Sneak Preview: Military's Maple-Seed-Inspired Drone, Plus More to Come at UAV Show Next Week

SAMARAI Monocopter A Lockheed Martin engineer holds the latest prototype of the SAMARAI monocopter drone, a unique vertical take off and landing (VTOL) configuration whose one wing whirls around a central hub like maple tree spinners Eric Hagerman

After years of development and military funding setbacks, defense contractor Lockheed Martin is finally ready to debut its maple seed-inspired drone. The one-winged, one-foot-long SAMARAI drone just flew a test flight for the Associated Press ahead of its official unveiling at an unmanned vehicle conference next week.

The asymmetric UAV is modeled after maple seeds, called samara, that fly off trees and twirl through the air with the utmost efficiency. Originally, the SAMARAI was envisioned as a seed-sized drone that could deliver a 2-gram payload and send back streaming video, but that has since changed to a much bigger, whining drone.

The current model has just two moving parts, allowing it to fly with a cyclic lift motion like that of a helicopter. It does have a camera on board, and it can be operated via remote control or a tablet computer, the AP says. Check out a video of it below.

The Samarai is just one of a suite of new unmanned vehicles that will be on display next week in Washington, D.C., at the convention of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International. PopSci will be reporting from this year?s convention, so check back regularly starting Aug. 16 for updates on the latest in unmanned vehicles, from the ground to the air.

[Navy Times/AP]

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Endangered species hit hard by historic Ariz. fire (AP)

PHOENIX ? The largest wildfire in Arizona history left a charred landscape of blackened forest, burned-out vehicle hulks and charred fireplaces as it destroyed more than 30 homes. It also inflicted a serious toll on an ecosystem that's home to numerous endangered species.

The flames spared three packs of endangered Mexican gray wolves but likely killed at least some threatened Mexican spotted owls as it roared through more than a half-million acres of a pristine forest on the New Mexico border.

Though some spots were untouched or had only undergrowth burn, the effect of the human-caused Wallow fire will last for decades because it burned so hot in many areas that it completely denuded the landscape, forest specialists said.

"The natural fires are good for a healthy forest, but these fires ? where the debris has been allowed to build up and it just hasn't been addressed ? they come out very hot and just scorch everything. As soon as the monsoon shows up, there's a potential for a lot of soil to move," said Tom Buckley, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife spokesman.

Forest managers are warning homeowners in the White Mountains to get flood insurance immediately because summer storms will likely create severe runoff.

It's part of the steep human cost from the 832-square-mile blaze that continues to churn through thousands of new acres per day in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest.

The fire destroyed 32 homes and four rental cabins. The charred skeletons of vacation homes are physical reminders of disrupted lives and bygone memories. For many Arizona desert dwellers, the mountains provided an escape from the heat for generations.

The Wallow fire was 67 percent contained by Thursday night but still slowly growing on the south and southeast flanks.

Two other major fires are burning in the state. The 44-square-mile Monument fire near Sierra Vista, Ariz., has destroyed 57 homes. Authorities lifted an evacuation order for an estimated 200 to 300 homes Thursday, but about 300 remain evacuated. The 348-square-mile Horseshoe Two fire atop southeastern the Chiricahua mountains has destroyed nine homes in the world-renowned bird watching area.

The three wolf packs in the Apache-Sitgreaves all had pups and were in or near their dens when the fire that broke out on May 29 roared through, said Jim Paxon, a spokesman for the Arizona Game and Fish Department. Firefighters on the ground have seen two of the packs moving around with their pups. Radio collars on the three adults in the third pack show they are alive, but the status of their pups remains unknown because they are in an area still too hot for ground crews to enter.

"They're there, and functioning, and able to persist and take care of their pups," Paxon said. "We feel very confident that our wolves are out there and they've all got pups, and that's a good thing."

The Fish and Wildlife Service said Thursday it had not confirmed the pups survived.

The wolves were reintroduced into Arizona and New Mexico beginning in 1998. Managers had hoped to have more than 100 in the wild by 2006, but the count stood at 42 at the beginning of 2010.

The spotted owls are another matter.

