M's Aviation blog

By now we should have farms in the Moon (as predicted in the 60s)

2013-10-15T20:06:00.000-10:00

Shooting Planes From the Ramp of An 12

2013-09-30T23:50:00.000-10:00

Amazing Photogallery by English Russia: Shooting Planes From the Ramp of An 12

Stylish Pilots of the Early 20th Century

2013-09-24T23:49:00.000-10:00

Through Flavorwire I found this interesting photogallery about pilots of the early century

AS350 Helicopter Fire Fighting [Video]

2013-09-18T22:09:00.000-10:00

On 13 of July 2012 a fire broke out on Figueira/Mogadouro/Portugal village meters from the residential area. One AS-350 B3 helicopter loaded water from a small tank near the houses and then dropped it on the blazing fire avoiding reaching the houses.

Asiana 214 Accident Video

2013-09-11T22:02:00.000-10:00

At 11:28 a.m., HL7742 crashed short of runway 28L's threshold. The landing gear and then the tail struck the seawall that projects into San Francisco Bay. Both engines and the tail section separated from the aircraft.The NTSB noted that the main landing gear, the first part of the aircraft to hit the seawall, "separated cleanly from [the] aircraft as designed". The vertical and both horizontal stabilizers fell on the runway before the threshold.
The remainder of the fuselage and wings rotated (yawed) counter-clockwise 330 degrees as it slid westward. Video showed it pivoting about a wing and the nose while sharply inclined to the ground. It came to rest to the left of the runway, 2,400 feet (730 m) from the initial point of impact at the seawall.

After a minute or so, a dark plume of smoke was observed rising from the wreckage. The fire was traced to a ruptured oil tank above the right engine. The leaking oil fell onto the hot engine and ignited. The fire was not fed by jet fuel.

Two evacuation slides were deployed on the left side of the airliner and used for evacuation. Despite damage to the aircraft, "many ... were able to walk away on their own".[23] The slides for the first and second doors on the right side of the aircraft (doors 1R and 2R) deployed inside the aircraft, pinning the flight attendants seated nearby.

This was the third fatal crash in Asiana's 25-year history. It was the first fatal passenger airliner crash in the United States since the Colgan Air Flight 3407 crash in 2009.

Text from wikipedia

Weird Airplanes: Piasecki PA97 Accident

2013-09-04T21:56:00.000-10:00

The Helistat concept was to augment the helicopters' dynamic lift with the static lift of an air buoyancy envelope. This would give greater maximum lift capability for heavy lift work. At low weights (i.e. travelling to site without a payload) it would also free up the helicopters' rotor thrust for forward thrust, requiring less dynamic lift and lower fuel burn.

To maintain coincidence of the dynamic and static lifts (otherwise the envelope would pitch as helicopter power increased), it's impractical to use a single helicopter rotor and so multiple rotors are arranged around the center of buoyancy of the envelope.

Differential changes to the collective pitch (i.e. thrust) of the rotors gives powerful control forces. Propulsion and retardation are obtained from the cyclic tilt of the rotors, as for a normal helicopter. Yaw moments are produced by the differential cyclic tilting of the rotors (i.e. one side forward, the other back). In forward flight, the ruddervators at the tail of the blimp also add their pitch and yaw control moments.

The PA-97 was built under a 1980 U.S. Navy contract for the Forest Service to demonstrate a heavy vertical air lifter for harvesting timber from inaccessible terrain. The single demonstrator used a Navy ZPG-2W blimp and four H-34J helicopters. The combination of a large blimp with powered lift made the 343 foot (104.57 m) long helistat the largest dynamic lift aircraft in the world.

The helicopters used were aged examples of a long-established design. Their tail rotors were removed, their fuselage shortened and they were attached to a crude tubular aluminum framework beneath the helium envelope. Although each of them retained its cockpit, they were all controlled by a single pilot flying the vehicle from the port rear helicopter. Four freely-castoring twin-wheel bogies beneath the framework provided the undercarriage. Criticism has been expressed of the structural qualities and stress analysis of this framework.

