How Microsoft has impacted my life and how I plan to bring a change to the society being a Microsoft Student Associate?

Hey there, I am Irfan Hussain from Awantipora J&K majoring in Computer Science (MCA) at Islamic University of Science & Technology (IUST) Awantipora J&K. I am here to express the impact of Microsoft on my life and How I am now planning to bring a change to the society being a Microsoft Student Associate as depicted by the title. Here is my story:

Microsoft in itself is really big name in the computer industry from last 35 years. It has evolved from being an OS developing company to a giant in Technology. There are several products of Microsoft which are used worldwide to utilize the power of computer to full extent.From Windows in 1985 to XBOX, Surface and Windows Phone, Microsoft has not only changed the way people live but have invented a new way of computing reason being the user-friendly environment and ease of use of its products. It will be freaky wrong to say that there would have been such use of computers in daily life as it is currently in the world without the technology giant-Microsoft helping people to reach what they want and what they need.

Microsoft hasn't only impacted my life but of millions and billions of people around the world. It introduced such technologies to the masses which could have been a dream for people. People would have been still using "Pen & Paper" to accomplish their work but Microsoft being a well-wisher of the people almost kept that apart and defined new ways to work with computers easily and effectively.

I remember when I was a kid (not a kid indeed but a kid in using a computer), I used to write my name in Office Word and play with it by changing its colours, styles, fonts though not being a playing app tool for kids but it would please me and make me happy that time. I used to praise Office Word in my own style before my colleagues and friends and tell them the impossible things it can do with just a click or so as it wasn't a common thing in our lives or anyone's but Microsoft with its innovative and incredible efforts has reached the heights that even an 8 year old kid now knows what Microsoft has done for the sake of technology. I used to create paintings and all that in Paint instead of going out and play. It was impact of Microsoft on me being a kid. With the time I grown up and got to know more about Microsoft and the fields Microsoft is consistently contributing to. I was limited to Office and Windows products of Microsoft until there was advent of Internet in my life. After that internet revolution I got to know about more Microsoft products and services which include MSN,Hotmail, Bing and SkyDrive (now OneDrive) at a later stage.These prodcuts changed the way I live, explore, learn and innovate.

When Microsoft revolutionized and changed the way of work in Offices, Teaching and Learning in Schools, Entertainment in Homes through Windows Desktop OS it was a great time to reach pockets of people to bring another revolution to the computing world by introducing Windows in pocket, Sorry! Windows in Phone, Oh-Gosh! Windows Phone. At the time of introduction of Windows Phone nobody thought it would be a success. It first introduced Windows Phone 7 by partnering with some hardware manufacturing giants like Samsung, HTC and Nokia at a later stage which was a total success for Microsoft. I got an early opportunity to get my hands on Windows Phone and have a sneak into some latest by Microsoft, believe me the experience was really out of this world. Above all the features of the OS the Metro style UI and Live tiles on start screen was totally incredible.

The thing which added sugar to the tea was the release of Windows Phone 8 which pleased me and I could easily substitute my Laptop with my Windows Phone. My focus is on learning more programming languages (JAVA,.Net,C#), Web Technologies (JavaScript, ASP & PHP) and I am now starting to learn Windows App development by using Visual Studio (Thanks to DreamSpark for free Visual Studio) so that I can pursue to an innovative and creative carrier in Microsoft Technologies alongside my academics. 

Unfortunately I didn't ever got a chance to get my hands on some other products of Microsoft- XBOX and Surface because of the limited economical resources but I hope the time will not be so far.

How I plan to bring a change in the society being a Microsoft Student Associate (MSA)?

I want people to love technology as much as I love it. Being a Microsoft Student Associate I will keep exploring and learning more about technology and would love to spread and communicate the information about Microsoft products and technologies to my colleagues, friends and all those who can make most of it by organizing events, seminars and various sessions in my institute and outside it as well. I want everyone to be more enthusiastic and kind to technology and use it in every walk of their lives. I will definitely work for it to happen. I have participated in several workshops, seminars, tech events and also volunteered  and helped in organizing DreamSpark 2012 & DreamSpark 2013 in Srinagar. I will keep organizing such events  and use the experience in getting most out of it

This is Irfan, Signing off! Bye Bye.

Connect with me: http://erfaanhussain.com
Email: me@erfaanhussain.com

Blog also on: http://erfaanhussain.com/mic_blog.html

Post by ErFaan Hussain.

Aakash 2 launched, available to students for Rs 1,130

Right on cue, on the occasion of National Education Day yesterday, President Pranab Mukherjee and the Human Resources and Development (HRD) minister, MM Pallam Raju, launched the Aakash 2 tablet at Vigyan Bhawan, putting an end to months of speculation surrounding the launch of the tablet. The upgraded tablet will be made available to students in India at a subsidised price of Rs 1,130. According to reports, Aakash 2 will be made available to engineering college students and universities for starters, and will be subsequently distributed to others.

Datawind CEO with the newly-launched Aakash 2 tablet

The Aakash 2 tablet has been designed, developed, and manufactured by DataWind Ltd for supply to IIT Bombay under the Human Resources and Development ministry’s National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology (NME-ICT). The launch was part of a two-day workshop conducted by IIT Bombay for teaching faculties in engineering colleges using remote training applications developed at IIT Bombay’s Open Source development lab.  Over the last many months, IIT Bombay has developed unique and compelling applications for engineering students on the Aakash2 platform, which include 3D-modelling, C++ programming, remote and collaborative training applications, robotic control and live assessment tools.  IIT Bombay has partnered with the Center for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), to assist with the hardware testing and logistics.

The Subrao Nilekani Chair Professor at IIT Bombay, Dr. Deepak B. Phatak, heads the project at IIT Bombay with the support of C-DAC.  Professor Phatak was quoted as saying, “I'm not only confident, but sure that Aakash 2.0 is here to stay.” In the first phase, DataWind is to supply 100,000 units of Aakash 2 to IIT Bombay, which intends to distribute them to Engineering University and College students. NME-ICT Director, N.K.Sinha said, “We envision all 220 million students across India to be enabled by low cost Aakash devices in the coming years.”

The Aakash 2 is a significant upgrade over the original Aakash tablet. The initial version of the tablet had a 7-inch resistive touchscreen, which struggled to respond to touch. It ran Android v2.2 on a 366MHz processor, based on an older ARM architecture. The Aakash 2 tablet is likely to be replaced by a successor, which will have a dual-core Cortex - A9 processor by the end of this year.

