How Delivery Drones Could Monitor Their Own Health

The day when people can order products online and have them delivered by a drone may not be far off. But to make sure these packages make it to their destinations, scientists have created a program that lets robotic flyers monitor their own "health" midflight.

The online retail giant Amazon announced a plan last December to use fleets of drones to deliver packages to consumers within half an hour of when an order was placed. But to arrive safely and on time, the tiny flying bots would have to be able to handle conditions such as high winds, fuel shortages and potential sensor errors.

"With something like package delivery, which needs to be done [consistently] over hours, you need to take into account the health of the system," Ali-akbar Agha-mohammadi, an aeronautical engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, said in a statement.

Agha-mohammadi and his colleagues developed a computer algorithm that enables drones to monitor the state of their equipment and sensors. It also helps drones head off problems; for instance, if fuel is low, the drone could plot a course for the nearest charging station. [9 Totally Cool Uses for Drones]

The team also figured out an efficient way for the drone to calculate all possible routes to its destination before takeoff, so it can avoid potential collisions.

The researchers simulated a set of drones in a realistic environment, one in which the machines had to make multiple deliveries. Scientists then compared the performance of bots that had the health-monitoring system to those without it. The self-monitoring dronesdelivered the same number of packages as regular bots, but had fewer problems or breakdowns, the researchers said.

To navigate, autonomous vehicles often use a decision-making method known as the Markov decision process, which can be thought of as a tree of possibilities in which each action branches out into other actions. The process involves figuring out the path of decisions that involves the least risk.

But the Markov process doesn't work so well in the real world, where even a strong gust of wind can throw off a measurement, the researchers said. So instead the researchers used a slightly different method that still involves a decision tree, except that each branching point includes the probability of an outcome occurring. This leads to a huge number of possible outcomes, which is difficult to compute.

To make that computation more manageable, the researchers divided it into two parts: keeping track of the drone's location (vehicle planning), and monitoring the condition of the vehicle's components (mission-level planning). Essentially, the algorithm narrows the vehicle planning down to only the likeliest possibilities that can be calculated before a flight, freeing up computing power to do mission-level planning while the drone is in the air.

In the future, the researchers plan to test real package-carrying drones using the new health-monitoring system.

The group will present its findings in September at the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, which is being held in Chicago.

OnCars: Top 10 upcoming cars to look forward to india

Model - Maruti Suzuki XA Alpha
When? - 2014
How much? - Rs 6 to 10 lakh
Engines - 1.3-litre Multijet diesel; 1.4-litre K-series petrol.
Rivals - Ford EcoSport, Renault Duster, Mahindra Quanto

Model - 2014 Honda City
When? – 2014
How much? – Rs 8 to 12 lakh
Engines – 1.5-litre i-DTEC diesel; 1.5-litre i-VTEC petrol.
Rivals – Hyundai Verna, Volkswagen Vento, Nissan Sunny.

Model - Mercedes Benz CLA
When? – Late 2013 / Early 2014
How much? – Rs 27 to 40 lakh
Engines – 2.2-litre diesel; 1.6-litre petrol.
Rivals – Volkswagen Passat, Volvo V40, Audi Q3.

Model - Datsun Go
When? – Early 2014
How much? – Rs 3 – 4 lakh
Engine – 1.2-litre petrol.
Rivals – Maruti Suzuki Alto, Hyundai Eon, Chevrolet Spark.

Model - Tata Nano diesel
When? - 2014
How much? – Rs 2 to 4 lakh
Engine – 800cc diesel
Rivals – Hyundai Eon LPG, Maruti Suzuki Alto 800 CNG, Datsun Go.

Model - Honda Brio LMPV
When? – Early 2014
How much? – Rs 6 to 10 lakh
Engines – 1.5-litre i-DTEC diesel; 1.2-litre i-VTEC petrol.
Rivals – Maruti Suzuki Ertiga, Chevrolet Enjoy, Nissan Evalia.

