Augmented Reality

Apple iPhone Apps reports on new iPhone features, attributing credit to an anonymous leak from inside Apple. I would like to focus on one specific feature. They report, with skepticism:

-Revolutionary combination of the camera, GPS, compass, orientation sensor, and Google maps

The camera will work with the GPS, compass, orientation sensor and Google maps to identify what building or location you have taken a picture of. We at first had difficulties believing this ability. However, such a “feature” is technically possible. If the next generation iPhone was to contain a compass then all of the components necessary to determine the actually plane in space for an image taken. The GPS would be used to determine the physical location of the device. The compass would be used to determine the direction the camera was facing. And the orientation sensor would be used to determine the orientation of the camera relative to the gravity. Additionally the focal length and focus of the camera could even assist is determining the distance of any focused objects in the picture. In other words, not only would the device know where you are, but it could determine how you are tilting it and hence it would know EXACTLY where in space your picture was composed. According to our source, Apple will use this information to introduce several groundbreaking features. For example, if you were to take a picture of the Staples Center in Los Angeles, you will be provided with a prompt directing you to information about the building, address, and/or area. This information will include sources such as wikipedia. This seems like quite an amazing service; and a little hard to believe, however while the complexity of such a service may be unrealistic, such is actually feasible with the sensors onboard the next generation iPhone.

And why “unrealistic”? Every piece of this technology already exists in the wild. This is not a great technological leap. This is merely smart convergence.

There are already two applications on the Google Android platform that have these features. One is a proof-of-concept called Enkin, developed by Max Braun and Rafael Spring (students of Computational Visualistics from Coblenz Germany, currently doing robotics research at Osaka University in Japan). The second, Wikitude by Mobilizy, is already in full-blown commercial release (an Austrian company, founded by Philip Breuss-Schneeweis and Martin Lechner).

WIKITUDE DEMONSTRATION:

ENKIN, PROOF-OF-CONCEPT:

It is only one short step further to let users geo-tag their photos. Many social photo/map applications available for the iPhone already incorporate such a feature. Building this into the realtime viewfinder would not be a great challenge. By example, the proof-of-concept for this already exists in the form of Microsoft’s Photosynth (silverlight browser plugin required).

Social Media apps could tap into this utility to network members in real space. At the most basic level, Facebook and/or LinkedIn apps could overlay member’s with their name and profile information.

The next logical extension of this will be to place the information directly into your field of vision.

The OOH marketing opportunities are immense. Recent campaigns for General Electric in the US, and the Mini Cooper in Germany show where this is going. Suddenly the work done by Wayne Piekarski at the University of South Australia’s Wearable Computer Lab is no longer so SciFi (now being commercialized as WorldViz). At January’s CES, Vuzix debuted their new 920AV Model of eyewear, which includes an optional stereoscopic camera attachment to combine virtual objects with your real environment. Originally scheduled for a Spring release, their ship-date has now been pushed back to Fall (their main competitor, MyVu, does not yet have an augmented reality model). If the trend finally takes, expect to see more partnerships with eyewear manufactures.

Initially through the viewfinder of your smartphone, and eventually through the lens of your eyewear, augmentation will be the point of convergence for mobile-web, local-search, social media, and geo-targeted marketing. Whether Apple makes the full leap in one gesture with the release of their Next-Gen iPhone, or gets there in smaller steps depends upon both the authenticity/acuracy of this leak, and the further initiative of third-party software and hardware developers to take advantage of it. Innovation and convergence will be the economic drivers that reboot our economy.

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EDIT: The only capability Apple actually needs to add to the iPhone in order for this proposed augmented reality to be implemented is a magnetometer (digital compass). Google Android models already have this component. Charlie Sorrel of WIRED Magazine’s Gadget Lab has separately reported this feature through leaks of a developer screen shot, and on May 22nd Brian X. Chen, also reporting for WIRED Magazine’s Gadget Lab, put the probability of a magnetometer being included in the new iPhone at 90%. Once the iPhone has an onboard compass, augmented reality features will begin to appear, whether through Apple’s own implementation or from third party developers.

UPDATE: Since the time of this writing, the iPhone 3GS has been released, and it does indeed include an magnetometer.

Nuclear Reactor, home edition

The United States’ Los Alamos National Laboratory, in conjunction with private sector partner, Hyperion Power, has announced its first client for their miniature nuclear power reactors— TES of the Czech Republic.