Speaking on the launch of Aakash 2, DataWind CEO, Suneet Singh Tuli said, “We wish to use technology to fight poverty with a passion.  Access to computers and internet will help deliver a better quality education and level the playing field for all Indians”.

The Aakash 2 takes forward the nation’s ambitions of making quality education affordable to the have-nots in the country. Over the past month, even as scores of students in the nation awaited the launch and availability of the Aakash 2 tablet, several units were sent across to all ministers as well as state chief ministers for their feedback recently.

As per reports, roughly 22 crore students across the nation will get the device in the next five to six years. In fact reports suggest that by Monday alone, 20,000 devices are expected to reach out to the students.

At the launch

HRD Ministry officials shared that the device can not only run on Linux operating system, it can also do Aadhar authentication and control a robot from a distance.

In the later half of September this year, Datawind started supplying units of Aakash 2 to IIT Bombay. In fact in an earlier statement, the company revealed that an October launch of the tablet was likely. Datawind CEO Suneet Singh Tuli told PTI, “Supplies are on to IIT Bombay. In the next few weeks, it should be launched. I do not have the exact date, but HRD Minister (Kapil Sibal) has said he wants to launch on the anniversary date which is October 5”. However, Tuli added that the launch would depend on Sibal’s schedule.

Recently, two units of the upgraded version of the Aakash tablet were presented to the Gujarat CM Narendra Modi by Kapil Sibal. The ministry is reportedly toying with the idea of sending units of the Aakash 2 to all state chief ministers for feedback, a move particularly strange considering the tablet is yet to make its way to several of its pre-designated locations. India’s attempt at low-cost computing has primarily been one to ensure quality education is made available to those who earlier found it beyond their means. Despite criticism, there still is a lot of optimism surrounding the low-cost tablet.

Samsung Galaxy S III best-selling smartphone in Q3 2012

The Samsung Galaxy S III launched earlier this year has been breaking sales records, and sales of the handset recently touched the 30 million mark. In what may come as another feather in its hat, an announcement by research firm Strategy Analytics states that the Samsung flagship smartphone has overtaken the iPhone 4S to become the top selling handset of the third quarter of 2012.

Strategy Analytics states that according to new research from its Country Share Tracker (CST) service, Samsung's Galaxy S III shipped 18 million units worldwide, overtaking Apple's iPhone 4S to become the world's best-selling smartphone model for the first time ever in the third quarter of 2012. The Galaxy S III captured an 11 percent share of all smartphones shipped globally in the period. A large touchscreen, extensive distribution, and generous operator subsidies have put the Galaxy S III in the top spot.

Top selling smartphone of Q3 2012

According to Strategy Analytics, Apple shipped an estimated 16.2 million iPhone 4S units worldwide for second place, as consumers temporarily held off purchases in anticipation of the widely expected iPhone 5 at the end of the quarter.

The announcement concludes by stating that the Samsung Galaxy S III has proven popular with consumers and operators across North America, Europe, and Asia. However, the Galaxy S III's position as the world's best-selling smartphone model is likely to be short-lived. The Apple iPhone 5 has got a solid start already with an estimated 6.0 million units shipped globally during Q3 2012. Strategy Analytics states that it expects the new iPhone 5 to out-ship Samsung's Galaxy S III in the fourth quarter of 2012, and the iPhone should soon reclaim the title of the world's most popular smartphone model.

As per a post on the official Twitter page of Samsung in Poland, the brand has notched up sales of 30 million units of the S III. Samsung had first launched the handset in May, and in a few months, reached this impressive number. Samsung has employed an aggressive marketing strategy for its flagship model and it is reaping its benefits. The smartphone was heavily advertised at the London Olympics, and shortly after, Samsung launched it in a variety of colour options, increasing the customers' options from the original Pebble Blue and Marble White colours. In what comes as another major push for this smartphone, Samsung has recently announced the availability of some more colour options such as Spiral Black, Garnet Red, and Embassy Brown.

Here is a quick look at the highlighted features of the Samsung Galaxy S III:

• 4.8-inch HD Super AMOLED display with a resolution of 1280 x 720
• 3G, EDGE/GPRS, Wi-Fi with DLNA support
• GPS with A-GPS and GLONASS,
• USB 2.0, Bluetooth 4.0
• 8MP camera with AF, LED flash, BSI sensor, and 1080p HD video recording
• 1.9 MP front facing camera with a resolution of 720p for video chat
• 16/ 32/ 64GB Internal memory, expandable up to 64GB

Microsoft building its own Phone hardware: Not 'If', but 'When

The hard route to 3rd place for RedmondBy Gavin Clarke • Get more from this authorPosted in Operating Systems, 2nd November 2012 13:32 GMTAnalysis Rumours refuse to die about a Surface-like smartphone coming from Microsoft.The Wall St Journal cites unnamed sources as (this time) saying Microsoft is working with component suppliers in Asia to test its own smartphone design.The paper reports Microsoft "is testing a smartphone design but isn't sure if a product will go into mass production". The device measures between four and five inches, in the same ballpark as Apple’s iPhone 5 and Samsung’s Galaxy SIII.Rumours of a Microsoft phone have been rife for ages now and this latest whisper comes as Microsoft releases the ARM-based version of its own tablet, Surface, running Windows RT - the version of Windows 8 for the ARM chipset.Microsoft’s chief executive Steve Ballmer has kept speculation alive, by saying “obviously” Microsoft would make more hardware. He told shareholders Microsoft would build specific devices for specific purposes and the BBC that he would “dive in” where Redmond sees important opportunities to “set a new standard.”Is Microsoft doing a phone, and why?There’s so much latitude in the words Ballmer’s using you could drive the Torrey Canyon through the wriggle room and, obviously, Microsoft has precedent on the Xbox.It’s also worth remembering, when it comes to the phone, that Microsoft has dabbled with hardware before: testing its software on new systems without bringing them to market. The WSJ's Microsoft-own phone could simply be normal software trials.Another analysis of the own-phone rumour is that Microsoft is simply doing more Apple following.But why, when it has Nokia in the bag and handsets from ZTE, HTC, Samsung and LG, would Microsoft risk cooking up something that’ll damage its relationship with those partners in the way Surface has damaged Microsoft’s relationship with PC makers and the channel – traditionally happy to feed off Microsoft’s Windows marrow.Google went down this route with the Nexus, selling its own brand handset until handset makers and telcos forced it to backtrack. Now, since Google owns Motorola, Samsung has made it clear it’s interested in owning “its own software”; an alternative to Google’s Android would let Samsung declare independence from Google.The argument on Surface, amplified by the Microsoft supporters’ club and noise chamber, was that PC makers had screwed up the PC experience - leaving room for Microsoft to do the job properly with Surface. A good point: the PC makers as a class have been slow-moving on form-factor innovation and slow-witted about putting the needs of crapware makers ahead of the interests of ordinary users, who simply want a clutter-free PC.The same cannot be said of smartphone makers, which have set the agenda for PC makers to follow on device and touch-based computing.But Microsoft’s early experience on Surface is also revealing itself to be somewhat challenging. It seems Windows RT is actually slower at running apps built in Microsoft's C# than a Samsung Intel Core i5 Samsung Slate. No wonder Microsoft withheld Windows RT test devices rather than risk de-railing a smoothly managed release process.