Test flights were made from the Naval Air Engineering Station Lakehurst in Lakehurst, New Jersey, making use of the long-established hangars for handling large airships. First flight was on 26 April 1986.

On 1 July 1986, the PA-97 crashed after completing a test flight, killing one of the pilots, 39 year old Gary Olshfski.

A gust of wind from the rear of the aircraft induced some movement across the tarmac. The undercarriage responded badly to this, the bogies shimmying uncontrollably. Vibration in the framework then coupled with a helicopter phenomenon known as ground resonance. The pilot correctly increased power and collective pitch to lift clear of the ground and reduce this vibration. However the vibration was sufficient to cause a structural failure as the starboard rear helicopter broke off its mounting, its rotors cutting into the envelope. The unbalanced lift then made the vibrations worse and all of the helicopters, including the pilot's, broke free.

From Wikipedia

Plane crash recorded from 3 gopro cams

2013-08-27T21:51:00.000-10:00

From comments on youtube:

The man flying the plane was unharmed, but this is a real plane crash. A friend of mine and I put 4 GoPro cameras on another friends plane. 3 of the 4 cameras recorded video. the 4th only took one picture. No cameras were broken even though he fell from about 300 ft

Boeing 747-400 Passangers to Cargo Conversion

2013-08-21T00:00:00.000-10:00

The Boeing 747-400 is a major development and the best-selling model of the Boeing 747 family of jet airliners. While retaining the four-engine wide-body layout of its predecessors, the 747-400 embodies numerous technological and structural changes to produce a more efficient airframe. Its most distinguishing features versus preceding 747 models are 6-foot (1.8 m) winglets mounted on 6-foot (1.8 m) wing tip extensions, which are found on all 747-400s except for Japanese domestic market versions.

The 747-400 is equipped with a two-crew glass cockpit, which dispenses with the need for a flight engineer, along with more fuel-efficient engines, a horizontal stabilizer fuel tank, and revised fuselage/wing fairings. The aircraft also features an all-new interior with upgraded in-flight entertainment architecture. As on the 747-300, passenger variants include a stretched upper deck as standard. The model has a maximum capacity of 660 passengers with the 747-400D variant, and can fly non-stop for up to 7,670 nautical miles (14,200 km) with maximum payload, depending on model.

The Boeing 747 Dreamlifter (formerly Large Cargo Freighter or LCF) is a wide-body cargo aircraft. Cargo is placed in the aircraft by the world's longest cargo loader. Constructed by drastic modifications to an existing Boeing 747-400, it is used exclusively for transporting 787 aircraft parts to Boeing's assembly plants from suppliers around the world. Boeing Commercial Airplanes announced on October 13, 2003 that, due to the length of time required by land and marine shipping, air transport will be the primary method of transporting parts for the Boeing 787 Dreamliner (then known as the 7E7). Initially, three used passenger 747-400 aircraft were to be converted into an outsize configuration in order to ferry sub-assemblies from Japan and Italy to North Charleston, South Carolina and then to Washington for final assembly, but a fourth was subsequently added to the program. The Large Cargo Freighter has a bulging fuselage similar in concept to the Super Guppy and Airbus A300-600ST Beluga outsize cargo aircraft, which are also used for transporting wings and fuselage sections. At 65,000 cubic feet (1,840 cubic meters) the cargo hold is the largest in the world, and it can hold three times the volume of a 747-400F freighter.

Documentary on israel UAV industry [Video]

2013-08-12T22:06:00.000-10:00

Israel is the world's biggest exporter of military drones, used around the world for everything from surveillance to precision rocket attacks on speeding cars in remote locales. Israel's drone program hasn't stirred as much controversy as its American counterpart, but not because their targeted killings are any less fatal. VICE sent Simon Ostrovsky to a drone testing airfield in Israel to find out what their latest eye-in-the-sky can see.

1st Rocket launch from Cape Canaveral, 1950.

