Wi-Fi Backscatter Technology Connects Battery-Free Devices To Internet

With a perspective of providing no-power connectivity to ‘internet of things’ devices, a research team at University of Washington has developed a power-efficient technology called Wi-Fi Backscatter that will enable the battery-free devices to connect to Wi-Fi infrastructure. This technology provides internet connectivity to battery-free prototype devices by using radio frequency signals as a source of power. The new, ubiquitous communication system reuses present Wi-Fi infrastructure in order to extend the internet connectivity to these devices. Now, everyday battery-free objects will be able to connect to your internet profiles and can also store information about your day-to-day activities.

The technology is built upon the previous research called Ambient Backscatter which showed that low-powered devices such as temperature sensors or wearable devices like wristwatch can run without batteries by leveraging existing radio and wireless signals present in the air. The following video demonstrates how the two devices without batteries can work by using existing TV or radio signals and can also communicate with each other.
The team has developed a novel ultra-low power tag prototype consisting of antenna and circuitry that can communicate to Wi-Fi enabled devices such as laptops, smartphones by using negligible amount of power. This prototype helps the battery-free devices to communicate through Wi-Fi by consuming less power than the power required by a typical Wi-Fi. The Wi-Fi backscatter tag can communicate with Wi-Fi devices with a speed of 1 kilobit per second and the range for communication between the two devices is about 2 meters. The team is planning to increase the range to about 20 meters.

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The research will be published at the Association for Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on Data Communication‘s annual conference this month in Chicago. The project received funding from the Washington Research Foundation, UW Commercialization Gap Fund, the National Science Foundation, the Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship and the UW.

World’s Fastest Camera Shoots at 4.4 Trillion Frames Per Second

Researchers from the Keio University and the University of Tokyo in Japan have jointly developed the world’s fastest camera that is able to capture consecutive shots with a frame interval of 4.4 trillion frames per second. It is thousand times faster than conventional high speed cameras which can capture an image every one-billionth of a second. Apart from the mind boggling frame-rate, the Sequentially Timed All-optical Mapping Photography (STAMP) camera has a high pixel resolution of 450 × 450 pixels. In order to understand the working of STAMP camera you need to first see how a conventional high speed camera works. A conventional high speed camera works on the pump-probe process where a pulse of light is initiated (pumped) at the object and then captured (probed). The drawback of this process is that it requires repetitive measurements to construct an image and during these measurements it often misses in probing non-repetitive events such as chemical reactions.

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The STAMP motion picture camera made by the Japanese researchers uses the method of femtophotography to capture images in a single burst without the need of repetitive measurements. Femtophotography involves optical mapping of the target's time-varying spatial profile onto a burst stream of sequentially timed photographs with spatial and temporal dispersion. The researchers have already captured plasma dynamics and lattice vibration waves and hope that their camera will be put to use to study fast dynamics in photochemistry, spintronics , phononics, fluidics and plasma physics. Before launching the camera to the public the team is working on shrinking its size as currently is measures about a square meter.

This Dashboard Camera Knows When You Are Talking On Phone While Driving

Researchers at the Santa Catarina State University in Brazil have developed a software and hardware solution for your car that is able to detect and warn you when you are using your mobile phone behind the wheel. Lead researcher Rafael Berri and his team started by installing a camera on the dashboard of the car just behind the steering wheel. They chose that spot to set up the camera because people talking on their mobile phones while driving tend to fix their gaze straight ahead instead of scanning the road like they do normally. After installing the camera the team programmed the system to work in three steps. First, the camera locates the driver and records a cropped video of him/her just focusing on the face and the area to each side of the face. It monitors these locations to find out if you have raised your hands to bring the mobile phone to your ears.