IDC: Windows Phone grew most quickly, but 2% is not a lot

Microsoft might be forced into making its own Windows Phone handset not out of love of hardware or to deliver some mystically improved user experience, but rather because it charges hardware makers too much money to license Windows Phone. And if it wants more uptake of Windows Phone, it’ll have to overcome this.Microsoft doesn’t say what it charges for Windows Phone, but ZTE earlier this year said Microsoft is chargingbetween £15 and £20 to license Windows Phone 7.The problem with Microsoft for decades has been twofold: the price of licensing Windows coupled with an operating system that device-makers are not allowed to customise – kit running Windows has always had to feature the Windows look and brand. Windows Phone continues this payment model. Meanwhile, with Metro, Windows licences are locked in to a hardened prescribed look-and-feel like never before. Windows Phone 8 doesn’t just put apps into tiny little boxes, there have been improvements made both with Bing and Skype - yet more Microsoft-owned and branded properties.Android, by contrast, has given handset makers a great way to slip free of the burden of Microsoft branding. And IDC’s preliminary worldwide third-quarter stats show just how much device-makers have run from Microsoft. Android phones broke a new record with 136 million units, 75 per cent of all handsets for the period. iOS was the only other to double market share, but was a distant second on 26 million units and 14.9 per cent market share. A year in, Windows is on 3.6 million units and 2 per cent of the market.Microsoft saw 140 per cent year-on-year growth, with Android on 91.5 per cent but – obviously – Windows is coming from a much lower base.Charging handset-makers £20 per handset to use something they can’t modify thanks to the design fascists at Redmond is a sign Microsoft hasn’t changed. It’s also a big reason Windows languished on mobile and why Android exploded. When Steve Ballmer laughed off the first iPhone, he had no idea how bad things could get: the first iPhone was released in 2007, and Android didn’t come until a year later.If other handset-makers prove reluctant or unwilling to use and promote Windows Phone software, then it might be that Microsoft is its own best hope in producing a killer Windows phone. There is, in theory, nothing to lose in terms of damaging relations with handset-makers.But such a move will come a huge loss to the company, because Microsoft will need to absorb the licensing it would have charged others. The Windows Phone unit is already one of Microsoft’s most anaemic business units. It is unlikely that Microsoft will able able to bag top spot or even second place, though it might have done if it had more partners. However, breaking out and making its own phone is almost certainly Microsoft’s best option for coming third. ®

Microsoft and Skype to axe world's most popular IM client early 2013

If it works, don't fix it. Kill it and go P2P
By Gavin Clarke •


Microsoft’s Instant Messenger will be sacrificed for Skype by the end of March 2013, it has finally emerged.The software giant’s Skype business has bloged Windows Live Messenger will be “retired” in the first quarter of 2013, except in mainland China.Skype said it will work with Windows Live Messenger users during the next few months to help with the transition and "offer information and help along the way".Microsoft began moving users with Skype 6.0 for Mac and Windows, which allows you to sign into the service using a Microsoft account."Now users just need to update to the latest version of Skype, sign in using a Microsoft account, and their Messenger contacts will be there," Skype blogged.News of Microsoft’s plans to kill the 13-year-old Messenger leaked on Tuesday, but the company was unable to comment at the time when approached by The Reg.Windows Live Messenger is the world’s most popular IM client, with Skype lagging in second spot – they have 40.6 per cent and 27.39 per cent of the install base respectively.The rapid transition to Skype will worry users who are comfortable with the reliability of Windows Live Messenger and still concerned about the overall quality of Skype. ®

Design a Smartphone App or Hardware to detect GPS Jammer Devices

TAGS: 

Physical Sciences, Engineering/Design, Computer Science/Information Technology, Tec^Edge (Air Force), Popular Science, Theoretical-licensing

AWARD: $20,000 USD  |  DEADLINE: 1/03/13  |  ACTIVE SOLVERS: 182  |  POSTED: 10/25/12

Design a system to detect  the location of GPS jamming devices.  Either hardware or software solutions (particularly those involving use of distributed smartphones) may be acceptable; scalability and robustness are key criteria. If a smartphone app is proposed, Solvers should explain why smartphone users would be motivated to use the proposed app.  Technical requirements and description of prior hardware solutions are available in the full description.
This Challenge requires only a written proposal.

Source: InnoCentive      Challenge ID: 9932738

 

 

Challenge Overview

GPS (Global Positioning System) jammers deny GPS signal within a local “bubble” by emitting noise at the same frequency transmitted from GPS satellites.  GPS jammers are illegal in most places due to the danger posed by unexpected loss of navigation.  However, due to the low-power nature of the GPS system, it is relatively easy to jam a local GPS signal using a cheap radio device.  Solvers are challenged to design a scalable system to detect the location of a GPS jammer device.
While a number of prior jammer locator designs exist, the Seeker is aware of none that have solved the key problem of efficient coverage---a single GPS jammer can currently dominate a large area while remaining difficult to detect and locate.  Current jammer detector technology would require a prohibitively large and/or expensive number of sensors to cover a similar area as a single cheap jammer device.  This Challenge seeks a hardware- or software-based design that can be implemented on smartphones.
The Seeker may be interested in additional follow-on work to obtain prototypes for the most promising theoretical designs; successful Solvers may be invited to engage in the design/prototyping process.
In many places, it is illegal to disrupt or interfere with radio transmissions.  Solvers are NOT PERMITTED to engage in any testing or prototyping that could (intentionally or unintentionally) cause illegal interference.
This is a Theoretical Challenge that requires only a written proposal to be submitted.  The Challenge award will be contingent upon theoretical evaluation of the proposal by the Seeker.  To receive an award, Solvers are not required to transfer exclusive IP rights to the Seeker.  Instead, in exchange for the Challenge award, Solvers will grant to the Seeker non-exclusive license to practice the proposed solution.

OR

Scientist Wants To Fly A Blimp Over Mountains To Search For Bigfoot

Idaho State University's Jeffrey Meldrum is looking for private donations to build the remote-controlled vessel.