2013-08-05T21:56:00.000-10:00

The RTV-G-4 Bumper was a type of rocket built by the United States. It was conceived in July 1946 by Colonel Holger N. Toftoy as a combination of the V-2 rocket and WAC Corporal sounding rocket. The missile program was inaugurated on June 20, 1947 to:

investigate launching techniques for a two-stage missile and separation of the two stages at high velocity,

conduct limited investigation of high-speed high-altitude phenomena, and

attain velocities and altitudes higher than ever reached.

Over-all responsibility for the Bumper program was given to the General Electric Company and was included in the Hermes project. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory was assigned responsibility for the theoretical investigations required, design of the second stage, and basic design of the separation system. The Douglas Aircraft Company was assigned responsibility for fabrication of the second stage, and detail design and fabrication of the special V-2 rocket parts required. The program was officially concluded in July 1950 after 8 launches.

Six Bumper launches, as well as other V-2 test launches, were from White Sands Proving Grounds. In 1949, the Joint Long Range Proving Ground was established at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on the east coast of Florida. The July 24, 1950 Bumper 8 launch became the first of hundreds of launches from "the Cape."

Wikipedia.

Reaching the moon (Article from 1959)

2013-07-06T23:52:00.000-10:00

I found an old national geographic magazine with a really interesting:
How will the USA reach the moon from a 1959 perspective (10 years before actuallz doing it).

Aerospace ads from the 50s

2013-06-27T00:11:00.000-10:00

Last week I found a couple of old National Geographic Magazines at home:
Awesome aerospace ads.

ads.

Classified footage of an out-of-control UAS almost crashing a civil aircraft

2013-06-21T22:09:00.000-10:00

The video, filmed from on board a German Luna unmanned aircraft as it flew over Afghanistan, shows it missing the plane by about two metres.

The 88 lb (40 kg) German ‘Luna’ UAS was caught in air turbulence created by the Ariana passenger plane, before losing control and crash landing near the Afghan capital, Kabul.

The video shows the plane in the distance before it swiftly moves into shot.

The UAS passes under the left wing of the engine.

Domino’s Pizza Unmanned Helicopter Delivery Test Flight

2013-06-17T22:07:00.000-10:00

Domino’s Pizza in the UK just published this video of what is purported to be a proof-of-concept test flight of the DomiCopter.

The Domino’s Heatwave bags attached to the bottom of the DomiCopter should also help keep any pizzas warm. Domino’s says that it might launch a flight academy for the ‘copters should the delivery service take off.

“At Dominos we’re always looking to innovate and find new ways to deliver our pizza and a DomiCopter could fit the bill perfectly,” said Simon Wallis, sales and marketing director at Domino’s. “We are the number one pizza delivery company and we are committed to staying in that position.

“What better way to totally avoid the traffic than to fly – if anything this will now make us even quicker! We think it’s a great way to reinforce that Domino’s go to more lengths than anyone to deliver great pizza.”

Source: YouTube

Mafia experimented with lethal UAVs in the 90s

2013-06-12T22:37:00.001-10:00

A mafia turncoat has revealed for the first time that Sicily’s Cosa Nostra tested bomb-loaded remote controlled aircraft in the early 1990s.

Two decades before the US began using Reapers to strike terrorist targets in the Middle East, mobsters in Palermo were testing ways to rain death on rivals from the sky, former mafioso Gaspare Spatuzza told a court on Tuesday.

Spatuzza said he was ordered by one of the Graviano brothers – two senior Palermo bosses in the 1990s – to buy and flight test radio controlled aircraft with explosives attached.

“Graviano ordered me to buy a radio controlled aircraft,” he said. “He said others had already bought them and we needed to carry out tests for transforming them into flying bombs by loading them with explosives.”

Spatuzza said he had spent around 500 euros on the aircraft. “I carried out some tests,” he said. “We needed to learn how to pilot it and steer it towards targets, loading it with a modest amount of explosives.” He did not say if the aircraft was used in an attack.