Crown fires in overgrown forests have become the greatest cause of unusual losses for the birds, and 73 protected nesting areas were burned in the fire, said Beth Humphrey, Apache-Sitgreaves biologist. There are 145 protested nest sites in the entire 2.1 million acres forest.

Any nestlings or eggs caught in the fire were surely lost, although mortality among adults was likely limited, Humphrey said.

"We don't know the severity of the impacts of those owl sites," Buckley said. "Fires don't burn evenly, so we have a lot of hope that some survived."

Fish and Wildlife is looking to see if prey for the wolves and owls will return quickly enough to let the animals stay in their regular areas.

The burned forest supports more than a dozen other endangered or threatened species, including snails, frogs and fish. Dozens of other species live in the forest that aren't rare, including bear, deer, antelope and a herd of elk that, at about 6,000, is among the state's biggest.

Only two dead elk have been found, Paxon said. A yearling calf had to be euthanized because its hooves were badly burned.

"These ungulates, the elk and the deer and the antelope, they're a whole lot smarter than people are when it comes to evacuations," Paxon said.

"When they feel heat, they will move away from heat toward a cooler area, and generally that's perpendicular to the way the fire's going. If it's not a huge fire, they often circle around and come back in. If it is a pretty widespread fire front, they simply get out in front of that and go over the hill into the next drainage."

The next round of damage will come once summer rains hit. The National Weather Service is warning of major flash floods and debris flows even with a 15-minute-long moderate downpour.

A 23-square-mile fire outside Flagstaff, Ariz., last June led to severe flooding from summer rains that inundated more than 80 homes and led to the drowning death of a 12-year-old girl.

The flooding from the Wallow will kill fish, since it will carry major flows of ash and sediment and clog streams. Decades-long efforts to restore endangered Apache and Gila trout to the streams that flow from the mountain will be hurt.

Already, plans are being made to pull pure Apache trout from streams where it is expected they will die, to preserve the lineage, said Julie Meka Carter, native trout conservation coordinator for the Arizona Game and Fish Department. They could be put in other streams or placed in hatcheries for as long as three years, until the ash and sediment flows subside.

"The forest will be very changed, very, very different," said Apache-Sitgreaves forest supervisor Chris Knopp.

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Testing the Goods: The Midnight/Shot, a Pocket-Sized Infrared Camera

The Midnight/Shot offers one key feature--infrared photos and videos--that you won't find on your average point-and-shoot, or even your average DSLR

By Dan Bracaglia and Dan Nosowitz Posted 08.12.2011 at 12:28 pm

Tree Shot at Night Foliage quickly became our favorite subject to shoot with the Midnight/Shot Dan Bracaglia

This may sound like a high-school science lesson, but to understand how the Midnight/Shot IR camera takes its eerie and beautiful shots, you must first understand what exactly infrared light is. Stay with us. (Please.) Because that understanding is key to appreciating that this little $150 camera can take photos most $3,000 DSLRs can't.

What's New

So, the lesson: The longest wavelength of light that is visible to the naked human eye is red. Infrared light is essentially electromagnetic radiation that is at a wavelength slightly longer than that of visible light. That slightly longer wavelength makes infrared light invisible to the naked eye.

All digital cameras, including the Midnight/Shot, contain a filter, generally located in front of the sensor, that blocks out all infrared light?without this filter, digital images would have a pink fuzz around the edges, since digital sensors are very sensitive to IR and the different wavelength would cause the lens to focus at a different point. However, in its "IR mode," the Midnight/Shot removes that infrared filter from the light path. It avoids the pink fuzz problem by using exclusively black and white for IR photos, and by being a relatively low-resolution camera to begin with. (This version of IR is different than the "heat map" photos, like this cup of coffee, that we sometimes associate with IR photography. Those are actually taken with thermographic cameras--heat emits IR, yes, but in a longer wavelength than the one the Midnight/Shot sees.)

Science lesson over (and it wasn?t so bad, right?).