By Colin Lecher

M-Class Blimp Wikimedia Commons

Jeffrey Meldrum, an anatomy and anthropology professor at Idaho State University, has spent significant time in his career searching for Bigfoot. That's gained him the ire of colleagues, but it hasn't stopped him from upping the stakes more and more. Now he's gotten the nod from the University to build a remote-controlled blimp and continue the chase.
Meldrum is trying to raise $300,000 in private donations for the project, which pays for some high-tech bells and whistles, like a thermal-imaging camera, that could help find the infamously blurry animal. Meldrum will be running the blimp and camera with another Bigfoot enthusiast, William Barnes, who says he came up with the plan when he saw the creature more than a decade ago. Dubbing the plan the Falcon Project, the duo hopes to have a months-long expedition across the West started by next spring, but so far, to the chagrin of other believers, they haven't raised any cash to move the blimp skyward.
[MSNBC]

How I Hacked An Electronic Voting Machine

What do you need to rig an election? A basic knowledge of electronics and $30 worth of RadioShack gear, professional hacker Roger Johnston reveals. The good news: we can stop it.

By Roger Johnston (as told to Suzanne LaBarre)

A simple non-cyber attack on an electronic voting machine Vulnerability Assessment Team at Argonne National Lab

Roger Johnston is the head of the Vulnerability Assessment Team at Argonne National Laboratory. Not long ago, he and his colleagues launched security attacks on electronic voting machines to demonstrate the startling ease with which one can steal votes. Even more startling: Versions of those machines will appear in polling places all over America on Tuesday. The touchscreen Diebold Accuvote-TSX will be used by more than 26 million voters in 20 states; the push-button Sequoia AVC Voting Machine will be used by almost 9 million voters in four states, Harper’s magazine reported recently (subscription required). Here, Johnston reveals how he hacked the machines--and why anyone, from a high-school kid to an 80-year-old grandmother, could do the same.--Ed
The Vulnerability Assessment Team at Argonne National Laboratory looks at a wide variety of security devices-- locks, seals, tags, access control, biometrics, cargo security, nuclear safeguards--to try to find vulnerabilities and locate potential fixes. Unfortunately, there’s not much funding available in this country to study election security. So we did this as a Saturday afternoon type of project.

It’s called a man-in-the-middle attack. It’s a classic attack on security devices. You implant a microprocessor or some other electronic device into the voting machine, and that lets you control the voting and turn cheating on and off. We’re basically interfering with transmitting the voter’s intent.
We used a logic analyzer. Digital communication is a series of zeros and ones. The voltage goes higher, the voltage goes lower. A logic analyzer collects the oscillating voltages between high and low and then will display for you the digital data in a variety of formats. But there all kinds of way to do it. You can use a logic analyzer, you can use a microprocessor, you can use a computer--basically, anything that lets you see the information that’s being exchanged and then lets you know what to do to mimic the information.
I’ve been to high school science fairs where the kids had more sophisticated microprocessor projects.So we listened to the communications going on between the voter, who in the case of one machine is pushing buttons (it’s a push-button voting machine) and in the other is touching things on a touchscreen. Then we listened to the communication going on between the smarts of the machine and the voter. Let’s say I’m trying to make Jones win the election, and you might vote for Smith. Then my microprocessor is going to tell the smarts of the machine to vote for Jones if you try to vote for Smith. But if you’re voting for Jones anyway, I’m not going to tamper with the communications. Sometimes you block communications, sometimes you tamper with information, sometimes you just look at it and let it pass on through. That’s essentially the idea. Figure out the communications going on, then tamper as needed, including with the information being sent back to the voter.
We can do this because most voting machines, as far as I can tell, are not encrypted. It’s just open standard format communication. So it’s pretty easy to figure out information being exchanged. Anyone who does digital electronics--a hobbyist or an electronics fan--could figure this out.
The device we implanted in the touchscreen machine was essentially $10 retail. If you wanted a deluxe version where you can control it remotely from a half a mile away, it’d cost $26 retail. It’s not big bucks. RadioShack would have this stuff. I’ve been to high school science fairs where the kids had more sophisticated microprocessor projects than the ones needed to rig these machines.
Because there’s no funding for this type of security-testing, we relied on people who buy used machines on eBay [in this case the touchscreen Diebold Accuvote TS Electronic Voting Machine and the push-button Sequoia AVC Advantage Voting Machine]. Both of the machines were a little out-of-date, and we didn’t have user manuals and circuit diagrams. But we figured things out, in the case of the push-button machine, in under two hours. Within 2 hours we had a viable attack. The other machine took a little longer because we didn’t fully understand how touchscreen displays worked. So we had learning time there. But that was just a couple days. It’s like a magic trick. You’ve got to practice a lot. If we practiced a lot, or even better, if we got someone really good with his hands who practiced a lot for two weeks, we’re looking at 15 seconds to 60 seconds go execute these attacks.
I want to move it to the point where grandma can’t hack elections. We’re really not there.The attacks require physical access. This is easy for insiders, who program the machines for an election or install them. And we would argue it’s typically not that hard for outsiders. A lot of voting machines are sitting around in the church basement, the elementary school gymnasium or hallway, unattended for a week or two before the election. Usually they have really cheap cabinet locks anyone can pick; sometimes they don’t even have locks on them. No one signs for the machines when they show up. No one’s responsible for watching them. Seals on them aren’t much different from the anti-tamper packaging found on food and over-the-counter pharmaceuticals. Think about tampering with a food or drug product: You think that’s challenging? It’s really not. And a lot of our election judges are little old ladies who are retired, and God bless them, they’re what makes the elections work, but they’re not necessarily a fabulous workforce for detecting subtle security attacks.
Give people checking the seals a little training as to what to look for, and now they have a chance to detect a reasonably sophisticated attack. Do good background checks on insiders, and that insider threat would be much less of a concern. Overall, there’s a lack of a good security culture. We can have flawed voting machines, but if we have a good security culture, we can still have good elections. On the other hand, we can have fabulous machines, but if the security culture is inadequate, it doesn’t really matter. We’ve really got to look at a bigger picture. Our view is: It’s always going to be hard to stop James Bond. But I want to move it to the point where grandma can’t hack elections, and we’re really not there.
Read more about elections security here.

Amputee Climbs 103 Stories Using Mind-Controlled Bionic Leg

The latest in smart limb technology went on public display for the first time Nov. 4.