Spatuzza’s claims mark the first time a Sicilian mobster has revealed Cosa Nostra’s aim of using remote controlled aircraft for murder. His testing of the rudimentary UAS came as the mafia was becoming ever more sophisticated in its use of radio-detonated explosives in the 1990s

Spatuzza, who was arrested in 1997 before deciding to give evidence against the mafia, was speaking on Tuesday at a new trial connected to Borsellino’s murder. He has been convicted of 40 murders, but claims to have found God in prison, pushing him to give evidence against former fellow mobsters.

via uasvision

Google Invests in Clean Energy UAS

2013-06-07T07:35:00.000-10:00

Google just bought one of the most promising airborne systems in development—it’s not for surveillance, it’s not for the military, and it’s not for hobbyists. It’s for making clean energy. It’s essentially a giant, autonomous wind turbine that takes to the sky like a mechanical kite. And it may be integral to the future of wind power.

Makani Power has been acquired by Google X, the search giant’s secretive research and investment arm. Makani seems pretty pumped. The cleantech concern has for years pursued a unique goal: float kite-like wind turbines higher into the air, where they can harness the more consistent, more powerful wind that their earthbound tri-bladed brethren can’t reach. Makani designed these kites to automatically take off and adjust themselves to the windstream to maximize energy production.

It’s always seemed like a novel concept, but many have written it off as lofty (seriously, I tried like three adjectives and there’s no way around a pun here). But Makani insists it’s anything but. The airborne kites are lighter and cheaper to build than conventional wind turbines. Makani’s CEO, Corwin Hardham, says it will soon be able to build turbines that generate power for 3 cents per kilowatt hour—that’s cheaper than the dirt-cheap coal power that currently provides much of the nation’s power supply.

Cleantech expert Silvio Marcacci explains that Makani’s genius lies its “using a fraction of the material necessary for a standard wind turbine.” He notes that “A conventional 1-megawatt wind turbine can weigh more than 100 tons, but Makani’s airborne turbine only uses a carbon-fibre wing and lightweight rotors of their own creation. The company says its 1-megawatt airborne turbine system will weigh a tenth as much and have an installed price half a normal turbine, but with the same rated power.”

That’s a lot less steel and many fewer materials to haul around to a build site. It’s also a lot less space. Traditional turbines take up a significant amount of space—which is fine, much of the time, as they can be integrated into farmland or underdeveloped areas. But if wind production is going to expand to the point that it provides a serious portion of nationwide energy supply, it’d be nice not to limit turbine placement to plains and farmlands.

Google agreed. “They’ve turned a technology that today involves hundreds of tons of steel and precious open space into a problem that can be solved with really intelligent software,” Google X Director Astro Teller said. That technology also includes the ability to stay aloft when wind is scarce, using minimal power, and to correct for violent winds or even decide to return to ground if hurricane-force gusts approach.

Their technology has turned heads before: The secured a $3 million grant from ARPA-E, the government’s clean energy development division and had received an infusion of cash from Google once before.

But the Google X deal was probably truly sealed after Makani completed its biggest milestone yet—its first successful fully autonomous wind kite launch on May 9th.

No wonder Google was impressed. This proves that Makani—which was aiming for commercial production by 2015 before the Google acquisition—isn’t just a novelty act, the product of high-minded tinkerers pushing the envelope. This proves that a new face of wind power may be on the threshold of changing the game altogether. See, Makani’s technology also allows wind power to become a force in areas that aren’t considered as windy—it’s windier the higher up you go—and may eventually transform wind power into a viable individual or community power source, as rooftop solar panels are now. After all, you’ll, no longer need wide open fields to build them—just ample airspace.

Of course, questions persist: if Makani turbines proliferate, it may prove a headache for the FAA—more aircraft circling the skies, along with other UAS, private planes, and who knows what else. Makani will no doubt have to address safety concerns, too; nobody wants to see one of those drone-kites come unleashed. And 3 cents per kilowatt hour seems pretty ambitious; I’ll believe that wind kites are cheaper than coal power when we get the meter readings.

