3D Mapping

I’m sure you all remember a scene from the movie- Avatar, where the marines are seen gathering around a giant 3D map of Pandora to plot their invasion? Thanks to Zebra Imaging Inc, this technology is no longer restricted to sci-fi movies anymore. The company makes holographic maps that, according to the company, have been “utilized by the US military overseas for visualization and defense planning applications.”  But Zebra doesn't just make maps to help the Army blow stuff up in real life. They're also widely used for forensic investigations of accident sites, as well as for designing urban infrastructure and architecture.

According to Zebra's co-founder, Michael Klug -is that the company can laser-encode any kind of 3D imaging data, using technology such as Computer-Aided Design (CAD) for example, into a thin sheet of plastic that'll display the full-color image in three dimensions from any angle, under normal lighting.  Zebra Imaging Inc. claims this technology is intuitive, rugged, and,  for a reasonable price of $3500 for a 2' x 3' print -- actually kind of a steal, at least compared to a giant table-sized computer (that wouldn't even display in 3D anyway).

Mobile Spatial Interaction, What?!?

In recent times, there has been emerging trends and progress made in the field of Mobile Spatial Interaction (MSI).  Technological advances in this arena is a culmination of successful research in topics such as, spatial sensing, geo-referenced digital content, 3D environment modeling, and more importantly human-computer interaction.  MSI allows users to interact with their physical, natural, and urban surroundings via the use of sensor-rich mobile devices. Even though there have been significant progress made in enabling MSI through improvements in gesture interface, remote sensing expertise, and enhancements in empirical knowledge on this topic, obstacles still remain on the path to mass commercial usage of this concept.  Mobile Spatial Interaction (MSI) has been evolving relatively faster than any other cutting edge technology that impacts human-computer interaction.  MSI in all its avatars possess certain strengths, weaknesses, and provide endless opportunities to push the innovation barrier further out.  MSI and the various mobile applications/devices that facilitate this concept/technology have endless possibilities.

Developers and mobile device manufacturers alike have recognized that the portability and web connectivity features on a mobile device provide MSI enablers (i.e. geo-referenced digital content, spatial sensing etc.) the means to function.  Currently, the various interaction paradigms that are available for functional use can be exemplified through technologies known as 1) Magic Wand, 2) Smart Lens, 3) Virtual Peephole, and 4) Sixth Sense (Peter Frohlich, 2011).  These technologies allow users to interact with the physical object they are curious about and the swaths of data about it, which are embedded in linked databases and wikis through their web-enabled mobile devices.  These technologies afford users the convenience of instant access to information about physical objects they are interested in without having to type a word or, a query prompt.  For example, one can click a picture of a historical monument, such as the Leaning tower of Pisa and without any further exertion; rely on an MSI technology, such as the Magic Wand to point a mobile device at a historical building and obtain information about it.  Ideally, MSI can reduce the need for any computing equipment that is bigger than the size of ones palm, but, still provide the same level of access to information a regular desk top with a fast CPU and internet connection can.

There are of course challenges to implementing these MSI enabled technologies and maintaining the back-end database that supports the front-end interface.  The information to be stored in a backend databases need to be continuously updated to provide accurate and detailed information about a target object.  In addition, the task of linking objects to pertinent information can be overwhelming due to the sheer number of physical objects that might draw a general user’s interest.  Storing information about the leaning tower of Pisa is one thing, and it is totally something else to research, gather and store information about one of the many gargoyles perched up on a steeple in Prague, Czech Republic!  A whole different set of challenges are around the mobile devices that are manufactured.  Not all mobile phones are created equal; the technology to swipe through the GUI on a device can enable an MSI technology better (think iPhone) than one that only offers a keypad (think Blackberry).