By Rebecca Boyle

Willis Tower Wikimedia Commons

A man with a mind-controlled bionic leg climbed to the top of Chicago’s famous Sears Willis Tower Sunday, part of a charity stair-climbing event. Zac Vawter, 31, lost his right leg in a motorcycle accident and is the first person to climb that many floors wearing a bionic limb.
Vawter lives in Yelm, Wash., with his wife and two children, but is a patient at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, which sponsored the event. The leg is designed to respond to electrical pulses from muscles in his hamstring, according to the Associated Press. When he thinks about climbing a stair and begins to move his leg, the bionic leg synchronizes its movement to his muscles, ensuring a smooth gait. The leg weighs about 10 pounds and contains two motors, which drive a belt and chain system that swings the leg at the knee joint.
The Rehabilitation Institute is developing the leg with an $8 million grant from the Defense Department, and its partners include MIT, Vanderbilt and other universities. The AP story is a little unclear about how it works, but if it’s thought-controlled, it sounds like a major advance in the world of bionic limbs.
Other bionic systems we’ve seen envelop a user in an exoskeleton, like the eLEGS system developed by Berkeley Bionics. Those are used by paraplegics who still have their limbs, but cannot use them. This one would help patients with above-the-knee amputations, which in many ways are more complicated. A bionic leg with a robotic knee, calf and foot has three components that must all work together, not to mention without interfering with the other functional leg.
Vawter practiced by using a stairmaster at a gym, and researchers spent months adjusting the leg so “it would respond to his thoughts,” as the AP puts it. Vawter won’t get to keep it, though. The experimental leg will stay behind in Chicago, where researchers will refine its steering and other components before taking it to market.
[Associated Press] 

Why Living Cells Are The Future Of Data Processing

Biocomputers make maps, run logic gates, perform binary calculations and more.

By Adam Baer

Intelligent Life Slime mold grows toward patches of food with the efficiency of a network engineer. Courtesy Andrew Adamatzky

Not all computers are made of silicon. By definition, a computer is anything that processes data, performs calculations, or uses so-called logic gates to turn inputs (for example, 1s and 0s in binary code) into outputs. And now, a small international community of scientists is working to expand the realm of computers to include cells, animals, and other living organisms. Some of their experiments are highly theoretical; others represent the first steps toward usable biological computers. All are attempts to make life perform work now done by chips and circuit boards.
Last year, for example, a computer scientist at the University of the West of England named Andy Adam­atzky and a team of Japanese researchers built logic gates that ran on soldier crabs. First they constructed mazes that replicated the shape of the wires in a computer’s logic gates.
Then they chased two swarms of crabs (inputs) from one end of the gate to the other. When the swarms collided, they combined to form a new swarm (output), which often headed in the direction of the sum of their vectors, demonstrating that a living, somewhat random system can produce useful order.

Power In Numbers: Soldier crabs live in flat lagoons and often move as a swarm, a trait that scientists have used to perform calculations.  Courtesy Benn K.K. Chan. Biodiversity Research Center. Academia Sinica

If crabs are good at clustering together, a single-celled organism that resides in rotting trees—Physarum polycephalum, or slime mold—is surprisingly adept at making maps. Adamatzky and Selim Akl, a computer scientist at Queens University in Ontario, have spent the past few years using slime mold to map networks.
Slime mold "will lead the revolution in the bioelectronics and computer industry."
In one experiment, they took a map of Canada, dropped oat flakes (slime-mold food) on the nation’s major cities, and placed the mold on Toronto. It oozed forth to form the most efficient paths to the cities, creating networks of “roads” that almost perfectly mimicked the actual Canadian highway system.
Last April, biocomputers got even more impressive. Swiss bioengineers announced that they had programmed human cells to do binary addition or subtraction, which is how a computer does arithmetic. They genetically engineered the cells with an elaborate circuit of genes that turn one another on or off. The cells can process two inputs added to their dish (the molecules erythromycin and phloretin) and display an answer by producing red or green fluorescent proteins.
What’s the point of all of this? Adamatzky says that slime mold’s mapping abilities could design roads, wireless networks, and information-processing circuits better than today’s computers. Combining slime mold with electronics could also yield benefits. Adamatzky is already making a computer chip that marries the speed of electrical communication with the learning capabilities of slime mold.
The hybrid technology would process information less like a computer and more like a brain, learning and growing through experiences and trial and error, making it possible to solve problems in both neuroscience and computer science. “We envisage that the Physarum-based computing research will lead to a revolution in the bioelectronics and computer industry,” he says.
His colleague Akl says one advantage of biocomputers may be that they can function in places that conventional electronics can’t. “Think about computing in harsh environments like the bottom of the ocean, the human body, or on another planet where our computers may not survive,” he says. Life forms could thrive in settings where silicon chips might melt, freeze, or disintegrate.

But the biggest benefits could be in medicine, because cells are adept at interacting with other cells. Martin Fussenegger, a bioengineer at ETH Zurich and the lead researcher on the cell-calculator project, says cells could be programmed into “smart cell implants” that sense health problems in the human body and administer tailored therapies.
For example, a patient with a high risk of breast cancer could receive an implant that would recognize cancer-indicating molecules and produce proteins to kill the cells making them. “A diseased cell is a program with a bug,” Akl says. “Computer scientists are good at finding bugs and fixing them. I leave the rest to your imagination.”

3 Ways To Go Along For The Ride With The Curiosity Rover

The Curiosity rover may be 190 million miles from Earth, but there are many ways you can share in its adventure.

By Laura Geggel and Dan Nosowitz

Along For The Ride Courtesy NASA

1. SOCIAL ROBOTS

Through Twitter, Curiosity has found its voice. The NASA-issued @MarsCuriosity tweets provide a play-by-play of the rover’s exploits on Mars. They’ve also inspired parody accounts. Case in point: the following exchange between Curiosity, a Martian rock, and Curiosity’s sarcastic alter ego.

Curiosity Rover

• ✔

@MarsCuriosity

Yes, I've got a laser beam attached to my head. I'm not ill tempered; I zapped a rock for science: 1.usa.gov/P7IXF1 #MSL #PewPew

20 Aug 12

• Reply
• Retweet
• Favorite

N165 aka Coronation @N165Mars

Um, @MarsCuriosity, what are you.... hey! ... HEY!

19 Aug 12

• Reply
• Retweet
• Favorite

SarcasticRover @SarcasticRover

You laser one stupid rock in the face and suddenly people say you have anger issues. Like the rock wasn't asking for it!

20 Aug 12

• Reply
• Retweet
• Favorite

2. COUCH PILOTS

In Mars Rover Landing, a free downloadable game for the Xbox 360, Curiosity’s fate rests in the hands of players. Wannabe pilots control the craft’s speed and angle of descent by moving their bodies in front of Kinect’s motion sensor. Guiding the rover through its “seven minutes of terror” landing sequence is fun and, not surprisingly, tricky.