But those are clearly surmountable obstacles; this is a major step towards a more thoroughly wind powered world. Remember, researchers like Stanford’s Mark Jacobson and UC Davis’ Mark A. Delucchi think that wind could provide 50% of the world’s power supply in just 20-40 years. Technology like Makani’s could help make that projection more feasible than critics thought. So really, it’s no wonder that Google is betting big here—Makani’s kites may be a serious player in the near future of clean energy.

Source: Mother Board

Police aborts take off of a drug plane

2013-05-31T20:41:00.000-10:00

Real footage of Brazilian police stopping a plane with drugs when it's about to take off by hitting it on the wing.

German railways to test anti-graffiti drones

2013-05-27T01:00:00.000-10:00

Germany's national railway company, Deutsche Bahn, plans to test small drones to try to reduce the amount of graffiti being sprayed on its property.

The idea is to use airborne infra-red cameras to collect evidence, which could then be used to prosecute vandals who deface property at night.

A company spokesman said drones would be tested at rail depots soon.

But it is not yet clear how Germany's strict anti-surveillance laws might affect their use.

Graffiti is reported to cost Deutsche Bahn about 7.6m euros (£6.5m; $10m) a year.

German media report that each drone will cost about 60,000 euros and fly almost silently, up to 150m (495ft) above ground.

Source: BBC

3D Printed Guns

2013-05-15T21:35:00.000-10:00

This is a story about the rapid evolution of a technology that has forced the American legal system to play catch up. Cody Wilson, a 25 year old University of Texas Law student, is an advocate for the open source production of firearms using 3D printing technology. This makes him a highly controversial figure on both sides of the gun control issue. MOTHERBOARD sat down with Cody in Austin, Texas to talk about the constitution, the legal system, and to watch him make and test-fire a 3D-printed gun.

NASA - Supersonic Aircraft Making History

2013-05-10T01:21:00.000-10:00

NASA.gov brings you images, videos and interactive features from the unique perspective of America’s space agency.

Recently they have pusblished a gallery with all the NASA supersonic aircraft and a brief explanation.

It is really interesting: NASA supersonic aircraft gallery

US Navy Wants Lasers on Marines’ Trucks to Shoot Down UAS

2013-05-03T23:20:00.000-10:00

The US Office of Naval Research thinks that Marine air-ground task forces are too vulnerable to adversaries flying cheap, small UAS overhead, like the four-pound Raven the Marines themselves used in Iraq. Its answer: outfit Marine ground vehicles with laser guns.
It’s all part of a new Office of Naval Research programme, formally unveiled last Thursday, with the clunky name of Ground-Based Air Defense Directed Energy on the Move. For the time being, it’s just a research effort, but the office expects to award grants and contracts for it worth up to $400,000. And it’s doable.

So, the specs. The idea is to get a laser cannon weighing less than 2500 pounds mounted onto a Marine Humvee or comparable truck. The cannon needs to provide a “minimum optical output power” of 25 kilowatts, with an eye toward scaling up to 50 kilowatts, for a two-minute full-power blast. Hardware that can adjust for all “environmental conditions” Marines operate in — from a muggy beach to the arid climes of Helmand Province — is encouraged; the Office is agnostic on how researchers get there.

The Navy is making a big push during 2013 to get its laser arsenal finally out of the lab and into the fleet. The first task anticipated for the laser arsenal is exactly the one envisioned here for Marine trucks — shooting down small UAS hovering too close for comfort. The Navy’s had solid-state lasers capable of burning through a boat’s outboard motor at sea for two years, and those models generated 15 kilowatts worth of power. In tests three years ago, an MK-15 Phalanx cannon tricked out to host a laser successfully shot down small UAS.

The hard part is going to be generating the power necessary for the laser beam either from a truck or portable within it. The generators on board ships are massive things that can divert enough power to a sub-100 kilowatt laser without jeopardizing propulsion. It’s unclear from the outline the Office of Naval Research provides just how a generator capable of generating 25 kilowatts worth of pew-pew-pew for two minutes and “followed by a 20 minute recharge to 80% of total capacity (power and thermal)” (!) is going to either fit in a Humvee or, more problematically, draw from the truck’s electrical systems. Then there’s the problem of cooling the thing down so it’s safe to drive.

