Ancient stone bridges dot the Spanish hills. Some are still in use, and all play a part in defining the region’s landscape and heritage. Now, researchers at Spain’s University of Vigo can examine the inner structures of these bridges without disturbing a single stone, thanks to some incredibly powerful imaging technology.
     |
If you thought low-light photography was coming on in leaps and bounds, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. This new camera, developed by researchers at MIT, can capture ultra-sharp images of objects even when they’re illuminated by just a handful of photons.
| |
As if there were any doubts that the future of aviation doesn’t involve humans at the controls, Boeing’s Unmanned Little Bird is the first helicopter to take off and land autonomously, choosing a safe landing site using an on-board laser LIDAR—a combination of light and radar—scanner.
| |
What do the Lumia 920, Surface Pro, Velodyne LIDAR, NovAtel GPS and Jetta TDI wagon all have in common? They’re all essential parts of the next generation Nokia Here collection vehicle. When Here was announced last fall, we checked out v1.0 of the car which featured an elaborate but clunky set of sensors and cameras. That’s also when Nokia announced it was acquiring Earthmine, a Berkeley-based 3D-mapping company. Nine months later, we’re seeing the results of this collaboration with v2.0 of the collection vehicle. It’s a simpler and more advanced setup which provides much improved image quality. Nokia recently invited us to take ride in a next generation Here car — check out the gallery below then hit the break for our video and breakdown of the technology. %Gallery-slideshow73223%
Filed under: GPS, Transportation, Mobile, Microsoft, Nokia
Fact: turbulence is no fun at all. Aside from the brief moments of bone-deep terror it can cause passengers, clear air turbulence (CAT) can also prove costly for airlines in terms of damages. To help pilots deal with difficult-to-spot areas where CAT is likely to occur, the German Aerospace Center (DLR) is spearheading a new joint European project known as DELICAT. Essentially, the DELICAT program calls for planes to be equipped with a light detection and ranging instrument (LIDAR) that emits short-wave ultraviolet lasers. Radiation then bounces off oxygen and nitrogen particles in the air, indicating fluctuations in air density that signal the presence of CAT pockets. Until the end of August, the DLR will run test flights in a specially modified Cessna Citation plane to both show off LIDAR’s capabilities and to give researchers invaluable data on CAT patterns. Though the system is still in its infancy, the folks at the DLR hope that the technology will one day become a standard part of commercial air travel.
Filed under: Misc, Transportation
Via: Gizmodo
Source: German Aerospace Center
LIDAR scanning has recently become cost-effective enough for archaeologists to use on large historical sites, and they’re taking full advantage. A helicopter jaunt last year has revealed a massive urban site below the jungles near Angkor Wat in Cambodia that likely housed thousands of people. New canals, temples and other man-made structures were discovered during a two-day scan, which emitted up to 200,000 laser pulses per second and would have taken years if done by traditional excavation methods. The technique can scope out features as small as a footprint, and is also being used in cities around the Egyptian pyramids and other archaeologically interesting regions — marking another way that Indy-style archeologists are becoming obsolete.
Source: MIT Technology Review
Forget trowels and tiny little brushes. The new must-have tool for archaeology is lasers. Just last month, researchers in the Honduran rainforest used them to find a lost city of gold
| |
After our interview with Peter Skillman last week we were given a brief tour of the Nokia Here collection vehicle, a bright blue Volkswagen Jetta Wagon specially outfitted with a smorgasbord of sensors. The main attraction is a retractable roof-mounted mast that collapses behind an aerodynamic fairing for stowage. From top to bottom, this mast features a military-grade GPS antenna, a 360-degree panorama camera in a white pod (which captures the spherical views you’ll see in Nokia Here), a Velodyne LIDAR unit in a spinning silver cylinder (for 3D mapping), high-resolution signage cameras in a black box (for forwards and backward automatic feature extraction) and finally a wheel encoder to measure distance / velocity. Sadly the car was locked so we were unable to check out what’s inside or go for a ride, but we’re hoping to remedy this at some point in the future. Until then check out the gallery below and hit the break for our hands-on video.
Gallery: Nokia Here collection vehicle
Continue reading Nokia Here collection vehicle hands-on (video)
Filed under: GPS, Transportation, Internet, Mobile, Nokia
Nokia Here collection vehicle hands-on (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 19 Nov 2012 08:09:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | | Email this | Comments
Where are the bad guys? The military has eyes and ears everywhere these days, including drones large and tiny, satellites, radar imaging, LIDAR, infrared, thermal and even the enemy’s own cellphones. The problem is how to take all that imaging and create a single picture of the environment. To that end, DARPA and George Mason University in Arlington have created the first Innovation House Project, which will put eight teams together for eight weeks in a “crucible-style” living environment to try to invent new ways of crunching the diverse sensor info. The military’s research arm wants those units to think way off-piste “without fear of failure” to dream up solutions, and will have access to specialists and mentors from the military and academia. Unlike DARPA’s usual challenges which have a grand prize, all teams accepted to the project will receive $30,000 in funding, but groups who go on to survive a four week cut will get an additional $20K. Proposals will be accepted up to July 31 (with no academic credentials needed), and the competition will begin in earnest on September 17. DARPA will get a license of any software created, allowing teams to hold the rights — and hopes to continue the concept down the road, with new themes for team-based research on a tight deadline. So, if you’re a data, imaging or “geospatial” whiz — and don’t mind being locked in a house and put under the brainstorming gun by DARPA — check the PR for all the details.
Filed under: Science, Software
DARPA Innovation House project wants teams to take imaging data, see the big picture originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 10 Jul 2012 13:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | 
DARPA, George Mason University | Email this | Comments
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
