Day: October 2, 2019

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Schlieren System Captures Brilliant Shockwave Images

https://www.techbriefs.com/component/content/article/1304-tb/techbriefs/aerospace/35254-drc-tops-40?Itemid=690

Supersonic flight over land is generally prohibited because sonic booms created by shockwaves disturb people on the ground and can damage property. Armstrong innovators are working to solve this problem with a novel system for capturing images of shockwaves created by supersonic aircraft. The Background Oriented Schlieren Using Celestial Objects (BOSCO) technology uses a celestial object, such as the Sun, as a background to secure unique, measurable shockwave images of full-scale aircraft. The patented image-processing technology captures hundreds of observations with each shockwave, benefitting NASA engineers in their efforts to develop a supersonic aircraft that will produce a soft “thump” in place of a disruptive sonic boom.

via NASA Tech Briefs https://ift.tt/2BVPq4O

October 2, 2019 at 11:04AM

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Portugal’s navy reveals “tech guerrilla” unit creating tech toys that kill

https://arstechnica.com/?p=1578145

Improvised weapons made from off-the-shelf parts.
Enlarge /

A “Black Fin” uncrewed submersible vehicle and two weaponized radio-controlled cars, produced from off-the-shelf hardware by the Portuguese navy’s Unmanned Vehicle Experimentation Cell.

You don’t need a huge budget like the US Department of Defense’s to harness emerging technology for mayhem. During NATO’s Recognized Environmental Picture Maritime Unmanned Systems (REPMUS) event last month—an uncrewed systems exercise held on the coast of Portugal—the Portuguese navy revealed its own in-house robot and drone capabilities, including some developed by the navy’s Unmanned Vehicle Experimentation Cell (Célula Experimentação Operacional de Veículos Não Tripulados, or CEOV). This unit—made up of a handful of sailors with extensive technical training and talents in hardware hacking and engineering—has built prototype weapons using off-the-shelf hardware.

Modified radio-controlled cars configured with cameras and grenade launchers were among the devices shown off for journalists—one of whom was James Rands of Jane’s Defence Weekly. The deadly RC racers are part of CEOV’s effort to “fight asymmetric threats with asymmetric thinking,” according to Portuguese Navy Fleet Commander Vice Admiral Gouveia e Melo. Commanded by Lieutenant Tiago Mendes, CEOV reports directly to the fleet commander.

Citing “Martec’s Law“—a proposal by tech executive Scott Brinker that technologies change exponentially while organizational change is a lot harder and slower (and at best logarithmic)—Lt. Mendes told journalists that the Portuguese navy’s procurement process was too slow to bring in cutting-edge technology. As a result, he said, sailors’ cell phones had more computing power than the ships they sailed on. Smaller organizations, such as terrorist cells, could exploit new technologies much faster—as was seen when ISIS turned off-the-shelf quadcopter drones into grenade-dropping bombers.

The things developed by CEOV aren’t necessarily intended to be used by the Portuguese navy against enemies. Instead, they are intended as a way to explore what an asymmetric, innovative enemy could do so that the military can develop countermeasures. “We’re like the flu vaccine,” Mendes said. “We don’t do the change—we start the process.”

via Ars Technica https://arstechnica.com

October 2, 2019 at 05:05AM

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Microsoft Announces Surface Duo – An Android Dual-Screen Device

https://www.anandtech.com/show/14931/microsoft-announces-surface-duo

Today at Microsoft’s Surface event in New York, alongside new laptops and various other Surface devices, we saw the company announce a new kind of device; the new “Surface Duo”. The new device more or less loosely described as a phone, is a clamshell dual-screen phone with a full swivel hinge design.

The design of the phone at the moment look relatively simplistic, but we were certainly shown just prototype devices. The interesting design aspect was that the device lacked any kind of external features aside from the Windows logo – particularly missing from the device was any kind of rear camera.

On the “inside” – or rather more aptly, on the side with the screens, we did see the device have an earpiece speaker as well as a camera. It’s possible Microsoft where is envisaging you using this single camera in all scenarios and would be relatively practical given you can use the opposing outwards facing screen as the viewfinder.

The screens themselves has two 5.6” screens which when unfolded amount to a diagonal of 8.3”.

The device is running a customized version of Android as the OS.

Currently the prototype devices are said to be running Android 9 Pie with a Snapdragon 855 SoC – although these specifications are sure to change until the device’s actual launch.

Much like the Surface Neo, this has been pretty much just a teaser pre-announcement of the Duo as the devices aren’t scheduled to come out until the holiday season in 2020.

via AnandTech https://ift.tt/phao0v

October 2, 2019 at 11:27AM