So why is infrared photography so cool? It allows us to see a world that is ordinarily completely invisible to us. Plus, it makes photos look really unusual and cool--contrast is dialed way up, with trees often seeming snow-white and the sky looking pitch-black, for example. IR photography isn?t new--in the old days of infrared photography, special IR-sensitive films were used. Unfortunately, the handling and processing of those films, in addition to the physical price of them, made IR photography out of reach for most photographers. But within recent years, many photographers have begun experimenting with the removal of that IR filter located in their digital cameras. In fact, there are quite a few services out there that will convert your camera for you (LifePixel being one of the largest). But as this conversion can cost nearly $500, it?s nowhere near worth it for someone who just wants to experiment with this very unusual branch of photography.

Enter the $150 Midnight/Shot, a tiny, solid-feeling (if plasticky) compact camera, boasting a roomy 3-inch LCD, a 5MP CMOS sensor and the ability to shoot authentic infrared images--you can even shoot infrared video at 640x480p--all for $150. To trigger the IR mode, you actually twist a little grooved ring around the lens to physically move the IR filter away from the lens.

The main difference between the Midnight/Shot IR camera and an expensive DSLR converted for IR photography is that the DSLR captures only infrared light, thanks to the filter placed in front of the sensor that blocks nearly all wavelengths except for the infrared ones. The Midnight/Shot, on the other hand, allows for all spectrums of light to flood the sensor--not just infrared, but also all visible light. Without the insertion of an additional filter to block out the other wavelengths, the Midnight/Shot is no different than a point and shoot with a busted IR-blocking filter?essentially a full-spectrum camera.

Check out some sample shots from the Midnight/Shot camera.

What's Good

We brought the Midnight/Shot along with us to a nighttime concert in Central Park to see how it'd fare. The results were, to our surprise, pretty impressive. The instructions do state that at night, the subject must be within nine feet of the camera. That's because at night, with the absence of light (including infrared light), you'll need to use the camera's little IR flashlight, located just above the lens, to provide your own (invisible to the naked eye) IR light. Without the flashlight, taking photos in a dark room would result in a black picture. In the daytime, you don't have to worry about that, but we did end up with several completely dark images, due to our negligence in reading the instructions. The flashlight generally does a better, or at least more dramatic, job of exploiting the "IR look" of photos than just using regular sunlight.

Still, we came home with a few winners--all in black-and-white, since the camera only shoots infrared in monochrome (it shoots in color when not in IR mode). You will notice that the IR-effect tends to give foliage and anything with chlorophyll an eerie white glow. This is because chlorophyll is known to reflect IR light back more than just about any other surface, which means any kind of greenery is going to give a particularly strong image. The IR effect is very particular--it looks almost like some sort of digital aftereffect, except even more unearthly. It's not going to be ideal in every situation, but we did find it to be a very fun toy to play around with--"how's that going to look in IR? How about that?"

However, the true genius of this inexpensive camera is revealed when the lights are turned off. Thanks to the IR flashlight located above the lens, the Midnight/Shot is able to see in complete darkness?something an expensive IR-converted DSLR can?t do. While the manufacturer claims that the beam is capable of illuminating objects shrouded in blackness up to eight feet away, our tests showed the beam's limit is more like six feet. For the best results, we recommend being no more than 3 feet away from your subject. Here's what we mean:

Night Vision With the Midnight/Shot: �Dan Bracaglia

The camera itself feels sort of like a cheap-ish knockoff of the Canon S95?pretty much the top compact camera in the game right now?which means it?s a thin, minimalistic black design, very businesslike, with no more buttons than necessary. It?s very easy to use, once you figure out how to activate IR mode, which is of course what you?ll mostly be doing with it.

What's Bad

It is still a basically no-name-brand $150 point-and-shoot, and one with middling specs at that, so in terms of performance, it's not exactly the most impressive camera you can buy. It does feel pretty cheap, though not necessarily fragile--it's very plasticky, but it doesn't feel as if it's liable to fall apart. We could probably pick apart its specs and shooting options, but that's really missing the point of the camera.

The Midnight/Shot IR Camera: Slim and inoffensively designed. �Midnight/Shot

The Price

$150 at ThinkGeek, which we think is a totally fair price. Cheap, even.