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Next the system looks for any skin pixels in the image and plots the location of these pixels. It further divides the image into areas showing the hands and faces calculating the probability of the driver talking and warns accordingly. The team put their algorithm to the test on a set of five videos shot by a dashboard camera. The camera shot videos with a resolution of 320 x 240 pixels at 15 frames per second. The videos were divided into three second ones and sent to the system for analysing. The system had an efficiency of 87.43 percent. The team warns that the system isn’t perfect and in some cases the accuracy of the algorithm drops drastically such as direct sunlight on the driver’s face.

The system however is not completely fool-proof as MIT Technology Review points out that the researchers have yet not finalised a warning system and the system has no provisions to check whether the car is moving or not. It also cites privacy concerns of constant monitoring by a video camera.

Indian Creates Google Glass Replica "Smart Cap" That Costs < Rs 4,500/-

Arvind Sanjeev, Chief Inventor and Founder of A.R.S. Devices, has developed 'Smart Cap'an augmented reality head-mounted display that works just like Google Glass, for less than $75 or Rs 4,500 within a month using open-source hardware. Arvind has even listed down the steps+hardware+software he employed to create the device on the blog DIY Hacking, so that anyone interested may go ahead and develop their version of the same. Arvind believes that while technologies like Google Glass and Oculus Drift are surely fueling the fad, they are quite expensive to use.

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In case you don't want to shell out $1500 to experience similar functionalities and want to create a similar device of your own, then the creator states that this DIY Head Mounted Display tutorial is what you need. Using this tutorial, he aims to show how one can develop one's head mounted, virtual reality or augmented reality displays from scratch. He then goes on to list down the steps he undertook to create the 'Smart Cap', a first of its kind. His system comprises a webcam for video sharing/recording and voice recognition to render a hands-free experience.

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During his engineering days, confesses Arvind, he wasn't able to understand how a calculator works and found it difficult to develop computer hardware. To make away from these discrepancies in knowledge transfer, he created the blog DIY Hacking to provide useful information/tutorial to students and hobbyists so they don't feel as lost as he did in college. It was in college where he created some veritable gadgets and systems in the connected devices genre, and the attention these projects got him was enough motivation for him to start his own company which later developed many product prototypes like RideSmart, etc.

Vision Correcting Displays Could Spell The End Of Spectacles Era

Wearing glasses or contact lenses for being able to read or see properly has become more common than ever before, thanks to the constant viewing of display screens. What if we could find a corrective solution for our eyes using exactly the same displays as a medium? Well, a team of engineers & researchers from MIT and University of Berkeley has come together to develop a new form of screens called 'vision correcting displays'. The new computational display technology is simply marvelous because the images it displays are pre-distorted so that the viewer can see them clearly without the need of any eyewear. The applications of this tech are immense. Right from our e-readers and tablets, such displays can be used in dashboard mounted GPS devices for cars and other vehicles.

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For thousands of years, our spectacles have undergone little or no change, ever since their invention in the 13th century. In recent times, there have been the upsurge of contact lenses and corrective eye surgery. However, most of these measures are invasive. With the vision correcting displays, the engineers from UC Berkeley and MIT have achieved something that was unthinkable so far. Their solution basically puts the glasses on the display, instead of on your eyes. Considering the fact that, most bespectacled individuals spend a major part of their lives interacting with the digital world, the vision correcting displays are really a great boon in disguise (you won't even know they are there).

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Fu-Chung Huang, the lead author of the paper based on this project and Brian Barsky, a Computer Science professor at UC Berkeley along with Gordon Wetzstein and Ramesh Raskar, researchers from MIT developed computer algorithms that can be used to compensate for a human's visual impairment. Their prototype setup involves a printed pinholes (each 75 micrometers and distanced at 390 micrometers) in a screen placed between two layers of clear plastic to an iPod display to enhance image sharpness. Based on the user's specific kind of visual impairment, the team's algorithm works by adjusting the intensity of each direction of light that emanates from a single pixel in an image. This light then passes through the pinhole array in such a way that the user sees a clear & sharp image.

