Day: May 20, 2016

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NASA And Australia Successfully Test A Hypersonic Rocket

Humans have only flown for a few centuries. Balloons, the earliest human fliers, were not what anyone would call fast. Airplanes, first flown in 1903, started slow, and even now, the majority of human flight is subsonic, with only the highest-end military jets regularly clearing the sound barrier.

To probe the edges of flight, NASA, together with Australia’s Department of Defence and America’s Air Force Research Laboratory, wants to see if they can make aircraft work flying many times the speed of sound. Together, they’re working on a project called HIFiRE, for Hypersonic International Flight Research Experimentation Program.

This week, a successful test brought the HIFiRE rocket to a height of 172 miles, with a maximum speed 7.5 times the speed of sound.

From the Australian Department of Defense:

“The success of this test launch takes us one step closer to the realisation of hypersonic flight,” Dr Zelinsky said.
Hypersonic flight, involving speeds of more than five times the speed of sound, has the potential to provide immense social and economic benefits.
“It is a game-changing technology identified in the 2016 Defence White Paper and could revolutionise global air travel, providing cost-effective access to space,” Dr Zelinsky said.

Several earlier tests of hypersonic machines have failed, like this Army missile that exploded prematurely.

But the potential for a hypersonic plane is huge: with that much speed, it would be impossible for an enemy to move anything on the ground after radar detected the plane, letting it either capture pictures immediately or drop bombs almost unimpeded.

Here’s what NASA said about the HIFiRES program in 2012:

NASA, AFRL and Australia’s Defence Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO) are working with a number of partners on the HIFiRE (Hypersonic International Flight Research Experimentation Program) program to advance hypersonic flight — normally defined as beginning at Mach 5 — five times the speed of sound. The research program is aimed at exploring the fundamental technologies needed to achieve practical hypersonic flight. Being able to fly at hypersonic speeds could revolutionize high speed, long distance flight and provide more cost-effective access to space.

Check out another angle on the rocket below.

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In-Ear Aid Translates Foreign Languages In Real-Time

In-Ear Aid Translates Foreign Languages In Real-Time

May 18, 2016 in

bionic

,

communication

,

cool

,

hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy

,

holy smokes

,

i am into this

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i’ll believe it when i hear it

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language

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neato

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now i just need a mouthguard that translates what i say into foreign languages and i’ll be great

,

oh wow

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sure why not

,

the future is now


in-ear-translator-1.jpg

This is a video demonstration of The Pilot translation system developed by Waverly Labs. The in-ear devices will cost $129 when they’re available this September and can translate a smartphone-selected foreign language in real-time into your native language with the voice of a robot lady. The languages currently supported are English, French, Spanish and Italian, so you’re shit out of luck if you fall in love with a Korean girl. I’m going to learn so many dirty words! Just kidding, I already know all the dirty words in over 400 languages, some of which aren’t even spoken in the Milky Way Galaxy. â—‰ ✹ ✗ ✍ ✌ ⌖ ✇ ✂ ! Hoho, you know what I just called you? “I’m pretty sure those are just wingdings.” Yeah….it’s cool to pretend I know things though. Ratface!

Keep going for a closeup and demonstration video.

in-ear-translator-2.jpg

Thanks to Allyson S, who agrees that body language is the most important language. You got that right! *thrusting and gyrating to a group of foreign tourists*





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France’s free coding school is coming to Silicon Valley

For 3 years, Paris residents wanting to learn programming have had access to 42, a school that offers a radical approach to technical education: there are no teachers, no lesson plans… and no tuition fees. As long as you’re between 18 and 30 and thrive in a 4-week coding challenge, you can spend 3 to 5 years mastering software development at no cost and on very flexible terms. Sound good? Well, you won’t have to move to France to give it a shot. The 42 team has announced that it’s opening a 200,000 square foot Silicon Valley-area campus (in Fremont, to be exact), with applications beginning immediately. The first class starts in November.

If you ask the school, this is about fixing a skill imbalance in the US. While the country has taken some steps to improve computer education, 42 believes the American educational system "deprives" companies of the programming-savvy people it needs to innovate. You’d ideally get a steady stream of highly motivated coders ready to cross San Francisco Bay and join startups.

It’s hard to say how well 42’s method works when few if any of its Parisian students have even graduated, but the concept (created by Xavier Niel, who founded the French telecom Free) may not be that far-fetched. As our TechCrunch colleagues point out, some existing students are so determined that they sleep in the hallway — while that’s not exactly healthy, it shows a kind of commitment that you don’t always see in college. If you see a sudden surge in young Bay-area tech talent a few years from now, you’ll know who to thank.

Via: VentureBeat, TechCrunch

Source: 42 (PDF)

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Harvard engineers designed a ‘soft wearable robot’

A team of engineers from Harvard University’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering have moved one step closer to a consumer version of a soft, assistive exosuit that could help patients with lower limb disabilities walk again. The Wyss Institute announced today that the university is collaborating with ReWalk Robotics to bring its wearable robotic suit to market.

The soft exosuit was designed by Dr. Conor Walsh, who also happens to be the founder of the Harvard Biodesign Lab, along with a team of roboticists, mechanical and biomechanical engineers, software engineers and apparel designers. What really makes the Wyss exosuit stand out from other exoskeletons and robotic suits, is its form-fitting and fabric-based design. Instead of a heavy, rigid frame, the exosuit uses small but powerful actuators tucked in the belt to assist the wearer’s legs in a more natural way. While the setup might not be powerful enough to fight off Xenomorphs, it is a much more elegant solution for stroke, MS and elderly patients who still have partial mobility, but need additional assistance.

"Ultimately this agreement paves the way for this technology to make its way to patients," Walsh said of his teams partnership with ReWalk. According to Harvard, the exosuit’s development has already had a lasting impact beyond those medical applications as well. As the announcement puts it, the team’s work has "been the catalyst for entirely new forms of functional textiles, flexible power systems and control strategies that integrate the suit and its wearer in ways that mimic the natural biomechanics of the human musculoskeletal system."

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Point your phone at an equation and Mathpix will solve it

Math isn’t everyone’s strong suit, especially those who haven’t stretched that part of their brain since college. Thanks to the wonders of image recognition technology, we now have Mathpix, an iOS app that lets you point your phone camera at a problem and calculates solutions in seconds.

The interface looks like any standard camera app: simply drag the on-screen reticle over the equation and the app solves it and provides graph answers where appropriate. More useful is a step-by-step guide offering multiple methods to reach a solution, making this a bona fide educational tool. It uses image recognition to process problems and pings its servers to do the mathematical heavy lifting, so it likely requires an internet connection to work.

Mathpix was envisioned by Stanford PhD student Nico Jimenez, who was advised by Stanford grad Paul Ferrell. The app’s other developers are high schoolers Michael Lee and August Trollback, which is impressive for an app that claims to be the first to visually recognize and solve handwritten math problems.

Source: Motherboard

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