Those are engineering problems that the Office of Naval Research feels confident its industry partners and associated geeks can crack. The effort underscores one of the drawbacks of small surveillance UAS, even as they proliferate and generate angst within defense circles: they’re slow and easily shot down — particularly by a line of sight weapon that can burn through them. And the Marines definitely want to demonstrate that as the UAS just get cheaper.

Turkey, US Sign Unmanned Aircraft Cooperation Agreement

2013-04-27T23:19:00.000-10:00

A statement by the Turkish General Staff about the unmanned aircraft cooperation agreement expressed that the flights in northern Iraq will be “conducted entirely under Turkey’s direction.” Turkey and the United States have signed an agreement regarding the use of unmanned aircraft under the direction of Turkey.

A statement by the General Staff had indicated that, due to the need for intelligence in struggles against the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) following the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, Turkey has signed a memorandum of understanding with the United States regarding the use of unmanned aircraft.

“Within the framework of this agreement, the flights of American unarmed unmanned aircraft regarding members of the separatist terrorist organization in northern Iraq will be conducted entirely under Turkey’s direction. Additionally, the 4 unmanned aircraft stationed at Incirlik are conducting their flights unarmed,” the statement said.

US Navy plans to place four UCLASS development contracts

2013-04-18T23:18:00.000-10:00

The US Navy has announced its intention to fund four companies to design new unmanned air vehicles as part of its unmanned carrier-launched airborne surveillance and strike (UCLASS) programme.

Boeing, General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman “have credible, existing, comprehensive UCLASS design solutions, and associated production capabilities and facilities” to design UAVs through the preliminary design review phase, the navy says.

The presolicitation, announced on 26 March, is the first step towards securing funding for the carrier-based strike and surveillance aircraft. A full solicitation is likely to go out “in the summer timeframe,” says the navy.

The first UCLASS aircraft are planned for production beginning in fiscal year 2016, following a likely downselect to a single manufacturer.

None of the involved companies had immediate comment, and all declined to share details of their proposals. All four have been working towards a UCLASS-capable aircraft for over a decade. In recent years, Northrop has won a navy contract to demonstrate the X-47B (above) onboard a carrier. General Atomics has developed and flown the jet-powered Avenger, while Lockheed has shown off a concept of a stealthy UAV for the requirement. Boeing has retired its Phantom Ray demonstrator, but has said it is prepared to compete for the contract.

Google Glass App to Make Wheelchairs Eye-Controlled

2013-04-10T23:16:00.000-10:00

What would you do with Google Glass? The company asked the public that question, with the hashtag #ifihadglass, to help find testers for its “explorer” programme.

Though those applications are closed, one local engineer from Wayfair posted on Google+ last month a fascinating idea with potential social impact: use it to allow physically disabled individuals to control their wheelchairs using only their eyes.

Wrote Wayfair’s Steve McHugh:

#ifihadglass I would use the eye tracking technology described in US patent 8,235,529 to implement a Masters robotics lab project’s alternative mechanism for quadriplegic and other disabled persons to control their powered wheelchairs (start/stop, speed, turning) while displaying real-time feedback about their surroundings (dangers, obstacles, suggested routes).

Since first posting the idea, McHugh has worked with a UI designer to refine it. Though many of the details are speculative, subject to unconfirmed details of how Glass operates, McHugh has clearly thought through exactly how this would work. I asked him over email to explain more about the origin of the idea and his proposed implementation.

How did you come up with this idea?

The idea for my project came from a robotics class I took while completing my Masters in Mechanical Engineering at Tufts University. For a class project, one of the groups built an eye-tracking software and an eye-tracking apparatus. They did this by using a webcam to control the motors of a small robotic car with the intention of applying this technology to a wheelchair. Later on, Tim Roberts, the group lead was able to pair his technology with an electric wheelchair as part of his Senior Capstone.

