Aerospace News

"The Secret Service is going to be mad at me about this." And with due cause, Mr. President, for we're pretty sure projectile weapons are prohibited in the State Dining Room of the White House. Nonetheless, an exception was made yesterday as President Obama hosted the second White House Science Fair, where he surveyed more than 30 student projects, cracked jokes with youngsters and the press, and--most notably--participated in a demo of 14-year-old Joey Hudy's "Extreme Marshmallow Cannon." Which is exactly what it sounds like.

For his part, Obama got a schooling from the young Hudy on exactly how to put together a pneumatic cannon. And the President contributed a little elbow grease himself, using a bicycle pump to prime the long-range snack delivery system (LSDS). See it all unfold, including the climactic marshmallow blast, below.

[YouTube]

A group of forward-thinking military scientists want to plug soldiers' weapons directly into their brains, and this time DARPA is nowhere to be found. The Royal Society, the UK's national academy of scientific thought, issued a report today on the applications of neuroscience in the military and law enforcement contexts. Discussed therein: new performance-enhancing designer drugs, brain stimulation to boost brain function, and weapons systems that plug directly into the brain.

The wide-ranging document reportedly covers a lot of ground, including the ethical issues surrounding the use of neuroscience in defense. It seems to focus less on ways to impact the enemy directly, and more on the enhancement of soldiers' fighting abilities--though neurological drugs that make enemy captives more talkative or perhaps cause enemy troops fall asleep or become disoriented also get a mention.

Of particular interest in the document: transcranial direct current stimulation, or tDCS. The idea of passing electrical signals through the skull to the brain to boost performance isn't new to U.S. defense dreamers, as the U.S. military has already done tests on the technology (and found it helpful in improving soldiers' abilities to detect threats). A battle helmet that can pass weak electrical pulses through the brain could sharpen a soldier's mind, the report suggests, upping attention spans and memory as well as attention to detail.

Similarly, electroencephalogram (EEG) could work to turn the human brain into a more efficient tool, although in a somewhat backwards fashion from tDCS. Using an array of electrodes, EEG can record brainwaves through the skull, detecting things that may not be conscious but that the brain nonetheless registers. For instance, the report cites DARPA research in which subjects looking at satellite photos were monitored with EEG. Even when the subjects missed some of the targets they were looking for in the images, the brain detected them, and that was evident in their brain waves even though it was never converted to conscious thought.

Such tools could also be used to screen recruits and identify certain mental traits, helping fighting forces more efficiently organize their ranks into fast learners, decision-makers, peacekeepers, and hardened, battle-ready special ops types. But none of these ideas is as far-out as using brain-machine interfaces (BMIs) to plug soldiers' brains directly into weapons systems.

This is based on the same kind of research that has shown that disabled individuals can move prostheses with nerve signals from the brain, but in this context such BMI technology would be used to plug the fast processing power of the brain into drone technology and other weapons technologies for faster target identification and, presumably, termination. Let's hope the soldiers mind-melding with the killer drones aced their EEG decision-making exams.

[Guardian]

We've been catching glimpses of iRobot's 710 Warrior ground robot at trade shows and in videos for something like 2 years now. We even saw a couple of pared down prototypes deployed to Fukushima prefecture to assist with the radiation cleanup after the earthquake in Japan in last year. And finally the behemoth of the iRobot ground fleet is going up for sale. Ready the 150-foot strings of mine-excavating explosive charges--seriously.

Massachusetts-based iRobot already has a number of robots in the field and in the household--they make everything from the popular Roomba vacuum robots to the tiny SUGV and larger Packbots that are workhorses of American Explosives Ordnance Disposal teams working overseas. But the Warrior will be the largest, weighing in at 450 pounds and sporting a 6.5-foot mechanical arm. It can climb stairs, reach its arm up to 11.5 feet high, and negotiate obstacles up to more than 1.5 feet high. It can be weaponized, or fitted with a variety of task-specific tools. It can delicately open a car door or smash its way through the windows. Or it can just tow the car.

You don't need us to tell you that's awesome. Warrior's size and weight will limit its ability to deploy in the field like Packbot and SUGV, which fit relatively well in the back of a truck or, in SUGV's case, in a rucksack. But in situations where it can be deployed it will offer handlers a far more versatile robot than its lighter brethren. See it perform many of these versatile tasks below.

[Technology Review]

Man has never crossed the sound barrier outside of an aircraft, and Austrian extreme athlete Felix Baumgartner--holder of several records for jumping off of very tall things--has wanted to be the first for several years now. And he finally might get his chance in 2012. After being set back by a lawsuit, the Red Bull Stratos initiative is back on track, which means Baumgartner could make the world's highest skydive jump from 120,000 feet as soon as August of this year.