The units will retail for US$25 million each. TES has committed to purchase 6 units (with an option on 12 more) to be delivered by 2013, and Los Alamos/Hyperion claim to have another 100+ orders in the pipeline. They have scaled their manufacturing capacity to deliver 4000 units over tens years.

Led by Dr. Otis Peterson, the reactors are based on a 50 year old design (the TRIGA), of a kind used by science students at University. It is said to be disaster proof (a completely sealed unit, with no moving parts) and nuclear-proliferation proof, as the fuel is Uranium Hydride which has proven ineffective as at being weaponized. Furthermore, the units will be installed underground to avoid tampering. The original patent was granted in 2003, for which Peterson was subsequently honored by the FLC.

Producing 70 megawatts of heat that powers a turbine that generates 25 megawatts of power, they will need refueling once every 7 to 10 years. By example they state that, based on contemporary US residential energy consumption levels, one mini-reactor would be capable of supporting the equivalent of 25,000 homes for five years. At the US$25M price tag, that comes to $200 per home per year.

Though the reactors were originally conceived for use by large industrial projects located off the power grid, Hyperion has adjusted their sales focus, after intense interest from remote communities including developers in the Bahamas and the Cayman Islands.

Recent growth in international energy demands coupled with concerns over global climate change have renewed interest in nuclear energy, which has the lowest Carbon emissions factor of any known form of energy production.

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FURTHER READING:

Hyperion: Nuclear In A Box

Micro-nuclear plants for local power

Hyperion Nuclear Batteries

We're Here to Go

NASA Administrator, Michael Griffin, in white

When NASA Administrator, Michael Griffin, can publicly state that, “The single overarching goal of human space flight is the human settlement of the solar system, and eventually beyond,” we have come a long way.

When my grandfather was with NASA, his pet name for the Space Shuttle was ‘the Space Truck’ or simply ‘the Truck’. As a teen, he explained to me how NASA had conceived of the Space Shuttle as a people mover. The Space Shuttle would have been much more affordable and practical if it only had to accommodate human passengers. It was meant to be a ‘Space Bus’, but in the 1970s, Congress was not receptive to the idea of funding space colonization. That was too Sci-Fi for most US politicians to embrace or fund. But a much more expensive “Truck” that could haul payloads, well that was something Congressmen could wrap their heads around. Once again, relating the conversations with my grandfather — it would have been much safer and extremely more economical to lift satellites and heavy payload for construction of the International Space Station on, to use Ralph’s words, “big dumb rockets”. Then the Space Shuttle’s dedicated role as a people mover would be undistracted by other tasks. Under this scenario the Space Shuttle would have been less expensive to develop, build and maintain. And payload launches could be handled by unmanned flights, human life would not have to be put at risk. Apparently the political realities of getting budgetary approval from Congress necessitated the compromise.

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ON A RELATED NOTE…

While the US is distracted with our own presidential election and domestic economic issues, the launch of China’s first space walk mission was barely covered here in the US.

Bravo to Bill Gates

A few weeks ago Bill Gates joined Linked[in]. It is often the network’s practice when a high profile member joins, to invite them to post a “featured question” on the site’s Q&A page. Mr. Gates did so by asking:

How can we do more to encourage young people to pursue careers in science and technology?

Before the question was closed, it received 3567 answers. Unfortunately, Bill did not mark a best answer (or even a list of good answers). My reply, which appears here (the 18th answer on page 90), emphasized that meeting our job market demand for scientist and engineers could not be met with education alone, but only by also opening up citizenship to foreign born students receiving college degrees in American Universities. My reply began:

With only 5% of the world’s population, all our talent cannot be homegrown. We desperately need to open our doors to more (I’d say “unlimited”) H-1B visas. With a shortage of engineering and scientific degrees going to American students, our Universities give more technical degrees to foreign students than domestic… yet when their student visas expire we effectively throw them out of our country. A great many of them want to stay here, and yet after giving them our most precious intellectual property, we basically give them the boot. We should be passing out citizenship at graduation ceremonies. Foreign students who earn a degree at a U.S. University in a field where America has a shortage of talent should be granted immediate and automatic citizenship. Anything less is both foolish and shameful. —bold emphasis added.

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On March 12th, Bill Gates gave an address before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science and Technology, on the topic of Competitiveness and Innovation. This address marked the committee’s 50th Anniversary.