Model - Mercedes Benz S-class
When? – Late 2013
How much? – Rs 1.2 to 2 crore.
Engines – 3.0-litre diesel; 3.0-litre petrol.
Rivals – Jaguar XJ-L, Audi A8L, BMW 7-series.

Model - Skoda Octavia
When? – September 2013
How much? – Rs 15 to 20 lakh
Engines – 2.0-litre diesel, 1.8-litre petrol.
Rivals – Toyota Corolla Altis, Volkswagen Jetta, Chevrolet Cruze.

Model - 2014 Hyundai i10 
When? – September 2013
How much? – Rs 4 to 6 lakh
Engines – 1.3-litre diesel; 1.2-litre petrol.
Rivals – Maruti Suzuki Wagon R Stingray, Honda Brio, Nissan Micra.

Model - Maruti Suzuki Wagon R Stingray
When? – August – October 2013
How much? – Rs 4 – 5 lakh.
Engine – 1.0-litre K-series petrol engine
Rivals – Hyundai i10, Honda Brio, Nissan Micra Active

Adobe Ink stylus and Slide ruler aim to replace your sketch pad with an iPad (video)

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Adobe has long dominated the business of providing software tools for creative professionals — but it has always shied away from hardware. Today that changes with the roll-out of two new accessories designed to play into the surging demand for mobile digital tools. Adobe Ink is a cleverly-designed version of an Adonit Bluetooth-enabled stylus, and Adobe Slide is a unique “digital ruler” that works with Adobe’s new iPad applications, Sketch and Line.
I was fortunate enough to have Ink, Slide, and pre-release software to use for a couple weeks prior to launch. I’m a huge fan of pen-based computing, so it didn’t take much to convince me that, as a more precise way to write or draw, Ink would be a useful addition to the iPad. While it is technically not a true active stylus, Ink’s pen tip does use some electronics, allowing its small tip to trick the iPad into thinking that it is a full “finger” touch. Ink connects over Bluetooth to allow its button to work, and enable it to support personalization. Ink connects to your Creative Cloud account, so you can store your favorite color palettes online and have them for use wherever you have your Ink.
At first I was a little skeptical of Adobe’s mini-ruler, called Slide. After all, what’s wrong with using a standard ruler when needed? I quickly became a believer. First, Slide is designed so that you don’t actually draw along the ruler itself. Instead, it causes the tablet to display a traceable line or shape on the screen near the ruler, that you can ink in. That way you don’t accidentally push the ruler while you are drawing (a danger on a slick touch display), and also means that Ink isn’t limited to drawing straight lines. It comes with quite a large library of pre-defined shapes and stamps — including everything from a French curve to a nearly complete set of Herman-Miller furniture templates. Currently only Adobe can create new shapes and stamps, but eventually it expects to have developer support for the capability.
It’s a little hard to get your head around how all this works from just a description, so here I am working with Ink and Slide on my drawing table:

Adobe Line and Sketch: Companion software for Ink and Slide

Since Ink and Slide are unique hardware, and Adobe hasn’t shipped its developer kit for them yet, using them to their full capability means using one of Adobe’s two new drawing applications for the iPad — Line and Sketch. Adobe has been continuing to tweak their interfaces and add features right up until release, so I’m not going to try to give you an exhaustive list, but basically they are very smart applications that provide an elegant interface for basic drawing. One nice feature of Line that it shares with its much bigger brother Illustrator, is an ability to project perspective grids for easy perspective drawing. Fortunately both applications are free to download so you can try them out yourself. They require a Creative Cloud membership — but even the free level is sufficient, so you don’t need to spend any money. Line even offers a software version of the Slide ruler capability, so you can experiment with it before you decide whether to shell out money for the hardware version.

