The SIADE SaaS (Spatial Decision Support System for Transportation Planning) project essentially marks a change in the positioning of Spanish SME Terrain Technologies. From a consultancy service built around an algorithm to infer passengers’ destinations, the company requested support from Horizon 2020 to become a software supplier. Now, cities across Europe can benefit from a…
How to Explore Inaccessible Places by Swarms of Sensors
Since the dawn of humankind, exploration of certain places, ranging from the depths of the oceans to the edges of the universe, has led to numerous discoveries. However, there are also several environments that need to be examined but can’t be directly observed, like chemical or nuclear reactors, underground water or oil distribution pipes, space…
Planet-Hunter CubeSat Images Los Angeles
A small satellite designed to hunt for new planets beyond the solar system recently looked down at Earth to capture an image of California’s “City of Stars.” The greater Los Angeles area stands out in these images from ASTERIA, the Arcsecond Space Telescope Enabling Research in Astrophysics, a satellite not much larger than a briefcase. ASTERIA is…
Quantum Cloud Computing with Self-Check
With a quantum coprocessor in the cloud, physicists from Innsbruck, Austria, open the door to the simulation of previously unsolvable problems in chemistry, materials research or high-energy physics. The research groups led by Rainer Blatt and Peter Zoller report in the journal Nature how they simulated particle physics phenomena on 20 quantum bits and how the quantum…
Japanese Space Startup Aims to Compete with US Rivals
A Japanese startup that launched a rocket into space earlier this month plans to provide low-cost rocket services and compete with American rivals such as SpaceX, its founder said Wednesday. Interstellar Technology Inc. founder Takafumi Horie said a low-cost rocket business in Japan is well-positioned to accommodate scientific and commercial needs in Asia. While Japan’s…
Brown Undergraduate Researcher Teaches Robots Handwriting and Drawing
An algorithm developed by Brown University computer scientists enables robots to put pen to paper, writing words using stroke patterns similar to human handwriting. It’s a step, the researchers say, toward robots that are able to communicate more fluently with human co-workers and collaborators. “Just by looking at a target image of a word or…
Insect Behavior, Miniature Blimps May Unlock the Key to Military Swarming Technology
Researchers at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory flew a fleet of 30 miniature autonomous blimps in unison to test the swarming behavior of autonomous systems. The blimps responded to each other while in flight and responded to changing conditions. Don Sofge, lead for the distributed autonomous systems group at NRL, and his team are working…
Hanscom AFB Software Teams Decode F-35 Maintenance
Software teams from Hanscom Air Force Base are fielding applications that help aircraft maintainers at Nellis AFB, Nevada, plan for successful operational testing of the Air Force’s newest fighter, the F-35 Lightning II. Hanscom AFB’s software teams travel to Nellis AFB to work with customers in the 57th Wing’s Bolt Aircraft Maintenance Unit. Bolt AMU maintains six F-35 operational…
Army Research Supports Communications in Smart Cities
The U.S. Army is researching how to leverage smart cities of the future where networks of sensors will be used to enable services for civilian and government use, such as environmental monitoring or traffic flow optimization. Smart city environments have emerged from continued growth in urban internet of things, or IoT, infrastructure, where devices connect…
How Acoustics Detected Artillery in WWI
During World War I, William Lawrence Bragg led a team of engineers in the development of an acoustic method to locate enemy artillery, work that was so successful that it was soon used widely throughout the British army. The method, known as sound ranging, was also adopted by the U.S. Army when they joined the…