Features

Features

Anyone curious to know of developments in the remote sensors or engineering systems for autonomous vehicles simply has to visit the joint EMRS & SEAS conference held in Edinburgh. At least 500 people were sufficiently involved to attend an event that requires of visitors sufficient disruptive technology to create doppelgangers for being at two desired deliveries simultaneously. SEAS breaks into three parallel sessions on sensor exploitation and communications, mission planning and decision making and algorithms, architectures, propulsion, power and energy management themes, EMRS contents itself with two parallels sessions on RF and EO

Back in May AeroVironment, Inc was awarded a Phase II contract by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to design and build a flying prototype for the Nano Air Vehicle (NAV) program. AV had completed a preliminary design review at the end of its Phase I, .7m program. Phase II, which was initiated in March, is a new six-month, 6,000 development program that will culminate with the demonstration of a rudimentary, three-inch flapping-wing air vehicle system. Following a successful demonstration, DARPA has the option to extend the program for an additional 18 months which could increase the Phase II contract value. But in Europe, research is keeping pace with ingenuity, if not the funding muscle of DARPA as research shows.

Scottish companies are missing out on huge savings in mailing costs due to their failure to take advantage of deregulation of the UK postal market says Gary Sweeney, MD of Altus, a leading independent postal estate management company. Lack of awareness means that many businesses are failing to cash in on potential savings as a result of deregulation introduced by government more than two years ago.

Under the current programme schedule, BAE will deliver four production MRA4s to RAF Kinloss in Scotland by the end of 2010, when the new type is expected to be declared in-service. This will require a concerted effort by both parties to be successful, says Joe Harland, the company MD, large aircraft in an interview with Craig Hoyle at Flight Global. Other factors needed to achieve the milestone include the availability of sufficient trained air crew and maintainers, plus ground support equipment.

Back in 2001 London's National Portrait Gallery unveiled its first entirely conceptual portrait - a "DNA image" of the leading genetic scientist Sir John Sulston by artist Mark Quinn. Now seven years later US based DNA 11, focused on DNA art announce that they have created the GenePak that allows customers to identify specific genetic traits in their custom DNA-portraits.

"With the group in good shape, now is the right time to make the break," said Tim Pearson, head of the Oxford based RM Group. This autumn he gave the school ICT world a jolt when RM announced its Asus miniBook. It retails to schools for only £169 and runs Open Source software throughout. The miniBook has preceded an avalanche of new products and new thinking.

Zinc oxide nanowires; sniper sensors, solar cells, LEDs, chemical detectors and micro generators.
The new technology uses zfor inc oxide (ZnO) nanowires are wide ranging, but are extremely sensitive to the ultraviolet light in the muzzle flash of a firearm.Invented in 2001, the nanowires are microscopically tiny hollow tubes about one-thousandth the diameter of a human hair. They exhibit some extraordinary properties: They can create electricity out of light; they can create light out of electricity; they can generate electricity from motion; they can be used to detect and identify gases.

Thanks to the web, a Glasgow piping centre acquires new pupils, with mobile cams being the next likely move, while the computer is behind the bendy pipes and is part of the piper robot in the US. On an accompanying tartan front, the computer lurks in the design for Scottish Highlands and Islands Film Commission new tartan.

Touch Bionics, based in Edinburgh is the manufacturer of the i-LIMB Hand prosthetic device is one of the four company finalists competing for the 2008 MacRobert award, a prize given out by the UK's Royal Academy of Engineering for technological and innovation in engineering. It is in competition with a former winner Johnson Matthey, and a diesel catalyst filter; with The Automation Partnership for the Polar system handling bio-banks at down to -8 degrees C and Owlstone Nanotech for its silicon chip to detect a wide variety of chemical in real time with communictions capability.

European researchers argue that biobanks would be easier to trace for research purposes if they can with a unique International Standards Biobank Number (ISBN). Looking at tissue and the emerging stem cell banks, and the amazing lack of centralised linking, perhaps an ISBTSCN (International Standards for Bio,,Tissue and Stem Cells Number is what should be on the international agenda.

For ten days in August, 14 teams of engineers drawn from UK industry and academia will embark into Wiltshire countryside, to engage in a series of robotic exercises for The MoD Grand Challenge taking place in August at the cold war mock village Copehill Down. This aims to energise the development and use of the kind of autonomous robotic systems expected to revolutionise future battlefields, and offers the potential for lucrative contracts to the winners.

Glasgow take-up of broadband is much lower than that across fthe central belt and in Edinburgh. With the exception of Aberdeen, the country is barely connected "Since our last survey in 2006, broadband take-up in Scotland has risen by 11% to 53% of homes. This compares to 58% in England, 52% in Northern Ireland and 45% In Wales. But the graphic difference between England and Scotland really lies in the empty spaces.

Flexibility is the common core between Finland and Korean research. In Europe printed electronics and moulded components are seen as the key to a new generation of 'smart" products. For Korea, currently photonics technology is the driver using hybrid technology to overcome the limitations of the the current PCBs.

Although Grand Theft Auto has earned commercial fame, it's undisputed violence has turned many distasteful of this sector. It should not as the Baltimore Games for Health conference revealed with the game Foldit possibly earning a Nobel in Medicine, according to researchers at the University of Washington. The conference also focused on games playing a constructive, educational and excercise role. From Scotland Dr Alasdair Thin of Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh outlined his thoughts on how future exergame design should work to ensure maximum health benefits.

Scottish Universities concerned at the current slump experienced in computer science, might find the development underway at University of Buffalo in the US an interesting approach to change the way the science is taught. Michael F. Buckley, a computer science lecturer there, is leading a movement he thinks could save computer science from its current slump: the 2007 graduating class had its lowest number of majors in 10 years.

The Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco inevitably meant a chunk of Web development activity. Among them Microsoft has announced a data storage and Web software system, called Live Mesh, that is intended to blur the distinction between software running on the Windows operating system and an elaborate array of services that will be delivered to a growing collection of electronic gadgets.Live Mesh is the Microsoft late entry into a rapidly growing cloud computing. Meantime Yahoo has declared it is rewiring from inside out, while Google launches into it Ap Engine infrastructure service and also offers iGoogle art skins
With Yahoo and Microsoft now going their separate ways, this is a meshed trio of ring owners and bearers and a far from a finished saga.

In June 2006, the biggest provider of helium in the UK, BOC joined UKAEA's Fusion Engineering Outreach programme to jointly fund The Helium Resources Project at Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, to determine the long-term availability and demands for helium. The three three year research project is expected to reveal how much longer industry can rely on this increasingly scare resource. That work has a year to run, but potential global shorage had drawn US reaction and India developments.

Coming on the website of Stevenage based Protocase, Gaberlunzie discovered it ran a 'project of the month' awarding October 2006 to Intel Research. Eric Paulos, Intel: "Currently, ringtones on mobile phones have a private meaning, but create a public experience. The project to work on was "'Can we generate a "place based ringtone" that would be a dynamic mashup of the people nearby. Using a mobile phone's Bluetooth sensor, we are able to retrieve unique IDs and names of nearby devices.

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