MIT Media Lab's Camera Culture Group had earlier developed a glasses-free 3-D technology (Take a look here). The vision correcting display seems like a variation of the same. The new system operates by simulating an image at the correct focal distance, between the display and the viewer’s eye. Moreover, the MIT and Berkeley researchers have adapted the algorithm to the problem of vision correction, therefore the new display results in very little loss in resolution.

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In the prototype developed by this team, they had to mask the display pixels from the parts of the pupil for which they’re not intended. To achieve this, they laid a transparency patterned with an array of pinholes so that the appropriate parts of the light emitting are blocked.

Now steal data from laptop just by touching it!

New research at Tel Aviv University (Israel) might just take out the 'heroism' out of being a hacker or a cracker. A team of researchers has developed a technique that lets you steal data from a laptop just by 'touching it'. All you need to do is wear a special wristband and touch the exposed part of the machine that you want to victimize. The wristband will measure all the minute changes in the ground electric potential and figure out encryption keys. You can touch the machine with your bare hands or with a wire.

In their research paper, to be presented at the CHES 2014, the researchers will describe how they were able to extract 4096-bit RSA keys and also 3072-bit ElGamal keys from the test machine. They say that though the machines work at GHz scale frequencies, a full blown attack will require just a few seconds to measure the frequencies using Medium Frequency signals ~2 MHz. The attack would require about an hour, if Low Frequency signals are used ~40 KHz. The team could extract keys from several test machines running a popular open source encryption software called GnuPG, which implements the OpenPGP standard.

The good news is that there's nothing to worry about just yet. The technique has all the focus on the encryption software. While GnuPG's got a patch ready to fix the problem to some level; the crackers will have to monitor the electricity changes during the decryption process to get hold of your data - which isn't quite easy. 

Robo Brains "Digs internet To make Machines More Humans

Robo Brain', a collaborative project between two Indian-origin researchers, is a large-scale computational system that comprehends everything from publicly available Internet resources, in order to teach robots natural human behavior. This complete data-bank for robots shall help the machines with finding keys, pouring a drink, putting away dishes and not interrupting two people when they're amidst a discussion. Lead researcher Ashutosh Saxena, assistant professor of computer science at Cornell University (New York) explained about the project, stating that out computers and cell phones have access to all information we require, and if in case a robot encounters a situation it has not experienced before, it can simply query Robo Brain in the cloud.

At present, as you're reading this article, Robo Brain is downloading and processing about 1 billion images, about 120,000 YouTube videos and nearly 100 million how-to documents and appliance manuals. All this information is being translated and saved in a robot-friendly format that the robots will understand when required, Saxena stated. As per him, Robo Brain shall process images in order to pick out the objects in them and by connecting these images and videos with text shall it identify objects and their usage, coupled with human language and behavior.

Take for example, of a robot comes across a coffee mug, it can learn from Robo Brain not only that it's a coffee mug but also the liquid content that can be poured in or out of it, that the mug could be grabbed via the handle, and that it must always be held upright when it's full. Aditya Jami, the large-scale database designer of Robo Brain, states that it'll look like a gigantic branching graph "with abilities for multi-dimensional queries."

Similar to a human learner, Robo Brain shall have teachers thanks to crowdsourcing, concluded Saxena who presented the project at 2014 Robotics : Science and Systems Conference held in Berkeley lately.

Supersonic Submarine Can Travel At Unthinkable Speeds!

While most of the speed experiments are focused on ground and air; the Chinese engineers want to break speed records under water. The latest super high speed submarine prototyped by the team of engineers at the Harbin Institute Of Technology makes it possible to travel underwater at never imagined before speeds. Li Fungchen, professor of fluid machinery and engineering at the HIT informs that the technique is called 'supercavitation'.

