GIANT LEAP: The Sand Flea jumping robot from Boston Dynamics is an impressive little beastie. It's a small platform on four wheels. If it meets an obstacle its remote driver makes it swivel to point a CO2 powered piston down at the ground. Then it fires the piston and leaps
into the air, as much as 7.6 metres high, and a little forward. That's enough to let it jump onto a roof or through a second floor window, for example. It can jump 30 times before the piston needs recharging. The US military are deploying the Sand Flea to Afghanistan to help see what's in walled compounds. I'd have thought they'd do better with a small RC helicopter to fly above the compounds. More at
Army Times and video here.
SMILE, YOU'RE ON CAMERA: Those TV crime shows where the computer spends hours matching a face? So slow! Hitachi Kokusai Electric in Japan developed a system that can search through data on 36 million faces in one second. Results come immediately and show thumbnail images of potential candidates. Click a thumbnail to see associated recorded surveillance footage. This system could be used in large stores, railway stations or perhaps at public events. Some speed is achieved by grouping similar faces and detecting faces when the footage is recorded. Maybe it's time for masks to become trendy? DigInfo News and video here.
SMILE, YOU'RE ON TV: If you buy a new Samsung LED HDTV make sure to read the manual. Some of the top-of-the-line models include a built-in, internally wired HD camera, twin microphones, face tracking and speech recognition that can connect to the internet. That's pretty cool and you have some degree of voice control with it. But the problem is that there's no hardware switch on the camera or mic and no light or other sign they're switched on. All of which means the world could be watching you if the TV's accessed by someone with bad intent. Read that manual carefully, warns
HDGuru.
MONEY MAGNETS: Vending machines can verify the authenticity of a banknote because of the magnetic ink it contains. So you'd think bundles of banknotes would be even more magnetic, and they are. Physicists at the University of Washington tried using an ordinary handheld metal detector to detect banknotes concealed behind different kinds of materials. With some refinements this could help police catch people trying to smuggle cash across borders. You'd think if money's magnetic it would attract more. New Scientisthas more.
SATELLITE SAFETY: With enough resources you can get access to live satellite imagery of a specific area on the planet. It's what you can do with that access that's interesting. In the case of the Satellite Sentinel Project, whose offices are in the USA, it's tracking the movements of rival armed forces in the Sudan and warning civilians when the troops are coming. That gives the locals time to flee. Analysts receive reports from people on the ground and then gain satellite access to grab pictures. By analysing the photos they can estimate where tanks and troops are heading. The images are also detailed enough to document things like mass graves or body bags near freshly dug pits. That's seriously smart spying. The Guardian has details.