When the co-founder and chairman of my company, Wayfair, encouraged all of us to submit ideas for Google’s Glass Explorer contest, the first thought that popped into my head was how the technology built into Google Glass could bring that project to life in a completely different way. I quickly verified if I was right in my assumption that Google would build eye-tracking into their device and found US patent 8,235,529 which confirmed that assumption. A professionally developed eye-tracking package provided by Google eliminated one of the two largest obstacles I saw to Tim’s project becoming a reality. My project will be able to utilize a highly optimized and professional eye-tracking library. The second major obstacle to the original design is the visual obstruction of the eye-tracking apparatus. Google Glass not only removes the need for an obstruction as in the original concept, but it also allows for adding in feedback to the user about their surroundings. Google Glass will provide a fantastic interface for the wheelchair controls by providing GUI overlays in real-time on top of the glass.

Can you explain a bit about the eye tracking technology and how you see it being applied in this context?

While I won’t know more about the specifics of the eye-tracking technology until I gain access to the Glass API, the patent Google issued (US 8,235,529) indicates there will be rather precise tracking of the right eye’s movement relative to objects presented in the user’s line of sight. This level of precision will make it possible to seamlessly use subtle eye motions to select controls that change the speed and direction of the chair when the user stares at a particular button for a determined period of time. What constitutes a significant period of time will need to be determined through some testing, but it will be more than the amount of time someone might absently glance past a button and less than an amount of time that degrades the ability to seamlessly switch from one direction to another or from speeding up to slowing down. The Google Glass human interface guidelines will most likely provide guidance on timing. Being able to rely on subtle eye motions for button-like control also allows us to track for more extreme eye motions, as well as shutting the eye all together for a significant period of time, to programme in system overrides such as an emergency stop.

What about the image you have of what the visual UI would look like. Can you talk me through what I’m looking at and what the functionality is?

The UI image attached to my contest application is a very rough concept about how a user would interact with the controls. What you see in the upper right is the card used to control the speed of the wheelchair. I have worked with a UI designer since then to iterate on the process further and sketch out what the UI may look like. So far it is still in conceptual stages as we’re missing the Glass GUI Library which will likely be part of the developers kit. Once that is released the buttons you’re seeing will likely be replaced with standard interface elements. The basic functionality on the image below are the buttons at the top which allow you to increase, decrease the speed of the wheelchair or to stop it altogether. The bottom right is a status bar letting the rider know their current speed and whether it is accelerating, decelerating or staying constant. The bottom left is a battery indicator for the chair itself and provides an estimate of how much battery is left in the chair. The last element I added is the obstacle and path detection. The machine would be able to detect potential obstacles in the path such as potholes or objects in the way and alert the user.

Anything else you’d like to add?

I am really excited about this project. My loftiest dream is that Google would somehow pick me out of thousands of submissions and that I would ultimately be able to turn this into a real product by sometime next year. I think medical applications of Google Glass are huge and even at the rumored $1500 Google Glass would be potentially life-changing for quadriplegics and even paraplegics, freeing their hands to do other tasks. I really hope that this project becomes a reality to help anyone who could benefit from supplemental control interfaces.

Source: BostInno

8 Totally Cool Uses for UAS

2013-04-02T22:48:00.001-10:00

“I am convinced that the domestic use of UAS to conduct surveillance and collect other information will have a broad and significant impact on the everyday lives of millions of Americans,” Senator Patrick Leahy, chairman of a Senate Judiciary Committee looking into drone legislation, said on Thursday (March 21), CNN reports.
There’s little doubt that UAS technology is here to stay, but their use isn’t limited to cloak-and-dagger operations and military technology. Here are just a few ways the UAS can be your friend:

Real estate sales

Daniel Gárate had a lucrative career as a UAS videographer, using his $5,000 aircraft to capture stirring images of high-end properties for the Los Angeles real-estate market — until the Los Angeles Police Department shut him down, declaring that commercial uses for drones were not allowed, the New York Times reports.