The Verdict

If you're looking for a new all-purpose point-and-shoot, forget about the Midnight/Shot. It's not for you. But for photography geeks and the generally curious, this is a really fun toy. You can replicate the effect in Photoshop, mostly--though not without some very significant time figuring out all the particular light and contrast settings--but we really liked playing with real IR photography, seeing how different objects and scenes would react with the filterless camera. The night vision mode, as expected from the camera's marketing, was one of the most fun features--it really does see in the dark, to a limited extent, and in our time with the camera, the feature didn't even start to get old. It's inessential, but definitely fun.

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Friendly Humanoid Robot Asimo (May Be) Tapped for Japanese Nuclear Cleanup Work [Updated]

I'm Going Where? Wikimedia Commons

[Updated 2:25 p.m.] Honda sent us an e-mail saying the Asahi Shimbun report is "speculative." "Although Honda hopes that ASIMO will someday be a helper to people, at this point the robot is solely a research and design project," a Honda spokeswoman said.

A couple camera-toting robots have been tooling around the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, where radiation levels are still making it unsafe for human workers. Now Japanese media are reporting the crews are getting their first humanoid counterpart.

Honda is aiming to redesign Asimo, its 4-foot-tall humanoid robot, so it can join workers at Fukushima Daiichi, according to Japanese media. Asimo would need tires or caterpillar tracks instead of its delicate legs, and the robot would also need updates to its arms so they can move as smoothly as a human?s, according to the newspaper Asahi Shimbun (reported by AFP).

Since it was introduced a little more than 10 years ago, Asimo has been a robot ambassador of sorts, used mostly to spur robotics research and development. The robot greets children at science museums and has even met heads of state. But it has not been tapped for such difficult labor before.

Asimo can easily shake hands, carry a tray and push small objects, but it would need motorized shoulders, elbows and wrists to get more human-like moves, the paper says. It?s not clear what Asimo would be doing inside the Fukushima plant, but it would likely go into radiation hotspots where it remains dangerous for humans to enter.

Fukushima Daiichi?s reactors have been leaking radiation since the March 11 earthquake and tsunami knocked out its cooling systems. Workers are being exposed to high levels of radiation while trying to make repairs. Japanese elderly have even offered to do the job, to spare the younger workers from harmful radiation. But a human-like robot would clearly be a better alternative.

[AFP ]

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Stress May Worsen Lung Function in Kids Breathing Dirty Air (HealthDay)

FRIDAY, June 24 (HealthDay News) -- Children who live in stress-filled homes experience more air pollution-related lung damage than kids in less stressful environments, a new study finds.

Researchers looked at the effects of traffic-related pollution and parental stress on 1,400 children, aged 10 to 12, in California. There were no significant associations noted between parental stress alone and lung function levels in the children.

But as exposure to traffic pollution increased, lung function decreased among children in high-stress homes. This did not occur among children in low-stress homes, said the researchers at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California, Los Angeles.

Certain factors associated with low socioeconomic levels were also linked with high stress, such as an annual income below $30,000, low education levels among parents, no air conditioning in the home and a lack of health insurance.

The study appears online ahead of print in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

"One possible explanation for the stress-related pattern of [traffic-related pollution] respiratory effects is the biological pathways common to effects of traffic-related pollution and stress," lead researcher Talat Islam, an assistant professor in the environmental health division at Keck, said in a news release from the American Thoracic Society.

"Like air pollution, stress has been linked to both inflammation and oxidative damage at the cellular level, so this may explain the association," he added.

The public health implications of this finding are clear, he noted.

"The magnitude of the traffic-related pollution-associated deficits in [lung function] levels in children growing up in high-stress households was larger than deficits reported for children exposed to maternal smoking during pregnancy and secondhand tobacco smoke," Islam said.

"Our findings suggest that by regulating traffic-related pollution levels around residential areas and schools, we could reduce the adverse effect of traffic-related pollution on lung function among vulnerable children," he concluded.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more about respiratory health and air pollution.