Time Keeper:  Curiosity Clock/Google Play

3. TIMEKEEPER

Oliver Blake, a flight operations engineer for the British-led Beagle 2 Mars probe, wanted to watch the sun rise over Mars right along with the Curiosity rover. So using topographic data from NASA’s Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter, Blake created Curiosity Clock, an Android app ($1.99) that shows the terrain on Mars in Local True Solar Time. A finger drag will pan the landscape 360 degrees at five locations on Curiosity’s 687-Earth-day mission plan. Users can also scroll through time to watch the sun cast shadows over the Red Planet or gaze at the stars accurately positioned above it.
Correction: The original Curiosity Clock image showed a screenshot of the wrong app and has been updated.

Hackers Could Access Pacemakers From A Distance And Deliver Deadly Shocks

Loopholes could switch off pacemakers, rewrite their firmware and infect other pacemakers with deadly code.

By Rebecca Boyle

Artificial Pacemaker Wikimedia Commons

Pacemakers could be infiltrated to deliver deadly shocks, according to a security expert. It wouldn’t be simple, but it offers the very James Bond-like possibility of anonymous digital assassination.
IOActive researcher Barnaby Jack demonstrated this capability at a security conference in Melbourne, according to Australia's SC Magazine. He used a laptop to send a series of 830-volt shocks to a remote pacemaker, and used some sort of unclear “secret function” the pacemakers possess, which could be used to activate all pacemakers and implantable defibrillators within a 30-foot radius. The devices would give up their serial numbers, which would allow the would-be assassin to breach their firmware and upload nefarious malware that could spread to other pacemakers like a virus. The devices could also give up personal data, and even supposedly secure data from the manufacturer.
“The worst case scenario that I can think of, which is 100 percent possible with these devices, would be to load a compromised firmware update onto a programmer and … the compromised programmer would then infect the next pacemaker or [defibrillator] and then each would subsequently infect all others in range,” he reportedly said.
It wouldn't be the first time a security expert showcased the vulnerability of these lifesaving devices. In one study four years ago, researchers from the University of Washington and University of Massachusetts figured out how to assume control of implanted pacemakers and obtain personal data. Other groups are working on ways to encrypt artificial organs and limbs.
Jack said he made the demonstration to alert device makers to insecurities.
[SC Magazine]

Dear Mystery Algorithm That Hogged Global Financial Trading Last Week: What Do You Want?

On Friday, 5, Oct-2012 a single mysterious program was responsible for 4 percent of all stock quote traffic and sucked up 10 percent of the NASDAQ's trading bandwidth. Then it disappeared.

By Clay Dillow

Trading Places More computers than people. Rafael Matsunaga via Wikimedia

In markets, as in war and medical research and just about everything else, technology tends to impart an advantage. And, as we’ve recently seen with concepts for 3-D printed handguns, the rate of technological innovation often far outpaces the law’s ability to address potentially dangerous developments. This is how a single computer program of mysterious origins managed to make up 4 percent of all quote traffic in the U.S. stock market last week while hoarding 10 percent of the bandwidth allowed for trading on any given day.
That’s scary. No one knows where the program came from, what it’s really doing, or why it failed to actually execute a single trade--though there are plenty of theories. None of which is comforting. Scarier still: This kind of thing most certainly happens more often than we realize, and it happens without any kind of oversight. The global financial markets that underpin our economies are essentially run by programs that function faster than any human, neither the program’s creator nor any government regulator, could possibly intervene to halt an impending disaster (remember the “flash crash” of 2010?). We often joke about the machines taking over, but in the financial markets we’ve already created that reality.
We’ve previously covered all kinds of technological trading shenanigans aimed at giving one trading house an edge over its competition and the rest of the market. Fiber optic companies have laid down new shorter optical cables aimed at shaving milliseconds off of transactions taking place between London and New York or New York and Chicago (one Harvard professor even wrote a paper examining which geographic locations are best suited to leverage the speed of light into millisecond trading advantages as quotes and trades bounce around global fiber networks). Rogue algorithms have made trading errors or overwhelmed trading systems, sending markets soaring or diving. We’ve even see algorithms designed to trick other algorithms and trading robots that make decisions based on superstition.
The point of all this algorithmic manipulation is generally to create an edge for high frequency traders--those that execute huge orders in rapid succession, making (or losing) huge sums of money via small changes in an instrument’s price, often repeating this over and over during a given day. High frequency traders can make money the old fashioned way, by watching a stock go up and down and buying or selling when it moves to a predetermined value. But they can also take advantage of latencies in the fiber optic networks and other computerized systems that conduct trading. If a program can get price information faster than other programs--and we’re talking fractions of a second here--they can make advantageous trades based purely on the flow of information, with no regard for the value of the underlying financial instrument.
That’s likely what we’re looking at here. The behavior of this particular program was picked up by market monitor Nanex, whose own algorithms mine trading data for anomalies. In this case, the program began placing orders early last week involving 500 stocks on the NASDAQ (the technology index, of course) in rapid-fire, 25-millisecond bursts--first 200 quotes, then 400, then more and more, repeating itself. But it canceled those orders just as quickly, never actually completing a trade. At 10:30 a.m. eastern time on Friday, the program vanished.
This algorithm was likely just testing the water. Whoever created it likely just added some bandwidth and the program was seeing exactly how well it could use that additional bandwidth to create an advantage. How? Generally these programs dive into the market, suck up bandwidth, and try to slow the machinery of the market computers that feed information to others in the market. Then, using servers co-located at the exchanges themselves, the program can buy and sell on information that its competitors won’t receive until a few fractions of a second later. Advantage goes to the algorithm that can best sabotage the rest of the market.
Regulators are looking into this kind of market manipulation of course, but they are woefully behind. This kind of trading accounts for 70 percent of what happens in the markets every day. The real fear: a huge news event or a market sell-off occurring while one of these programs is choking up the system by eating up some double-digit percentage of an exchange’s bandwidth. The exchanges themselves aren’t even monitoring for this kind of activity (it’s not illegal, so they are not compelled to). Yet a glitch, or a single error buried in the code, could set off a serious market disaster.

Robo-Wheelchair Climbs Stairs! [Video]

The robotic wheelchair senses the topography of a surface and decides whether to roll across it, or walk.

By Rebecca Boyle

Wheels Up DigInfo TV

Wheels are the most efficient way to get around, but they can't take you everywhere. This new robotic wheelchair designed in Japan can go almost anywhere, however--it can swivel its axles up and down to climb up stairs, onto curbs or over obstacles.

