Crowdfunding a Drone That Takes Selfies

World’s Safest Drone by Fleye

The world’s safest drone by Fleye is made by two Belgian founders wherein the drone is the size of a soccer ball with its propellers on the inner side which is encased by a shell. Most of the drones in the market tend to have their propellers exposed. The CEO of Fleye, Laurent Eschenauer, had informed CNBC at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in London, recently that if they were going to have autonomous flying robots around, they need to make them safe’.

The company had raised around half of its 175,000 euro so far, funding goal on Kickstarter with 38 days left. The starting price is 599 euros for one of the drones. Co-founders are now opening up the operating system of Linus for the drone to run on it, so that the developers may develop apps for it and are expecting to launch the device by April 2016.

The drone is controlled through an Android or iOS smartphone and is equipped with some pre-programmed functions like when a user tends to click the selfie control; the drone autonomously tends to move to position itself to take a picture of the user.

Supports Computer Vision Library OpenCV

The main invention of Fleye is its exceptional spherical design where all the moving parts seems to be sheltered which means that one can be hold, touch, push and bump into Fleye without much trouble of being injured. It also means that while bumping into something, Fleye could be more robust.

One does not need piloting skill to control the drone but just select a flying camera mode, - selfie, panorama, virtual tripod etc. andwatch the live video stream focusing on capturing photos and videos. If one intends to be in manual control, you could use the virtual gamepad or hook a Bluetooth gamepad to the smartphone. Fleye tends to have a powerful on-board computer like the latest smartphone which is dual-core ARM A9, with hardware accelerated video encoding, together with two GPUs, 512MB of RAM and runs on Linux.

Moreover it also supports Computer vision library OpenCV which means that Fleye has the capacity of being programmed to execute mission autonomously, responding to what it tends to see in the environment.

Operating from Logistic to Disaster Recovery

The main anxiety for regulators looking at drones after various high profile occurrences, is safety. A drone had crashed on the lawn of the White House, earlier this year and at a music concert, pop star Enrique Iglesias had reached out to grab a drone which was filming and had sliced open his finger.

 Eschenauer has been betting on a world wherein drone would become universal, operating in areas from logistics to disaster recovery as well as roaming around the office. A camera has been attached on the top for the drones to recognize the world around and to take decisions and also for the people to take videos and photos. However, the company tends to find itself in a competitive space against bigger manufacturers with deeper pockets.

The Chinese drone maker DJI had raised around $75 million this year which was reportedly valued at $10 billion, offering drones for professional filmmakers and hobbyists. Eschenauer has admitted that Fleye will not be able of taking on the recognized players but has stated that the company has made its own niche. He has commented that that they have been carving out their own niche which is proximity. If one desires to capture a film at a wedding or in an industrial plant, one would not use the big drone with big propellers, especially if it tends to becomes autonomous’.

Gmail be Replaced By Inbox Smart Email Tool As Main Google Email System

Gmail Rolled out New Tabbed Interface for Inbox on Mobile/Desktop

Gmail has rolled out a new tabbed interface for inbox on mobile as well as desktop. On first glance it seems good for email organization but on further inspection, these latest tabs seem to be confusing. According to the official Gmail blog, one can select which categories can be enabled as tabs that will show you how many new emails one may have for each category offering another option in organizing the inbox.

One can drag and drop messages between tabs and set certain senders to appear always on certain tabs. This feature is rolling on the desktop gradually and will soon be coming to Android as well as iOS apps shortly.

The tabs will slide in from the side in the case of mobile. Google has added the unsubscribed button to Android version of Gmail also and the feature that had been offered on the web enables users to get rid of newsletter together with other subscriptions which the users do not read or could have never intentionally signed up. Both the options are available in the same dropdown menu which is utilised in the selection of `Reply’ or `Forward’ options. Updates of the web are available already and the Android ones would be available very soon.

Beginning of the End for Gmail

Users have been encouraged to utilise its `Inbox by Gmail’ service by the company, in the intention which some have stated could be the `beginning of the end’, for Gmail. Inbox had been introduced last year, though Google had been focusing its interest on the app, analysing emails to group one which could be interesting together with other features that smartly organises emails. Google has described it as `the inbox which works for you’. Users of the app on their phone are now being redirected to Inbox instead of the normal Gmail.

When a user tends to click through on Gmail, they are greeted by a pop-up informing them that they may want to use Inbox instead. When the user logs in, a message pops up stating `Thanks for trying Inbox. To make it easier, we have updated Gmail to redirect you here’. The tool also provides the choice of heading back to the normal Gmail screen with a large button stating `turn it off’. Moreover it also enables user to turn it off at any point of time in the future through its settings.