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Stress May Worsen Lung Function in Kids Breathing Dirty Air (HealthDay)

FRIDAY, June 24 (HealthDay News) -- Children who live in stress-filled homes experience more air pollution-related lung damage than kids in less stressful environments, a new study finds.

Researchers looked at the effects of traffic-related pollution and parental stress on 1,400 children, aged 10 to 12, in California. There were no significant associations noted between parental stress alone and lung function levels in the children.

But as exposure to traffic pollution increased, lung function decreased among children in high-stress homes. This did not occur among children in low-stress homes, said the researchers at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California, Los Angeles.

Certain factors associated with low socioeconomic levels were also linked with high stress, such as an annual income below $30,000, low education levels among parents, no air conditioning in the home and a lack of health insurance.

The study appears online ahead of print in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

"One possible explanation for the stress-related pattern of [traffic-related pollution] respiratory effects is the biological pathways common to effects of traffic-related pollution and stress," lead researcher Talat Islam, an assistant professor in the environmental health division at Keck, said in a news release from the American Thoracic Society.

"Like air pollution, stress has been linked to both inflammation and oxidative damage at the cellular level, so this may explain the association," he added.

The public health implications of this finding are clear, he noted.

"The magnitude of the traffic-related pollution-associated deficits in [lung function] levels in children growing up in high-stress households was larger than deficits reported for children exposed to maternal smoking during pregnancy and secondhand tobacco smoke," Islam said.

"Our findings suggest that by regulating traffic-related pollution levels around residential areas and schools, we could reduce the adverse effect of traffic-related pollution on lung function among vulnerable children," he concluded.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more about respiratory health and air pollution.

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Pollution found in Pa. wells near site of blowout (AP)

ALLENTOWN, Pa. ? Federal environmental officials say that testing has revealed contamination in three private water wells following an April blowout at a Pennsylvania natural gas drilling site.

Environmental Protection Agency spokesman Roy Seneca said Friday that EPA took water samples from seven private water wells near the Chesapeake Energy Corp. drilling site near Canton in in northeastern Pennsylvania's Bradford County.

EPA briefed residents on the sampling results Thursday. Seneca declined to reveal the nature of the contamination. He says EPA will sample the wells again in July.

The Chesapeake well spilled thousands of gallons of salty, chemical-laced water into fields and a stream.

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Pa. robot institute attracts presidential visit (AP)

PITTSBURGH ? Need help defusing a bomb, mowing a lawn or scraping old paint?

President Barack Obama might see robots that can do those tasks on Friday when he visits the National Robotics Engineering Center at Carnegie Mellon University. It's one of eight research centers at the school's Robotics Institute.

The institute has been a global force in robotics development over the last 30 years. Its scientists have created robot vehicles to scout out war zones, medical robots, entertainment robots and even the SnackBot, which ferries snacks to people so scientists can study how humans respond to machines.

With growing interest from the military, businesses and consumers, the institute has more than 500 technical experts and a $65 million annual budget. And its scientists aren't just asking questions ? they're building robots that ask questions, too.

Institute director Matthew Mason told The Associated Press that in the early days of robotics research the vision was for machines to do the dull, dirty or dangerous jobs that humans shun.

"But now we think not so much of a robot instead of a person, but of robotic technology working with people," Mason said. That could mean helping the elderly or sick cope with basic household tasks, or helping a doctor perform surgery.

For Manuela Veloso, a scientist at the institute, a key step was building robots that are aware they don't have all the answers.

"They know the bounds of their ability. If they are not confident, they stop," and then ask a human a question, she said.

Her robots also learn that some people in the office don't have the time or inclination to answer questions from a machine.

"The robot plans not only with a model of the environment, but a plan of the people in the environment," she said.

Veloso now has two of the new designs ? called co-bots for collaboration ? and like humans who gossip about the best path to success at work, the co-bots compare notes.

"The two robots exchange information when they learn about the humans, and they negotiate who should go where among the two of them," said Veloso, who is also president-elect of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence.

She now sees robots ? and artificial intelligence ? in a completely new way.

"Forget about these robots knowing it all," she said. "I suddenly realized that intelligence was not about what you know. It was actually about knowing what you don't know."