More importantly, as the concept and technology around mobile spatial interaction is further developed, advances in various aspects of human-computer interaction can be combined to enable mobile devices to accomplish far more tasks in terms of managing our tasks, email, and calendars.  We have already seen examples of applications in the market today that can assist us in typing documents using voice recognition software (e.g. Dragon Diction), and we have also seen applications that can extract information from pictures taken by our phone-cameras and convert to text.  These are all examples of interactions we have with our computers and the physical world every day.  If these technologies were combined, synthesized, and/or further developed into a standard method of interacting with both computer processors and physical objects around us, there would be less and less dependence on other resources within our organizations.  We could all then be an “army of one”; in the corporate jungle, of course!

Emotion Through Motion Detection

Today, more than anything else, the security apparatus of our nation is concerned over implementing impenetrable security measures at major airports to protect the flying public.  To that measure, government agencies, such as the TSA have implemented a variety of tools, mechanisms, and procedures to proactively detect threats, and mitigate any potential risks associated with mal-intent by rouge agents and terrorists.  To aid in that initiative, National Science Foundation (NSF) among other government and quasi-government organizations have dedicated intellectual resources to develop and/or leverage technology to deploy safeguards from such threats.  One such example is, NSF’s partnership with Christoph Bregler and his team of research fellows from New York University.  Chris Bregler and his team have been working on deploying the technology behind motion detection, primarily used in developing video games and animation, to detect human emotions.

Developers use special body suits with hundreds of embedded sensors in capturing body part movements to replicate them into character movements in developing video games.  Invisible to the human eye, ‘green dots’ disseminated from those motion detection sensors are read by programs give the video game characters a reference to reality.   Mr. Bregler and his team of scientists are using those ‘green dots’ to analyze the movement and intensity of facial expressions, jaw movement, the blinking and shifting of eyes and lips to interpret emotions.   The difference is that instead of relying on special body suits or technical appendages, Mr. Bregler and his team can use the program they have developed to apply it on to video footage to measure and translate facial expressions to correlate to human emotions.  To test this program out, they have taken video footage of past speeches from Fidel Castro, JFK, President Obama, and other world leaders to measure the intensity of their facial expressions and jaw line movement to relate it to their moods for those given circumstances.  Now, one might ask, why is this important in the fight against terrorism?  Actually, the answer is quite simple – this technology can assist and supplement existing mechanisms to proactively detect the most concealed weapon- intention to cause harm.  If law enforcement officials can scan individuals and their facial expressions and speech by analyzing a video footage to derive meaning, they are that much more capable of thwarting imminent threats.

Learnt from Anatomy...

By copying the human eye, scientists have developed what may be the world's smallest autofocus lens for mobile devices.  The majority of mobile phones today include built-in cameras, but these are not generally equipped with autofocus like most regular cameras.  This is because autofocus function requires cameras to move their lenses back and forth until they correctly focus on an object, which can prove a slow and energy-draining process, and energy is a paramount concern for mobile devices.  Instead of focusing cameras by using motors to move lenses, researchers have now hit upon having cameras that focus just like the human eye — by changing the shape of the lens. Human eyes squeeze or relax their flexible lenses to alter their curvature and thus how near or far they are focused.

In order to mimic the human eye, scientists needed a soft lens, as well as materials that could mimic the eye muscles that control the lens. The resulting device was a complex sandwich of four different layers. The end product is just a half-millimeter thin and as little as 3.5 millimeters across.  At the very top is a ceramic film made of lead zirconia titanate, which acts much like the muscle in an eye and responds to electricity. When voltage is not running through it, the film remains flat, and light can pass through. However, when a voltage is passed through the film, it flexes, bending the underlying glass membrane into a lens shape that focuses light-the higher the voltage, the greater the curvature.  Under that is a thin glass membrane that serves as the flexible lens. Beneath this membrane is a synthetic transparent rubber, which acts like a cushion when the lens flexes. At the very bottom is a glass support.

The new lens system also uses less than 1 percent of the energy to autofocus than a conventional motor-driven camera in a mobile device. The sharpness of the resulting images is also comparable with other mobile device cameras.  After creating a working prototype, researchers developed the lens further with the Norwegian optics firm PoLight. The company debut a mobile phone camera with the new lens in February at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Chromebook? Really? That's ALL I need?