Gmail Alive & Well

However, some users have recommended that the change could signal the beginning of the end for Gmail in its present form and the inbox could eventually be the default way of reading emails. Google has stated that Gmail was very much alive and it was simply making it easy to get Inbox as a default. A spokesperson had commented that `Gmail is alive and well and that they want to provide a seamless way for Inbox users to reach the Inbox site from Gmail.com without memorizing a new URL.

The possible redirect makes it easy to access Inbox often, according to the user and it could be turned off with a single click under `settings’. Inbox has been considered to complement the old Gmail view, enabling users to keep their old Gmail address. However the old way of organizing email, like long list of subject lines and senders, ordered by date, seems to be mostly unaltered since Gmail had first introduced it around eleven years back.

Scientists Discover New Form of Carbon Harder Than Diamonds

New Form of Q-carbon Discovered

Jay Narayan together with his colleagues discovered a new type of solid carbon known as Q-carbon that enables them to create diamond connected structures within room temperature and at ambient atmospheric pressure in the air.

 The two solid formulas or phases of carbon are graphite and diamond and this would be a new phase which the researchers believe seems to be harder than diamonds. Narayan who had authored three papers comprising of one in the Journal of Applied Physics on the work with doctoral student AnaghBhaumik, had mentioned in a statement that `they have now created a third solid phase of carbon and the only place it could be found in the natural world would be probably in the core of some planets.Together with being harder than diamonds, Q-carbon seems to be ferromagnetic, which means that it is easily magnetized and tends to glow whenever it is exposed to low levels of energy.

Narayan further adds that the strength of the Q-carbon and low work function, its inclination in releasing electrons, tends to make it very likely in the development of new electronic display technologies. He adds that Q-carbon could be used also in creating various single crystal diamond objects.

Discovery – Synthesis/Processing of Nanodiamond/Microdiamond

The researchers had mentioned in another study on the discovery in the journal APL Materials that `this discovery had opened a new chapter in synthesis and processing of nanodiamond as well as microdiamond for various application which could be ranging from abrasive powders, novel catalytic properties, myriads of biomedical and microelectonic, smart displays and nanoelectronic applications.

 In order to come up with Q-carbon, the researchers started with a substrates like sapphire, glass or a plastic polymer and the substrate is later coated with amorphous carbon. This is hit with only a lase pulse which tends to last about 200 nanoseconds. The pulse tends to cause the temperature of the carbon to stretch to 4,000 Kelvin or around 6,740 degrees Fahrenheit and thereafter rapidly cools down. The outcome of the procedure is a film of Q-carbon between 20 nanometers and 500 nanometers thick.

Two Provisional Patents Filed – Q-carbon/Diamond Creation Techniques

The cooling rate can be handled by utilising various substrates and altering the duration of the laser pulse. On changing the rate of cooling they are capable of creating diamond structures within Q-carbon. Narayan had stated that `these diamond objects tend to have a single crystalline structure which makes them stronger than polycrystalline material which is all done at room temperature and at ambient atmosphere.

 So not only does this enable them to develop new applications but the procedure tends to be comparatively economical. However, the researchers agreed that there seems to be plenty of queries with regard to Q-carbon, adding that they were still in the early stage of comprehending how to handle it.

 He had commented that they know a lot about diamond and can make diamond nanodots but they do not know yet how to make Q-carbon nanodots or microneedles and that is something which they are working on. Two provisional patents on the Q-carbon and diamond creation techniques have been filed by North Carolina State.

This Innovative Fingerprint Scanner can Discern Fake Fingerprints from Real Ones

Revolutionary Fingerprint Scanner – Discerning Fake Fingerprints

One can beware of career crooks and villains now with BitFlow, the machine vision technology company that has created a revolutionary fingerprint scanner with the potential of discerning fake fingerprints from the real ones. While fingerprint scanners could be easy to fool, the new tech of BitFlow tends to scrap the process of photo scanning in favour of a method that looks inside the person’s finger.

Developed in amalgamation with the scientist at the Langevin Institute in Paris, France, the new scanner can quickly and accurate capture what according to the team is a person’s internal fingerprint. Just as the fingerprints are seen on the surface of a finger, an internal fingerprint has the similar topographical features that resides around half a millimetre below the skin.

Besides this, the system also has the potential of imaging sweat pores in the finger of the person, thereby enhancing its means of recognizing an individual. The internal sensor, engineered by Langevin Institute postdoctoral researcher Egidijus Auksorius and scientific instrument professor, Claude Boccara, is based on a full field optical coherence tomography of FF-OCT.