Alternative solutions for digital drawing

Ink and Slide sell for $200, and require an iPad. As cool as they are, they’re not the only way to do digital sketching with cool tools. Autodesk’s Sketchbook application works with active stylus devices, and provides a fairly complete set of drafting tools, even including a software ruler. Ambient Design’s ArtRage far outshines Adobe’s fairly simple applications in features, and also has a very slick software ruler that can be extended and rotated — complete with a realistic set of pixel and inch markings. Of course, if you want to go the whole hog you can always get a Windows tablet with active stylus like the Surface Pro 3 or Cintiq Companion. Finally, for those who are dragging their heels about drawing digitally, the Livescribe 3 allows you to draw on its proprietary paper while it automatically digitizes your ink onto your iOS device.
If you’re addicted to your iPad for any kind of serious sketching or technical drawing, and have thought about purchasing an after-market stylus, Adobe Ink and Slide is certainly a more powerful, if more expensive, alternative. Adobe is cautious about future plans for its budding hardware initiative, saying only that it will gauge market response and future demand before deciding whether to add support for additional platforms or commit to more products in its Creative Hardware line.

Creative Cloud and Photoshop 2014: Adobe piles on the goodies for photographers

                            Adobe is continuing its full-court press to convince photographers to move to its Creative Cloud subscription-based licensing model. Today’s announcement of Creative Cloud 2014 marks its biggest effort yet. New features in Photoshop, lots of new mobile goodies, and a permanent discounted subscription for photographers were highlighted by Adobe as it rolled out its newly branded 2014 edition of its Creative Suite for the Cloud.

Photoshop 2014: Path-based blurs and focus-based selection are headline features

While Adobe plans to continue to roll out incremental improvements to its Suite as they are ready, it has decided to provide annual milestone releases to make it easier for plug-in developers to have known release numbers for testing. Today’s CC 2014 launch features updates to all 14 Creative Suite applications, but two new features in Photoshop CC will be of the most interest to photographers — path-based blurs and focus-based selections.

Photoshop’s new path-based blur lets you create just about any blur effect you can imagine

Adobe has previously provided a variety of tools for creative blurring on an image, including for simulating motion, but Photoshop 2014 takes the capability to a new level. Motion blurs can be made along a line, a radius, or just about any path that can be constructed using Photoshop’s curve construction tools. So in addition to simple motion, like a vehicle in a straight line, it is possible to mimic spinning wheels or even a vehicle in a swerving path.
Creating selections based on focus is also new in Photoshop 2014. You can tell Photoshop to only select areas that are in focus, and use that selection to create a mask for other commands. The magic is far from perfect, so you can further refine the selection using the usual set of Adobe tools, of course. This worked quite well for the demo images Adobe chose — that featured an in-focus subject in the foreground with a distant and out-of-focus background. We’ll see how accurate it is with real world images now that the production version has been released.

Photoshop 2014 now has “experimental features,” including touch and high-dpi support for Windows

With this release of Photoshop CC, Adobe is also providing an experimental features capability. Users will be able to selectively activate features that otherwise would not have made it into the product. The most exciting of these for Windows users are support for high-dpi displays and for touch gestures. The high-dpi support scales user interface elements by 200%, which will make Photoshop a lot less painful to use on high-resolution laptops and tablets. Touch gesture support includes standard Windows 8 gestures like pinch to zoom, and the new version offers improved stylus support.
Creative Cloud subscribers with an iPhone or iPad will also benefit from a new capability to manage their Adobe assets from their mobile device, using Adobe’s Creative Cloud app for iOS. All these goodies are available for immediate download from Adobe, or by using the integrated Update capability in your Creative Cloud applications.