Bill Gates’ address to Congress:

Most of the committee members were respectful and receptive to Mr. Gates’ message. Representative Ralph Hall of Texas, district 4 gave a particularly warm introductory speech. There was one quite noteworthy exception. Dana Rohrabacher, California representative, district 46, who went on a protectionist/isolationist rant, felt that if Microsoft couldn’t hire the “A students” from abroad, they should just hire “B and C students” that were American born. He felt it was Microsoft’s responsibility to create jobs for these workers too. He even made the argument that, by giving H-1B visas to foreign engineers, that we would unfairly damage the labor needs of the recipient’s home country (you can’t make this stuff up!). After this bone-head (can I say that? …yes, of course I can. It’s my blog.) went beyond his alloted time, the chair of the committee asked him to wrap it up. Incensed by the perceived insult, Mr. Rohrabacher blathered, “You know, I’ve got a, uh, I’m working at, uh, I’m one of the guys who helped Kosovo become independent, I’m on the Foreign Relations Committee…” before he was eventually shut up. California, is this guy really the best you can find to represent you?

There is a very foolish and shortsighted sentiment that H-1B visas drive down wages and/or cause US citizens to loose jobs to foreign workers. With a shortage of scientific and engineering candidates, without more (many more) H-1B visa recipients, these jobs do not then go to natural born American citizens, but rather simply go unfilled. And that highly sought candidate will instead be employed by a foreign competitor.

Bill’s address was succinct but not thin, and his follow-up answers were well informed. He covered everything from the role of philanthropy in improving education, new educational opportunities offered by the internet, US competitiveness as compared to Europe and Asia, US investment in research and development, his strong support for the America Competes Act, teaching programs that have been successful both inside and outside the US, and what effect this has had on American competitiveness and businesses ability to meet their hiring needs. It was however, the issue of H-1B visas that captured the media. Below I have pulled all of Bill’s quotes related to the subject from the more than 2 hours of footage, sans any media spin (only 9 minutes of which was his actual Congressional address).

At time marker 5:25, citing research (PDF) Mr. Gates makes the case that H-1B visas actually create more jobs here in the United States:

Today our university computer science and engineering programs include large numbers of foreign students. In fact, the Science and Engineering Indicators Report showed that 59 percent of doctoral degrees and 43 percent of all higher-ed degrees in engineering and computer science are awarded to temporary residence. But our current immigration policies make it increasingly difficult for these students to remain in the United States. At the time when talent is the key to economic success, it makes no sense to educate people in our Universities, often subsidized by US tax payers and then insist that they return home. US innovation has always been based in part on the contributions of foreign born scientist and researchers. For example, a recent survey, uh, conducted by several universities, showed that between 1999 and 2005, firms with at least one foreign born founder created 450,000 new US jobs. Moreover, as a recent study shows– for every H-1B holder that technology companies hire, five additional jobs are created around that person. But as you know our immigration system makes it very difficult for US firms to hire highly skilled foreign workers.

At time marker 7:51 he added:

I want to emphasize that, to address the shortage of scientist and engineers, we must do both– reform our education system and our immigration policies.

While the video above only contains Bill Gates’ address, and not the follow-up questions by members of the house which, as I point out, lasted much longer than the address itself, I have included a couple of noteworthy highlights. The majority of the committee’s members were sympathetic to Mr. Gates position, Mr. Rohrabacher bizarre comments above being the only exception.

Later, in response to a question by Mr. Rothman, representative for New Jersey, district 9, at time marker 10:47, Mr. Gates further made the point:

I’d also suggest that, if someone’s educated in a US University that, because of the research funding that comes out of the government, you know, you’ve basically subsidized that education, I think there should be a direct path to permanent residency.

In another exchange with the committee regarding the stature of American Universities, Mr. Gates has this to add (11:04):

The very top engineers, the US Universities still have a strong position, but as I’ve said, the majority of the students in the computer science department are foreign born. And so we educate them. We provide the world’s very best education, and the… the research funding and various things are, a… a major factor there. And then those are the students who, uh, are not allowed to stay and, and work in the country because of the limits we have.

I would like to commend Bill Gates for speaking sense in the face of all the ill-founded isolationism being advocated by some false populist shills for the labor union special interests. The tech sector is the future of the American economy, and of the world. If America is to continue to prosper, we must increase our number of scientist, engineers and mathematicians. Even if all American college graduates became engineers, we would still have a shortage. This has more to do with birthrates than anything else. The only way to close this gap is through immigration, and the low hanging fruit are those foreigners who have already been educated in our system. They are already here, they want to stay here, and when we force them to leave, they will not leave the labor market, they will simply goto work in a foreign competitor economy, taking American intellectual capital with them as we throw them out.