Back in 2004, if you thought Gmail revolutionized the internet and how people communicated over the World Wide Web, think again!  The “father of Gmail”, Rajen Sheth has been at it again in what he does best - tweaking the existing technology to develop something better, and maybe even innovate something totally different, so it redefines the way an existing technology can operate.  After almost seven years after Mr. Sheth first pitched the Gmail concept to the senior leadership at Google, Rajen went on to build Gmail as the one of the largest browser based email services in the world.  Additionally, he has bitten off a large chunk of the online application (App) store market by conceptualizing, developing, and marketing the “Google Apps Marketplace” as a “healthy” alternative to Apple’s App Store, with a far more robust array of mobile and computer applications.  Now, he is urging businesses to move away from traditional hard-drive-equipped machines running local applications and embrace a new breed of stripped-down laptop that runs all apps inside a web browser: the Google Chromebook.  The concept behind the technology used in the Google Chromebook is a based on the premise that the web is ultimately more powerful than any native platforms – and may one day displace them all.  

Google bills the Chromebook as a kind of disposable laptop. If you lose the machine or trade it in for another, (most) all of your applications and data are waiting for you when you boot up a new one. Taking this idea to the extreme, the company is offering subscriptions to the machines, which are manufactured by Acer and Samsung. For $28 per machine per month, you get those continuous software updates, a web-based management console, Google tech support, and yes, hardware replacements.  ‘Apps’ moved traditional office applications into the browser, and Chromebook seeks to move everything into the browser.  The lightweight version of Google’s Chrome OS is the foundation upon which the Chromebook architecture will reside.  Like an ordinary browser, the lightweight Chrome OS can be readily updated over the wire. Most other software, including data, resides on the web. And each web application is confined to its own “sandbox,” so it doesn’t touch the rest of the system.  Ultimately, Sheth says, this means the machine is far cheaper to operate.

The need and emergence of IPV6

Information is exchanged over the Internet using a standard communications protocol called Internet Protocol (IP).  Each device (PC, router, server, mobile phones, game systems, etc.) on the Internet is given an address so packets of information can be transmitted from one address to others using IP.  The most common IP is IP version 4 (IPv4).   IPv4 uses 32 bits for addressing and provides 2^34 addresses.  Because of the expansive growth of the Internet, the Internet Engineering Task Force realized more address space was necessary and in 1998 they released the next generation protocol, IPv6.  IPv6 uses 128 bits for addressing and therefore provides 2^128 addresses.      

Security for IPv6 is also a concern among many organizations.  Typically organizations don’t want to transition to IPv6 because they are unsure of how to secure it.  This is really turning a blind-eye to the problem.  Some vendors ship IPv6 enabled equipment.  Anyone using this equipment without taking the time to disable IPv6 has IPv6 on their network.  IPv6 can also be tunneled via IPv4.  This provides an attacker a way in to a network without the network team knowing.  Unless the security team is monitoring for and denying all forms of IPv6, IPv6 is on the network. 

The Federal Government recognized the need to transition to IPv6 as early as 2005 when the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) released the memorandum, Transition Planning for Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6), and established June 2008 “…as the date by which all agencies’ infrastructure (network backbones) must be using IPv6 and agency networks must interface with this infrastructure.”  In September 2010, OMB released additional mandates requiring Federal agencies “…to operationally use native IPv6 [on public/external facing servers and services] by the end of FY 2012” and “Upgrade internal client applications that communicate with public Internet servers and supporting enterprise networks to operationally use native IPv6 by the end of FY 14.” 

IPv6 provides other features that were added on to IPv4.  These features include IP Security, Domain Name Server Security and IPv6 eliminates the need for network address translation (NAT).  NAT is usually used to hide many IPs behind one publicly routable IP.  This makes packet processing more complex and destroys the end-to-end communication theory of the Internet.  Because IPv6 provides so many addresses, there is no need to use one IP for publicly routable addresses and then forward the packet to the intended recipient.  This reduces the complexity of the Internet.