Supercavitation isn't an entirely new technique per se. During the cold war, the Russians had developed VA-111 Shkval, a torpedo capable of traveling underwater at the speeds of 370 kmph using supercavitation; and continues to be one of the fastest torpedos till date. Supercavitation is about forming a wrapping air bubble around the torpedo to minimise the direct contact of the body of vessel with water, in order to minimize the drag offered by water. Theory suggests that a supercavitating vessel can reach the speeds of about 5,800 kmph; allowing travel-time from Shanghai to San Francisco cut short to just 1.5 hours
The main issue with the supercavitating vessels is that it's difficult to maneuver them. Also these vessels need to be launched into the water at the speeds of about 100 kmph to maintain the cavitation. The Chinese researchers have succeeded in addressing both these problems. They found out a way to cover the vessel with a specialised liquid membrane allowing a very controlled friction between water and vessel body. It also allows to take care of the challenges associated with high-speed launch required.

Li Fungchen said they need to solve several problems before these vessels can be adopted in the mainstream. The biggest challenge now is to develop an underwater rocket engine that can sustain longer range. The Shkval torpedo could travel only between 11 - 15 km under water.

New Camera System Doesn't Use Mirrors To Capture Objects Placed Around A Corner

Capturing an object positioned around a corner from a camera seems like an impossible task if you don't have a mirror at hand. Well, no magic tricks involved when it comes to the work of a research team from University of Bonn and the University of British Columbia, Vancouvera have developed a camera that can actually "see" around the corner. The novel technology introduced here makes use of diffusely reflected light for reconstructing the shape of objects that's not in the direct field of view of the camera or the person holding it. Prof. Dr. Ing. Matthias B. Hullin from the University of Bonn, who works on this project, shares that the mathematical procedure they created, was coupled with the camera system so that they could transform the wall virtually into a mirror.

In their setup, the laser light shone on the wall would itself act as the source of information. Some of the laser light that gets rebound from the wall also contains some valuable data about the appearance of the object beyond the wall and around the corner. The team has been successful in capturing this "light echo". This light is nothing but the time-resolved data which is later used to reconstruct the object. To achieve this, the team developed a special camera system that records not only the direction from which the light is coming but also how long it took the light to get from the source to the camera.

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Using readily available image sensors from video controllers and spare cameras, the team measured the sum of numerous light reflections which reached the camera through multiple paths. On superimposing them over each other on the image sensor, they were able to get the desired image capture.

The ability to extract only the desired information from this data has been a challenge for the engineering team. Their exclusive mathematical procedure they employed was able to achieve them reasonable results. Thanks to some smart coding and their call on keeping the technical complexity to the very minimal, the researchers were able to do a rapid development of the novel camera system. Their method isn't of course full-proof yet. It comes with its own set of limitations. Even though that's the case, the team looks confident about achieving an even higher resolution soon enough. The applications of the new tech can be found very useful in the field of medical imagery, remote sensing as well as telecommunications.

Source: University of Bonn

PhoneGap 2.0

Everyone seems to agree that mobile is the new black. And since that's the case it's a major pain in the proverbial that this 'new' platform managed to recreate so many of the problems faced by the desktop: different APIs, languages, browsers, file formats… Thankfully, PhoneGap has gone a long way towards smoothing out those difficulties.

PhoneGap 2, the first release since Adobe took the reins, is a significant advance for at least two reasons. The first is the simple increase in platforms reached, Windows 8 phone included. The second is the availability of PhoneGap Build, giving developers a single compile point capable of reaching every platform. No wonder there's so many apps.

BitTorrent Unveils Bleep: A Decentralised & Encrypted Chat Client For Windows

The people behind the massively successful and controversial BitTorrent technology have unveiled Bleep, a new chat client that promises secure and snooping free communication. BitTorrent have implemented their knowledge of decentralised infrastructure to build Bleep. Instead of having a centralised server to handle chats and client metadata, Bleep uses the same BitTorrent technology to build a fully distributed SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) server that serves as an engine for Bleep. Ever since the NSA-Snowden saga many chat clients have included the option of encrypted communication. While the encryption is sufficient to safeguard the messages, the client’s metadata has to remain in the company’s servers making it vulnerable to government snooping and hacking. Bleep does not maintain a central repository of chat log and contact information. People on Bleep can find each other through other nodes in the network. Bleep employs secure encryption protocols such as curve25519, ed25519, salsa20, poly1305, and others for end to end encryption. 