FF-OCT Depends on 2D Detector

Different from the standard optical coherence tomography that makes use of the 3D data as well as lasers, the FF-OCT tends to depend on a 2D detector thus making it easy as well as faster for utilisation. Essentially the images of an internal fingerprint could be captured within a second on using this tech which is of great advantage for the fingerprint scanning industry.

The scanner analyses the difference interference patterns produced when in use, after a beam of light reflects off a sample, which is the finger, against a reference beam of light. For example when a light beamed at a finger tends to register with the system, it has the capabilities of seeing the different grooves, patterns as well as pores linked with someone’s unique fingerprint.

The reference beam of light that is a pure beam enables the scientist to precisely read the variations and chart the grooves and the patterns. As per the published press release of BitFlow, a study which was done by the Department of Homeland Security, it was observed the wearing of fake prints, or spoofing a fingerprint sensor beats a scanner by about 80 percent of the time.

Produces Fingerprint Biometric Data

Taking this into consideration, it is a surprising percentage in any given capacity. Auksorius and Boccara’s collaboration with BitFlow seems to be a forensics expert’s best colleague. The system is expected to produce fingerprint biometric data which is less vulnerable to spoofing and could also be popular if the concern for security of 2D scanners tends to rise.

However, with the other 3D imaging systems like the ones based on ultrasonic technology developing at the same time, size and the cost would be essentially important and the FF-OCT system could envisage stiff competition in that sphere. As per a scientific paper published in a leading journal, Auksorius and Boccara had initially used an expensive InGaAs camera though recently had demonstrated that images of the internal fingerprints of same quality could be recorded on utilising a new silicon camera from Adimec which is due to the camera’s high frame rate together with the pixel’s high capacity. A compact LED source releasing at 780 nm is utilised to provide the illumination.

Tokyo Police are Using Drones with Nets to Catch Other Drones

 

Camera Equipped Drones – Capture Suspicious Drone

Exclusive fleet of interceptor drones designed to chase and capture suspicious looking drones in nets flying over sensitive areas in the midst of concern for the safety of the prime minister, has been introduced by Tokyo’s police force. The riot police would be controlling the camera-equipped interceptor drones in chasing private drones which may be spying on buildings including the Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe’s office and trap them in large nets before reaching back to the ground.

 Those in control of the force drone would first caution the operator of the suspicious drone to cease the flight before tracking them. In April, a four propeller drone with trace amounts of radioactive caesium was seized on the top of the prime minister’s office which raised terror concerns in the capital. Police had informed that radioactivity levels were only at a maximum of 1 microsievert of gamma rays per hour, which is a level that is not harmful to humans.

Illegal to Pilot Drones in Certain Area in Japan

Yoshihide Suga, the chief cabinet secretary had mentioned in a press conference that `the situation concerns the centre of the Japanese government, the prime minister’s office and are taking every essential measure inclusive of a detailed investigation by police’. Later on, a man had been arrested.

The drones of the police force measures about one metre in diameter while the net measures two metres by three meters which is suspended below the body of the interceptor. The drones will only take to the air when an unlawful drone is spotted and the police officers on the ground will utilise loudspeakers in an effort to warn the drone’s controller to evacuate the area.

The net to catch other quadcopters was eventually decided, as there would be less chance of an aircraft falling from the sky and injure civilians. The force intends to start utilising them later this month before rolling the enterprise out more broadly in February. It is illegal to pilot drones over certain areas in Japan, including airports, over roads or 150 meters above the land.

Drones – Most contentious Creation of Technology

Unmanned aerial vehicles or drones are the most contentious creations of technology and though the opportunity that they provide for the retail industry like Amazon’s delivery services is remarkable, there is a concern over safety, warfare as well as surveillance which tend to continue blocking their adoption in the mainstream utilisation. Solar powered drones had been developed by Facebook to fly over the UK in order to plug gaps in mobile coverage offering a boost to `not spot’ areas of the country which are yet without mobile internet.

As per reports from The Asahi Shimbun andthe Asian Review, a drone had been first deployed on a trial basis from mid-December and a more complete operation would then be introduced later in the year. The drone squads would provide protection for some of the most sensitive areas in the city comprising of the Imperial Palace, the National Diet, where the Japan’s parliament meet besides the office of the prime minister.

 Japan’s police force may be the first law enforcement agencies in introducing countermeasures for the consumer drones, though several other government as well as commercial agencies having been considering the same in the West.