Hacker hijacks thousands of Synology storage devices, forces them to mine 500 million Dogecoins

If you have a device that connects to the internet on a regular basis, patch it. That’s the big-picture takeaway from today’s news of a hacker who convinced Synology DiskStations (a type of network-attached storage device) to mine more than 500 million Dogecoins for him — and made out with an estimated $620,000 in cash in the process. Much of the focus has been on the size of his haul, which may represent the largest sum of cash ever mined by unwitting dupes, but Synology got in touch with us to point out that hey — they actually patched the hole used by the hacker quite some time ago.
Synology was warned that this particular flaw existed on DiskStation Manager (DSM) 4.2 and 4.3 boxes and patched it on September 23. It sent out an update informing users of the need to update their hardware. In February, they released a patch to fix the same bug in the beta version of the DSM 5.0 OS. Since February, the company has seen a huge spike in reports and service tickets, again, primarily from users who haven’t updated their software.

How to watch hacking, and cyberwarfare between the USA and China, in real time

You’ve no doubt heard countless stories about how the internet is rife with hackers and ruled by malware-peddling malcontents. You’ve probably read dozens of paragraphs on how the next great theater of war will be online rather than offline, and how China and the US are already battling each other for cyber supremacy. The truth is, though, unless you’ve actually been hacked, it’s hard to appreciate just how real the prospect of cyberwar actually is; after all, the effects of hacking are mostly invisible to the untrained eye, with the exception of very-high-profile database breaches. Now, though, a security company has produced a fascinating geographic map that shows you global hacking attempts in real-time — and sure enough, you really can see China waging cyberwar against the US.
The real-time map, maintained by the Norse security company, shows who’s hacking who and what attack vectors are being used. The data is sourced from a network of “honeypot” servers maintained by Norse, rather than real-world data from the Pentagon, Google, or other high-profile hacking targets. In hacking a honeypot is essentially a juicy-looking target that acts as a trap — either to gather important data about the would-be assailants, or to draw them away from the real target. The Norse website has some info about its “honeynet,” but it’s understandably quite sparse on actual technical details.
If you watch the map for a little while, it’s clear that most attacks originate in either China or the US, and that the US is by far the largest target for hack attacks. You can also see that the type of hack used, indicated by the target port, is rather varied. Microsoft-DS (port 445) is still one of the top targets (it’s the port used for Windows file sharing), but DNS (port 53), SSH (22), and HTTP (80) are all very popular too. You’ll probably see CrazzyNet and Black Ice, too — two common Windows backdoor programs often used by script kiddies and criminals, rather than actual cyberwar fighters.

Astronomers discover Earth-sized diamond-encrusted white dwarf

              Stars are usually unfathomably hot objects fueled by a nuclear inferno that can only be extinguished when it runs its course, but astronomers have detected an elusive object that doesn’t come close to fitting that description. A white dwarf star 900 light years away might be the coldest star ever found in the cosmos. Hovering near a much larger pulsar, this ancient stellar remnant has a temperature of less than 3,000 K, or about 2,700 degrees Celsius.

              That’s cooler than an industrial acetylene torch. It’s so old that it has crystallized into what is essentially a Earth-sized diamond, and it was surprisingly difficult to spot.
               A white dwarf like the one found near the pulsar is what’s left over after a star about the size of the Sun runs through all its nuclear fuel. The outer layers are thrown off, and all that’s left is a tiny, super-dense core of elements like carbon and oxygen. They burn at an excruciatingly slow pace, taking billions and billions of years to finally go out, and even newly transformed white dwarfs are incredibly hard to spot compared to active stars. This one was only discovered because it happens to be nestled right up next to a pulsar.
In the same way a white dwarf is what’s left after a sun-sized star runs out of fuel, a neutron star is what’s left after a slightly larger one runs its course. A spinning neutron star is known as a pulsar because it appears to pulse as it strobes the universe with beams of radio waves while whirring around. The pulsar partnered up with our diamond-encrusted white dwarf goes by the catchy name PSR J2222-0137, and is 1.2 times the mass of our sun, but even smaller than the white dwarf. Astronomers were tipped off to the presence of something near the pulsar by distortions in its radio waves. An old-fashioned space hunt was on for the culprit.