Jumping from that altitude is extremely challenging of course. The current jump record is held by former Air Force pilot Joe Kittinger, who jumped from nearly 103,000 feet in 1960, back when we were still trying to figure out just how high the human body could go. Others have failed to break Kittinger's record. One person has died trying. It's cold up there, there's not a lot of air to breathe, and air pressures are significantly lower than at sea level. Biologically speaking, man was not designed to fly this high.

As such, Baumgartner will make the ride up to 120,000 in a custom-built pressurized capsule tethered to a 600-foot-wide balloon. A special pressurized suit, similar to a space suit, will protect him from the conditions outside once the door comes open and Baumgartner takes the plunge. About 35 seconds after he jumps, he'll break the sound barrier. Then he'll continue to fall for another five minutes, pulling his parachute about a mile from the ground.

Records bested would include the highest skydive, the highest manned balloon ride, and the longest free fall ever recorded. Or they might include highest manned balloon disaster and worst idea ever. We'll just have to wait and see. Regardless, the team should learn quite a bit about high altitude pressure suits, which could in turn inform the designs of future space suits.

[SPACE]

The era of the rampage is officially over.

In 2001, Grand Theft Auto III introduced a mass audience to a new way of experiencing the world of a game: Instead of walking narrow corridors or outdoor environments that felt hemmed in by invisible walls and artificial barriers, you could explore a vast city.

Back then, the ability to wreak havoc in a wide-open space was enough. For decades video games were linear affairs, fraught with difficulty. Find yourself stumped by a tricky puzzle or brutal boss battle and you were left with nothing to do. Video games were rife with dead ends. Grand Theft Auto III helped change all that. Sure, the game had a plot. But you weren't limited to chasing the story. Players who found themselves stuck could blow off steam by stealing a car, blowing stuff up with a rocket launcher or punching a random pedestrian. But the kind of freedom Rockstar's blockbuster offered was ultimately limited. Players could roam a vast world, but their only meaningful way to interact with that world was to cause trouble.

The message was loud and clear, though. Players wanted more agency in their videogames - less hard and fast goals and more freedom to find fun in their own way

But what's a gamer to do when there is no princesses to rescue or universe to save? If you're one of the millions playing the wildly successful independent game Minecraft, you build. The game, from developer Mojang, seems to go against the grain of contemporary video games. Rather than concentrate on action, Minecraft leverages player creativity and curiosity to generate fun.

Playing Minecraft is like being dropped into a sprawling world made of Legos with no road-map. After years of playing games with hard and fast goals the rudderless sensation can be disarming. It doesn't help that Minecraft has no tutorial or in-game instructions. It's just you in a pristine Eden, comprised of winding waterways, verdant forests and jutting mountains Swiss-cheesed with networks of caverns. It is not uncommon for the first-time Minecraft player to think, "What now?"

Minecraft's adventure mode is about survival. Players are dropped, empty handed, into a vast, randomly generated world. Their first task is to make tools and shelter. Because when the sun sets the monsters come out. Players scrounge for wood and stone, craft a workbench and begin the gradual process of gearing up. Here is where Minecraft is most conventional - there's a rigid progression from building tools out of wood and stone to eventually mining diamonds, constructing working railroads and magical portals that can transport players to other dimensions. Once the player has built a workshop and a fortress to protect them from wandering zombies, spiders and Creepers the game tilts towards the creative. Players are free to proceed how the choose - they can gather resources, develop their base of operations or strike out into the world, looking for new adventure. It's this undirected freedom that keeps millions occupied.

That aimless feeling hasn't stopped fans from finding their own fun in Minecraft's procedurally generated worlds. The secret to Minecraft's stickiness is the voxel - the three-dimensional cousin of the pixel. It only takes one glance at the chunky, retro look of Minecraft to understand that the game isn't interested in verisimilitude. Minecraft doesn't want to trick you into thinking that you're in a world just like ours. When you see all those voxels, each like an individual Lego - one of millions of building blocks that make up the world - it is hard not to be inspired. Think of Minecraft as a God game, where the player has the ability to shape the world the way they choose, played at ground level. And to that end players can play together via online servers where they collaborate to build wonders. Some servers are geared towards pure creation, where resources are unlimited and monster never interfere.

The most ambitious have used Minecraft's voxels to build working computers and replicas of Star Trek the Next Generation's Enterprise. But the activity loop of exploration, resource gathering and creation has proven entertaining for gamers of all stripes. Obsessive compulsive disorder isn't a prerequisite for enjoying Minecraft.

