminated the program was eventually left out of the bill, but the current federal budget doesn't include any funding for the program. There's also been some talk of moving the program away from the Department of Defense and shifting it to the Department of Education, which could effectively kill the program as it exists today. "Since we're on a military base we have things like airplanes and people on airplanes," said Chris Treadway, the director of Charleston's Starbase academy. "It's a great place for kids to see those folks, to see STEM careers in action and having a positive role." Starbase is open to fifth-graders who come with their classrooms - it's like a mini field trip over a period of time. Classes usually spend five days at Starbase, or 25 instructional hours. Those 25 hours are a marathon of experiments and projects in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math - what are commonly called the STEM fields in the education community. STEM has been a trendy topic in education circles over the last several years. The dearth of qualified workers for an increasing number of high-tech jobs has left school and government officials wondering how to better train students in those fields, and how to encourage more kids to seek those jobs. That's what makes the threat of the funding loss so disconcerting to Treadway and other fans of Starbase. They think students need more things like Starbase, not less. "When you're an elementary teacher you feel like you're just talking to them, blah, blah, blah," said Kathy Christian, a teacher a Pinch Elementary. "It's not the same as having the technology and the room and the motivation." Fans of the program have come out en masse to support it, and oppose cuts in its funding. A national Facebook group has more than 1,200 members, and more every day. Teachers from Kenna, Ruthlawn, Montrose, Shoals and Kanawha City elementary schools have all taken to that Facebook page to come out in support of the program.The activities at Starbase are on a scale that classroom teachers just can't accomplish on their own. Kids build rockets and use air compressors. They design things on computers and then make them with three-dimensional printers. "And the whole place is set up for this kind of thing," Christian said. "It's something that you can't duplicate in your room."

by Shay Maunz  - Charleston Daily Mail