I started off writing a technology story, and here I am, stuck in politics again.

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RELATED LINKS:

Bill Gates’ Address in the C-Span Archives
Bill Gates’ full hearing before the Committee on Science and Technology, including pre-address comments by committee members, as well as a post address question and answer with Bill Gates, can be viewed in full at C-Span’s online archives. Available formats include both a Flash Movie and a Windows Media file (total run time is just over two hours). It can also be ordered on DVD.

Committee on Science and Technology, 50th Anniversary Address
Additionally, the address can be viewed in full from the United States House of Representatives’ website as a Real Media file.

Bill Gates unabridged written testimony as PDF
Due to time constraints, Mr. Gates agreed to give an abridged version of his address. His full testimony was entered into the record in writing, and can be downloaded in PDF form.

Microsoft website— Bill Gates, transcript from committee address
The full transcript of Bill Gates address before the Congressional committee, including all follow-up questions.

Bill Gates’ Speeches— Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Transcripts of other speeches by Bill Gates, in the archives of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

EU wins planet race

This is already getting plenty of coverage in the mainstream press, but I still find it newsworthy, and wish to cover it here.

After a ten year competition with scientists in the US, today a team of European astronomers and astrophysicists lead by Swiss scientists Michel Mayor and Stephane Udry, operating from the European Southern Observatory at La Silla, Chile, notified the Journal of Astronomy and Astrophysics that they have found the first “Earth like planet” outside of our solar system.

It’s far, far too soon to know for sure whether it has water, or what kind of atmosphere it has, but it is believed likely to have water, and is at least confidently believed to be at an hospitable temperature, conducive to life as we know it.

Whether it has life forms of its own (even merely bacteria/microorganisms), or could simply be a potential future colonization point, it is notable for being in orbit around one of the 100 near-earth stars. This still places it 20 light-years away, a journey far beyond the reach of any human lifetime with any known technology.

It has been speculated by some that we will only become long distance space travelers when we find a way to make our species immortal, and therefore the long periods of travel less relevant. I’m skeptical of the vanity of absolute immortality, but the notion of elongating the human life-span such that, barring terminal illness or tragedy (car wreck, etc.), with a little luck some of us could reach a few hundred years in age. Given the strides that the first world has made in human life-spans in the past century, I don’t think this is inconceivable. That, combined with some inevitable advances in space travel and private sector competition make the idea of planet colonization more within the realm of practical consideration.

Or, put another way, “We’re here to go.”

Potential cure for HIV

This week’s Foresight Institute newsletter has several recent breakthroughs in nano-filtration technology. One using a silicon membrane and two others using different applications of carbon nanotube technology.

At the University of Rochester researchers have developed a porous membrane of silicon just 50 atoms thick (4,000 times thinner than a single human hair) yet with the strength of 15 pounds per square inch, that can be used to filter out individual molecules within air, water or blood based on both molecular size, and the charge of the molecule. Read more here.

Scientist at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, using a low-voltage electrical charge combined with a carbon nanotube membrane, have found a way to filter individual molecules of salt from water, in a discovery that they say can “transform salt water into pure drinking water almost instantly.” Read more here.

In the laboratories of Queensland University of Technology, Associate Professor Huaiyong Zhu is leading a team that has developed a carbon nano-mesh that they believe will be able to filter the HIV virus from blood. They’ve done a proof of concept removing individual viruses from water and are now seeking a partner to develop the technology into a real world medical application. Read more here.

You can join the Foresight Institute’s email list by subscribing in the upper right corner of their homepage.

Visible Beam Lasers

These lasers, available from the appropriately titled “Wicked Lasers”, have a visible beam and can shoot a visible straight line for 100 miles… not meters, miles.

Careful, these lasers can burn. If held stationary, they can melt a hole in a plastic bag, and will light a cigarette. Other than a note to wear eye protection, their real destructive power is actually pretty feather weight compared to anything Han Solo would strap to his hip. None the less, the strength of these lasers portents to where this technology may progress in the near future.

The Electric Car

In the late 70s, my grandfather, Ralph Grayson, accepted an assignment from NASA, that required him to relocate to California for a few years (Principle Research Scientist, Aviation Safety Reporting, under a Battelle research contract).

This was amidst the Opec Oil embargo, and the infamous California gasoline rationing. Ralph bought himself an electric car. More specifically, he bought a Serbring Vanguard, Electric CitiCar. Not content to use it for corner store runs, he made it his daily driver to the NASA facility at the Moffett Field Naval Air Station in Mountain View (this U.S. Naval Base was closed in 1992).