Her next project is training the robots to go to the Internet for answers when humans can't provide them.

"I have a big vision of where we are going," Veloso said of her robots. "They know what they can do and what they cannot do. That's very beautiful."

Now the question may be how humans react to such new robots.

Mason, director of the institute, says that there's always been the issue of human trust in technology.

"For many years a lot of us were reluctant to get into medical robotics," he said, because of a fear that a robot mistake might cause harm to a patient, and thus tarnish the whole field.

But Mason thinks that the success of robots that identify and dispose of bombs in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars has helped change views.

"You can't look at the wreckage without feeling grateful" that no human life was lost, he said.

Large agricultural companies also are considering robotic harvesting because of potential migrant labor shortages, he said.

Obama will stress the theme of growing American jobs through high-tech manufacturing with the visit to Carnegie Mellon.

Some companies already have such job openings, and they struggle to find enough people with the right skills.

Roderick Herrick is vice president and site manager for Bayer Corp.'s industrial park in Baytown, Texas. It's a manufacturing plant that uses advanced techniques. Jobs there can pay well ? around $60,000 a year ? and have the opportunity for advancement.

"The challenge is really whether we can find the talent," Herrick said. "Manufacturing has kind of gotten a black eye over the years."

___

Online:

http://www.ri.cmu.edu/

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Willow Garage Introduces Discount PR2 SE, a One-Armed Personal Robot for the Rest of Us

PR2 SE Half the arms, nearly half the price. Willow Garage

Willow Garage?s PR2 has provided a unique, open source robotics platform to all kinds of labs and institutions that otherwise wouldn?t have access to a complex robotics system--but not to that many. For all the absolutely cool things you can do with PR2, the $400,000 price tag is prohibitive--only about two dozen commercial and academic labs have their own PR2s. So, in an attempt to make their robot more accessible, Willow Garage is introducing the PR2 SE this week, a pared-down version of the same robot costing a mere $285,000.

So how do you cut more than a hundred grand off a $400,000 robot? You start by removing one of its arms. Robot arms are complicated and expensive, and a lot of roboticists have told Willow Garage their research really doesn?t require two arms (unless you?re researching how to bake chocolate chip cookies). Cut off one arm and the price drops dramatically.

Figure in the 30 percent savings Willow Garage offers to those who show a proven track record of open source development practices, and pretty soon you?re talking about a personal robot at a price that many more universities and other institutions can justify. That?s good for robotics, good for the open source community, and good for Willow Garage. PR2 doesn?t seem to mind either.

Plus, the PR2 SE comes with an updated sensor suite (which as yet has not been fully defined) to offset the loss of that arm, an added value that PR2 SE would likely applaud--if it could.

[Willow Garage via SmartPlanet]

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Sneak Preview: Military's Maple-Seed-Inspired Drone, Plus More to Come at UAV Show Next Week

SAMARAI Monocopter A Lockheed Martin engineer holds the latest prototype of the SAMARAI monocopter drone, a unique vertical take off and landing (VTOL) configuration whose one wing whirls around a central hub like maple tree spinners Eric Hagerman

After years of development and military funding setbacks, defense contractor Lockheed Martin is finally ready to debut its maple seed-inspired drone. The one-winged, one-foot-long SAMARAI drone just flew a test flight for the Associated Press ahead of its official unveiling at an unmanned vehicle conference next week.

The asymmetric UAV is modeled after maple seeds, called samara, that fly off trees and twirl through the air with the utmost efficiency. Originally, the SAMARAI was envisioned as a seed-sized drone that could deliver a 2-gram payload and send back streaming video, but that has since changed to a much bigger, whining drone.

The current model has just two moving parts, allowing it to fly with a cyclic lift motion like that of a helicopter. It does have a camera on board, and it can be operated via remote control or a tablet computer, the AP says. Check out a video of it below.

The Samarai is just one of a suite of new unmanned vehicles that will be on display next week in Washington, D.C., at the convention of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International. PopSci will be reporting from this year?s convention, so check back regularly starting Aug. 16 for updates on the latest in unmanned vehicles, from the ground to the air.

[Navy Times/AP]

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