A classic of the Minecraft YouTube video genre

As much as Mojang and creator Markus "Notch" Persson have innovated with Minecraft much of the credit for the game's success goes to the people who play it. The game's long gestation period and open-ended style of play has inspired a legion of fans and supporters with the enthusiasm of evangelists. Mojang didn't need to buy ads or produce commercials to land 20 million players. Their user base grew virally. Crowd-sourced Minecraft Wikis offer clear instructions for the Minecraft newbie. And millions of user-generated YouTube videos offer glimpses of awe-inspiring Minecraft creations, allowing inspiration and creativity to spread virally. In 2010 Minecraft fans spontaneously gathered in Bellevue, Washington, to meet Persson and other like-minded Minecrafters. The off-the cuff meet-up only attracted fifty or so fans, but became a seed which would germinate into something bigger. In 2011 4,500 Minecraft fans from 23 different countries gathered in Las Vegas for MineCon - the first official convention for the game's growing legions of aficionados. In 2012, a version for XBox and Kinect is expected.

Minecraft's success story has proven inspirational to other game designers. The influence is most obviously felt among the scads of so-called Minecraft clones. Since Minecraft entered public beta testing in 2009 dozens upon dozens of imitators have cropped up. Some are straight up copies. But many others use Minecraft as a starting point and create something entirely new. Terrarria, the two-dimensional side-scroller from indie studio Re-Logic, melds Minecraft with retro games like Metroid and Castlevania. And it isn't just independent game makers who are taking the lessons of Minecraft to heart. The recently announced Fortnite from Gears of War studio Epic Games will allow players to build their own fortresses to help them survive nighttime waves of zombies.

The great contribution of Minecraft and the many games that will come after it is to fundamentally change what players can expect to do in the videogame worlds they visit. From here on out more and more players won't be asking, "what can I blow up?" Instead they'll be wondering, "what can I build?" That's real, constructive change.

This is genuinely amazing.

The skies are going to look very different pretty soon, and it's been a long time coming. Congress finally passed a spending bill for the Federal Aviation Administration, allocating $63.4 billion for modernizing the country's air traffic control systems and expanding airspace for unmanned planes within three and a half years.

By Sept. 30, 2015, drones will have to have access to U.S. airspace that is currently reserved for piloted aircraft. This applies to military, commercial and privately owned drones - so it could mean a major increase in unmanned aircraft winging through our airspace. That's airspace to be shared with airliners, cargo planes and small private aircraft.

As it is now, drones can only use some pieces of military airspace and they can patrol the nation's borders. Some 300 public agencies can also use drones, according to the AP, but they must be at low altitudes and away from airports.

The FAA has spent years planning its NextGen upgrade, a new system designed to streamline traffic at airports, save fuel and reduce air travel headaches. NextGen is a behemoth program that consists of several complementary systems, notably the Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast, or ADS-B in airspace lingo. This system uses GPS to determine aircraft location, and it will enable planes to land in a more efficient, steep glide, rather than the fuel-wasting stair-step descents of the past and present. This is already being rolled out in some places, but the new bill requires the FAA to set up new arrival procedures at the country's 35 busiest airports.

Eventually, planes will all have GPS that can update a plane's location every second, instead of the six to 12 seconds it takes with current radar systems, AP points out. This will allow pilots to know where their planes are relative to each other, and this could help ease congestion and make for smoother taxi procedures.

NextGen has been planned and debated for years, and the modernization plan has been stymied by Congressional wrangling since 2007. This new bill, which now goes to President Obama for his signature, will finally get things moving again.

[via NPR]

The space heater nestled perpetually at my side this time of year can be pretty comforting, but it's not great for my utility bills. It would be better to direct the heat in my house more efficiently, like capturing warmth from the refrigerator, computer, DVR and other appliances. This prototype phase-changing heater ‘bot would do just that.

It is made of a phase-change material, which stores and releases energy as it changes from a solid to a liquid or a gas. Hagent contains a type of PCM that can store heat and release it. It also comes with an on-board thermosensor and wheels, so it can roll around and find heat sources in your home, drawing in the warmth and storing it.

It also has ultrasonic sensors and a control unit so it can navigate around your home or office. German designers Andreas Meinhardt and Daniel Abendroth built a prototype for a contest in Paris, the Prix Émile Hermès, and won second place. In the video below, a prototype rolls around and finds a heat lamp.

It's just a prototype for now, but I would love to see these on sale in the space heater aisle.

[via IEEE Spectrum]

Playgrounds are competing for kids' time and losing. Nearly 25 percent of children ages 9 through 13 have no free time for physical activity, and a child is six times as likely to play a videogame as to ride a bike. The playgrounds of tomorrow must offer something that even the most enticing virtual offerings cannot: real spaces that look at least as amazing as anything virtual. Architects and design firms are remaking the playground by taking virtualization head on. These spaces are complex and engaging, and some even have buttons to push.