All the user has to do is move a joystick to point it in the desired direction, and the robo-chair figures out what to do. Sensors on its feet detect the distance to nearby obstacles and determine their size. The chair will stabilize itself in the best position to hoist one of its front wheels, like a rider straddling a horse.
It has four-wheel drive and five axes of motion, including the ability to deploy horizontal stabilizers and spin in a tight circle. This would make it easier to back up or change directions, even in tight spaces. The chair is still a prototype, with ongoing tests at the Chiba Institute of Technology in Japan.
[DigInfo]

NASA | X-ray Nova Reveals a New Black Hole in Our Galaxy

They're gorgeous images, published with convenient timing.

By Colin Lecher

Colorful Pipes Pipes carry water to and from a data center In The Dalles, Oregon. Google

View Photo Gallery

Click here to enter the gallery
Two things need to be said about these images of data centers--the server storage areas for tech giants--just released from Google: a) They're breathtakingly beautiful, and b) They're a breathtakingly beautiful PR push.
It's not a coincidence that these images are being released after a report from The New York Times about the wastefulness of data centers. Only a fraction--6 to 12 percent--of the energy used in such centers, The Times reported, went to computational services. Facebook was slammed by the investigation, but so was Google: The search company uses almost 300 million watts to power its centers, and it doesn't always go to good use. "[D]ata centers can waste 90 percent or more of the electricity they pull off the grid," they wrote.
So it's not surprising that so many of the images released by Google would highlight efficiency and environmental friendliness--water vapor means "our cooling towers are at their most efficient," while several photos show the tech that goes into keeping the servers cool.
But they're still a lovely look at the rarely-seen centers, even if the glasses you're looking at them through aren't so rose-colored.
[New York Times]

New Black Hole Discovered [Video]

An X-ray nova lit up the sky enough for NASA's Swift satellite to spot it.

By Colin Lecher

New Black Hole NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center

We could say NASA has just discovered a never-before-seen black hole, but it might also be true to say a new black hole just threw up signal flares and shouted at us to discover it.
A rare X-ray nova--a release of X-ray energy--was first caught by NASA's Swift telescope in September. Scientists focused in on it and unraveled a story: the black hole formed a binary system with a nearby star, sucking in gas, then eventually releasing it. It's a rare event--the first one the Swift satellite has ever seen.
It's hard to tell exactly how far away the black hole is, but NASA's estimates peg it at between 20,000 and 30,000 light years away. See the full explainer on it below.

Video: Steve Jobs's Yacht Unveiled At Last

It's sleek. It's huge. And it's controlled by an iMac.

By Miriam Kramer

Steve Jobs Yacht Tech.UK.MSNBC

It's the yacht that Steve Jobs commissioned before his death, and it was just unveiled in the Netherlands this week.
In true Steve Jobs fashion, the yacht, called Venus, "comes equipped with seven 27-inch iMacs" that are responsible for the navigation of the more than 230 foot long vessel, reports the Atlantic Wire. It was designed by Phillipe Starck and is made solely out of aluminum. That metal choice makes it lighter and quicker than your everyday yacht, but we don't have video of it in action quite yet.

To thank the shipbuilders for six years of work, the Jobs family gave each of the team members an iPod Shuffle with the word "Venus" engraved into it.

You Built What?!: A Tesla Coil Gun That Produces Foot-Long Sparks

Modeled after a Nerf gun--but with 200,000 volts under the hood

By Gregory Mone

Super Taser Michael Clinard

While browsing a bookstore near his home in Seattle last year, Rob Flickenger came across a graphic novel titled The Five Fists of Science. The story portrays inventor Nikola Tesla as a crime fighter who battles his enemies with a pair of handheld Tesla coils—transformers that discharge spectacular streams of electricity into the air. To Flickenger, 37, the guns were beautiful, hilarious, and inspiring. “I started thinking, How would I do it?” he says.
Flickenger wanted his homemade lightning machine to look as cool as the one in The Five Fists of Science, so he chose his model carefully: a huge motorized Nerf gun. With the help of Rusty Oliver at the HazardFactory, an industrial arts studio, he made an aluminum version of the plastic toy. He gathered cans, scrap metal, and even a bicycle fender and melted it all down. Then he and Oliver created a cast of the Nerf gun out of sand and clay and poured in the molten aluminum. After it hardened, Flickenger milled excess metal from the interior using a CNC machine and cleaned up the edges with a rotary tool.
Flickenger, who designs wireless infrastructure for developing countries, had previously taught himself the physics of high-voltage electricity through free online courses from MIT, and he had experimented with Tesla coils in the past. But the smaller size of a handheld model posed new challenges. It also gave Flickenger one big advantage over Tesla, he says: “We have really cheap Chinese power tools.” An 18-volt lithium-ion drill battery would be more than enough to power the gun.
The real hurdle was engineering the gun’s circuitry to safely generate high voltages. At one point, Flickenger wound conductive copper wire around a piece of acrylic tubing 1,100 times only to realize that the tubing was too fragile and would break apart easily. His early tests had mixed results. “I’d switch it on, and nothing would happen, so I’d switch it off. Then I’d switch it on again and set something on fire,” he says, half-joking. In fact, safety was a major priority—at first, he activated the gun via a remote switch only. Later, he added a toggle with an arm-the-missile-type plastic hood to prevent shooting the gun accidentally. Right now, the gun’s either on or off, but Flickenger plans to make it more like the cartoon version by adding a trigger.
When he finally got the gun working safely, Flickenger showed it off at his wedding reception, held on a friend’s property. The guests were delighted. “There’s a corona discharge that comes off the front that’s just beautiful,” he says. “It’s almost like a fluid.” Although the gun’s not suited for fighting crime, it’s extremely popular at parties.

The Deep-Space Suit

Astronauts can only travel so far in existing space suits. What will it take to see the universe?