Truthfully, taking the CitiCar out on the highway was like riding in the Kevorkian death-trap. The body was made out of plastic. Can I say that again? Plastic. The earliest models had no front bumper at all. Each subsequent model had a larger and larger bumper, until the final models produced had a big bizarre looking snout. I remember running out of charge once, stuck in traffic on the highway and helping my grandfather push the thing to the nearest “gas station” so he could plug it in to their electrical outlet.

I still loved that car. It was fun to ride around in. It was only supposed to go 30 mph, but he souped it up, and was able to eek 40mph+ out of it. It made hardly any sound, just a muffled high-pitched whir. Because it was electric it really only had two speeds: stop and go. The acceleration was so swift it gave the feeling you were going much faster than you were. It could beat any sports car off the line. It was quite entertaining to see this awkward, doorstop-wedge of a vehicle leave corvettes behind, even more so when you were the one riding in it. I also loved that car because it meant something symbolic. It was a glimpse into one possible future. An optimistic one, where necessity was the mother of invention.

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Gasoline and the Combustible Engine

The problem with gasoline is not that it’s too expensive, but to the contrary, that it’s far too cheap. Capital investment, real investment, won’t flood into so called “alternative energy sources” until they become cost-competitive with oil. The path to alternative energy is expensive oil. Nobody wants expensive oil because of the high investment we’ve all made in the internal combustion engine. Not just automobile manufacturers, or oil companies, but each one of us. For most Americans, their gasoline powered cars are their second largest personal investment after their home. For those who are not home owners, it’s their largest financial investment.

The other dilemma is the investment of man hours. The number of hours that scientist, engineers, inventors, and mechanics have spent for more than a century now refining the internal combustion engine is nearly incalculable. The gasoline powered automobile is a mature technology. That is difficult to compete with, even by a superior technology.

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Third time’s a charm?

The 90s saw the short lived GM EV1 get murdered in its infancy by its own parent.

Today we have Tesla Motors, and their sporty Tesla Roadster, body built from technology borrowed from the light weight Lotus Elise. I’m hoping this time they can buck the odds.

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For your viewing pleasure.

The Unveiling of the Tesla Motors Electric Car		Keio University Japanese electric concept car, Eliica.
1996 Commercial for the GM EV1 Electric Car		Movie Trailer for Who Killed The Electric Car?

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To this day, at just over 2500 units sold, the Serbring Vanguard Electric CitiCar still remains the highest production run, street legal electric car ever produced.

Personal Home Planetarium

The HomeStar Pro by Sega Toys is the improved version of their original HomeStar Home Planetarium, with an LED projection that is 3 times brighter than the original. It is still recommended that the device be used in as close to total darkness as possible. In addition to the moving view of the Northern sky, the “Pro” also comes with an additional plate projection of a full moon, in great detail.

A wonderful educational gift for children, especially those who live in urban areas where the city lights obscure all but the brightest stars, making telescope viewing less practical.

The HomeStar Pro Home Planetarium is available from AudioCubes for $329.00.

You can view this 4 minute Japanese infomercial for the HomeStar Pro on YouTube.

Of course, if you live out in big-sky country, someplace like the American mid-west, you can always just, you know, look up at the sky.

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Rose Planetarium

For us city-dwellers that want the big experience, there is always the Rose Planetarium, or as they like to call it, The Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History’s Rose Center for Earth and Space* (it just rolls off the tongue). Their most recent production, produced in cooperation with NASA, and narrated by Robert Redford, is titled Cosmic Collisions, where viewers are invited to, “explore cosmic collisions, hypersonic impacts that drive the dynamic and continuing evolution of the universe.” Whooa…

* Or when addressing the name of the museum wing itself: The Frederick Phineas and Sandra Priest, Rose Center for Earth and Space, Featuring the Hayden Planetarium. Not that we want to confuse anyone.

Happy B-day Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking turned 65 today. On his birthday, he announced that he will be traveling into space on Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo, in the year 2009.

In the past year Hawking has become outspoken on the issue of space colonization. In a widely quoted statement made at a lecture in Hong Kong last year, Stephen said, “it is important for the human race to spread out into space for the survival of the species.”

In recent years, the X Prize competition, Scaled Composites’ first successful privately funded manned flight into space, and subsequent investment by billionaire iconoclast, Sir Richard Branson have kept the message of space colonization top of mind.

As William S. Burroughs like to say, “We are here to go.”