That’s no longer the case, since a federal law signed in 2012 opened drone technology to commercial applications. Gárate, who also uses UAS to take videos for commercials, has also been approached to take paparazzi-style photos of celebrities like Kim Kardashian, the Times reports.

Sports photography

Falkor Systems, a pioneer in the consumer use of UAS technology, has targeted extreme sports photography and video for drone use, focusing on skiing and base-jumping activities.

“The angles people get [while filming] are not quite as intimate as would be possible with an autonomous flying robot,” said Sameer Parekh, Falkor CEO, who envisions a small UAS device that can accompany a downhill skier.

“You just take it out, let it take off and it follows you down the hill. You get back on the ski lift and put it back in your backpack,” Parekh said.

Highway monitoring

There are roughly 4 million miles of highways crisscrossing the United States, but who’s watching them all? UAS, someday.

A project to study the use of UAS for inspecting roads and bridges, surveying land with laser mapping and alerting officials to traffic jams and accidents recently received a $75,000 grant from the Federal Highway Administration and the Georgia Department of Transportation.

“UAS could keep workers safer because they won’t be going into traffic or hanging off a bridge,” said Javier Irizarry, director of the CONECTech Lab at the Georgia Institute of Technology. “It would help with physical limitations of the human when doing this kind of work.”

Wildlife research

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has been testing the Raven A, a small, camera-equipped UAS that’s about 3 feet (1 meter) long, to see if it can be used to conduct aerial counts of the endangered sandhill crane (Grus canadensis pulla).

“We flew it over the cranes when they were roosting, feeding, and loafing to see how they reacted,” said Leanne Hanson, a field biologist, in a USGS report. “They sat still for us when they were roosting and loafing, but birds flushed during feeding. We will plan missions during roosting and loafing times, when their behavior is not affected.”

And critically endangered Sumatran orangutans (Pongo abelii) nest in treetops, making them difficult to study. UAS, however, can easily navigate the primates’ aeries, providing valuable information that will assist in conservation activities, reports PCMag.com.

Atmospheric research

Ozone in the upper atmosphere plays a critical role in protecting the Earth’s surface from harmful ultraviolet (UV) radiation.

To better understand how water vapor and ozone interact, NASA is sending a UAS into the stratosphere — the layer of the atmosphere where protective ozone is found — above the tropics.

The flights are the first of a multiyear campaign to study how changes in water vapor in the stratosphere can affect global climate.

Hunting — and anti-hunting

Wild hogs ruining your crops? Get yourself a “Dehogaflier,” a drone devised by engineer Cy Brown of Bunkie, La., which uses a heat-sensing camera to find feral hogs at night. The UAS saves time otherwise wasted wandering muddy fields in the dark.

“Now you can know in 15 minutes if it’s worth going out,” Brown told the New York Times.

UAS have also been used by animal-rights advocates to determine if illegal hunting is taking place, even on private property. UAS equipped with video cameras are being used by the League Against Cruel Sports, a British animal-rights group, to spot instances of illegal fox hunting.

Disaster relief

UAS have a wide range of applications for disaster relief, from entering radiation-filled “hot zones” where human access would be dangerous (after a nuclear accident, for example) to searching for survivors across a debris-filled landscape.

George Barbastathis and others at the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology recently received a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to develop drones to deliver vaccines and medicines to hard-to-reach locations and disaster zones, PCMag.com reports.

Environmental compliance

Midnight dumping of toxic waste and other surreptitious activities are the bane of environmental law enforcement. But UAS may prove to be a cost-effective solution to that problem.

A hobbyist in Texas discovered a river of blood flowing into the Trinity River near Dallas. “I was looking at images after the flight that showed a blood-red creek and was thinking, ‘could this really be what I think it is?”.

The blood, it turns out, was coming from a meat-packing plant that was discharging into the river. The facility was soon under investigation by Texas environmental authorities.

Source: Live Science