By Eric Sofge

The Deep-Space Suit Nick Kaloterakis

By the time the alarms go off, he’s back on his feet, hoping the rover wasn’t filming, but knowing that it was—that his face-first sprawl on the surface of Phobos has been recorded for posterity. The visor’s fiber-optic display flashes ominously: suit breach. His body, or some small sliver of it, has been exposed to the raw, airless vacuum of a Martian moon.
An astronaut can die many ways, but decompression is one of the more gruesome. A punctured space suit means a race to sanctuary, before the envelope of pure oxygen surrounding the body bleeds away and hypoxia causes the person to black out. Rapid pressure loss isn’t explosive, but it’s ugly: Water in the body begins to vaporize and tries to escape, the lungs collapse, and circulation shuts down.
No one’s dying today, though, at least not on Phobos. The suit he’s wearing isn’t a pressurized balloon. It’s the reverse, really—a squeeze suit, with a lattice of smart-memory alloys that binds it to the body, replacing an oxygen cushion with direct, mechanical counterpressure. The result is formfitting and nimble; it requires less energy to move andincreases an astronaut’s range on foot. And in the event of a rupture, the suit remains viable: It can be patched on the spot with a space explorer’s equivalent of an Ace bandage, its own shape-memory alloys pulling tight to seal the breach.
By the time the patch is in place, the alarms have stopped. Epidermal biosensors and path-planning algorithms have shortened the astronaut’s trek across the surface, from six miles out to just over four. He’ll call mission control to argue against this shortcut when his heart rate settles. A nasty bruise isn’t going to kill him. And he didn’t travel 100 million miles from home to turn back now.
* * * For human beings to push farther into the solar system—to an asteroid, to a Martian moon, or even to Mars itself—they will need a new space suit: one that will allow them to travel through deep space, move easily across alien surfaces, and survive a wide range of potentially lethal hazards. “If a small hole appeared in a gas-pressurized suit, it’s a major emergency. Mission over; get back to your safe haven ASAP,” says Dava Newman, an aerospace biomedical engineer and director of MIT’s Technology and Policy Program.
Even today’s most sophisticated suits are limited to low-Earth orbit—and one was never designed to leave the spacecraft. NASA began using the Advanced Crew Escape Suit (ACES) after the 1986 Challenger disaster to protect shuttle astronauts during launch and reentry. But it was barely fit for duty. Since the shuttle’s controls weren’t built for suited operation, pilots routinely flew without their bulky gloves, leaving them vulnerable to a rapid pressure leak. The suit’s life-support system was ad hoc, with hoses taped down throughout the cabin. Now that the shuttle program has ended, astronauts wear the Russian equivalent of the ACES, introduced in 1973.
NASA’s other suit, the Extravehicular Mobility Unit (EMU), is less of a garment than a multi­million-dollar spaceship packed with liquid-cooled plumbing. Worn during space walks, it first touched the void in 1983; the majority of its fabrics were cutting-edge during the Cold War. Though the suit’s manufacturer, ILC Dover, has been experimenting with self-healing polymers, and though NASA has promoted the development of advanced materials such as aerogels for ultrathin thermal insulation, those technologies haven’t yet migrated into the EMU.
The next era of spaceflight shouldn’t have to make do with hand-me-downs, not with the wealth of materials and designs incubating in labs around the world. With the impending private takeover of orbital and suborbital launches, and the first echoes of a mandate to land humans on Mars, there will be many more people going to space, some of them traveling vast distances. They deserve suits that not only keep them safe, but also live up to their ambitions.
* * *

THE LAUNCH SUIT

The first new suits will be streamlined successors to ACES, only they won’t be designed for steely-eyed missile men, but for a new cohort of pilots and passengers who paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to be whisked into space. Called intravehicular activity or launch-entry suits, these are the drop-down oxygen masks of the space industry, devices whose true funct­ion­ality—which includes pres­sur­ization and some measure of life support—kicks in during emergencies.
In its initial contract with a suit maker, SpaceX stipulated that the pressure garment must look “badass.”As designers deal for the first time with clients other than NASA, they are being forced to take on new challenges. In an initial contract with suit-maker Orbital Outfitters, SpaceX stipulated that the pressure garment must look “badass.” “You don’t get that sort of verbiage in government contracts,” says Chris Gilman, chief designer at Orbital Outfitters. “I love it.” There are obstacles, however, to badass space suit design. A launch-entry suit is ungainly, an oversize one-piece embedded with rigid interfaces for the helmet and gloves, and enough room to inflate, basketball-like, when pres­surized—especially in the seat, so an astronaut isn’t forced to stand up. Gilman plans to counter this “baggy butt” with tactical stitching. Ted Southern, co-founder of Final Frontier Design, which secured initial funding for its 3G Suit through the Kickstarter crowd-funding platform, hopes to use patterning as fashion designers always have—to improve fit. “I honestly think that’s the key,” he says. “The more anthropomorphic it is, the cooler it looks.”
This is the new business of space suit design: to satisfy the needs of commercial customers, whether that means cramming survivability into a svelter package, or coming up with novel, cost-saving innovations in structure and materials selection. The 3G suit—the first of which is slated for delivery as early as January to the Spanish aerospace start-up zero2infinity—eliminates some metal components. Final Frontier is considering replacing others with high-performance plastic. For the IS3 suit that Orbital Outfitters is providing to XCOR Aerospace for use in its suborbital two-seater, the Lynx, the company is exploring disposable elements. Components such as the bladder layer that seals the suit could be swapped out before each launch.

'MacGyver' Robot Could Make Use Of Objects It Finds

Georgia Tech researchers are designing robots that can improvise, using objects in their environments to complete complex tasks.

By Rebecca Boyle

MacGyver Bot to the Rescue Controlled by a human operator, a robot known as Golem Kang uses an object found in the environment as a lever to free a person trapped by equipment. Georgia Tech Photo: Josh Meister

Give a modern robot a specific job to do and it will do it pretty well, whether it’s scooping dog waste, fetching food for humans, or searching a dangerous environment. But it probably wouldn’t be able to improvise, or figure out how to grab objects lying around it and use them as tools. Researchers at Georgia Tech want to change that, turning robotic helpers into machine MacGyvers that can use objects creatively to solve complex problems.
GA Tech Professor Mike Stilman, who studies robot navigation among movable obstacles, is studying the cognitive processes that enable humans to grab arbitrary objects and find creative new uses for them. Future robots might scan their environments, see something on the ground, and quickly run through a list of possible uses for the thing. Maybe it sees a chair and realizes chairs have height, so it can use the chair to climb up to reach a window to escape a burning room. Or maybe it sees a metal pipe and realizes it can work as a lever to lift something heavy, freeing a human trapped under it. Stilman said the goal is to create machines that operate like MacGyver, the '80s TV character.
This would be helpful for military robots working alongside human personnel--so the Office of Naval Research is funding Stilman’s work with a three-year, $900,000 grant. The first step is to build a “hybrid reasoning system,” which will use physics-based algorithms and a learning system to teach robots how to recognize and use various objects. They plan to test it using a headless humanoid robot called Golem Krang, seen above pretend-rescuing a trapped seaman. This research on a MacGyver-bot is one of its kind, according to the Navy.
[Georgia Tech]