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On Bleep you can communicate with others in text and voice. Since the makers of the chat client believe in the idea of open internet, they have made the Bleep engine to serve as the back-end to any chat and voice application. The company has launched Bleep in its pre-alpha form and is asking users to register their e-mail ids on the website and wait for the invite. Once your request is processed they shall be mailing you back with the download link for the client. The company is targeting the application towards journalists, diplomatic corps, business and individuals who want to safeguard their messages from illegal snooping. The client is currently available for Windows desktops only. The testers have the option of inviting their friends to use the application. BitTorrent warns that since it is an early build users can expect some bugs in the system which will be rectified in future builds.

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To get your Bleep client, you can register on this link and to obtain more information about it head over to theBitTorrent blog (1) (2).

Critical Security Flaw In USB

Security researchers Karsten Nohl and Jakob Lell of Security Research Lab have managed to exploit a fundamental flaw in USB technology that makes us rethink the way we use this versatile technology. We use USB devices every day; we use them as storage devices, computer peripherals, cell phone chargers, data cables for smartphones and printers and much more. To make USB work with any device a programmer has to reprogram the USB controller chip present in the peripheral. The only problem with this is that most USB controller chips including the ones used in thumb drives have no protection against reprogramming. These researchers exploited this flaw by developing a proof-of-concept malware called BadUSB. Once BadUSB infects a USB drive, it reverse engineers the USB firmware and turns them malicious. They can program any USB device to behave as a keyboard and issue commands to the computer to install harmful malware and corrupt users’ files. The downloaded malware can then be used to infect controller chips of other USB devices connected to the computer. The tainted USB device can also be used to emulate a network card which has the capability to change the computer’s DNS and redirect the traffic to hackers. Finally, there is the threat of injecting a computer with a boot virus with the help of a thumb drive which has been programmed with BadUSB. 

Image Courtesy: CurveFever​

Normally when you discover a malware on your computer you have to rely on your trusted antivirus or in the worst case perform a system format to get rid of the threat. In case of a BadUSB infiltrated system however you do not have any defences because of three reasons. First, antivirus software cannot check the firmware running on a USB device. Second, when a BadUSB infected device is plugged into a computer, the antivirus does not perform a heuristic analysis (checking unusual behaviour for unknown malware detection) because the changed persona of the new device makes it think that the user has plugged in a new device. Finally, a full operating system reinstallation cannot get rid of this because all the while the computer was infected it could have downloaded the malicious software which would have reprogrammed other USB devices connected to the computer such as a hardwired USB webcam on a laptop or worse it could have reprogrammed the computer’s BIOS because as we have mentioned earlier it can behave as a keyboard.

While talking to Wired, the researchers said that once infected with BadUSB one has to think that the USB device is a hypodermic needle which should not be shared among users and immediately thrown away because a technical patch cannot fix the problem. During their research they contacted a Taiwanese USB device maker whom they refuse to name citing the problem but the company insisted that such infection was not possible. The duo is planning to give more details of their research and demonstrate BadUSB at the BlackHat USA 2014.

Adobe Edge Inspect

A great little app for mobile developers, formerly known asAdobe Shadow, which cuts a huge amount of hassle from the design process. Just pair your devices (Android and iOS) with your main machine. Then the sites you browse to are echoed direct to every connected device.

If you've got conditional code or responsive templates then these should work fine. And if you want to tinker with the code, just hit the angle brackets next to your paired device (in Chrome) and away you go.

Adobe Edge Inspect

A great little app for mobile developers, formerly known asAdobe Shadow, which cuts a huge amount of hassle from the design process. Just pair your devices (Android and iOS) with your main machine. Then the sites you browse to are echoed direct to every connected device.

If you've got conditional code or responsive templates then these should work fine. And if you want to tinker with the code, just hit the angle brackets next to your paired device (in Chrome) and away you go.