A simple wireless technology promises to make driving much safer.

Hariharan Krishnan hardly looks like a street racer. With thin-rimmed glasses and a neat mustache, he reminds me of a math teacher. And yet on a sunny day last September, he was speeding, seemingly recklessly, around the parking lot at General Motors’ research center in Warren, Michigan, in a Cadillac DTS.

I was in the passenger seat as Krishnan wheeled around a corner and hit the gas. A moment later a light flashed on the dashboard, there was a beeping sound, and our seats started buzzing furiously. Krishnan slammed on the brakes, and we lurched to a stop just as another car whizzed past from the left, its approach having been obscured by a large hedge.“You can see I was completely blinded,” he said calmly.

The technology that warned of the impending collision will start appearing in cars in just a couple of years. Called car-to-car or vehicle-to-vehicle communication, it lets cars broadcast their position, speed, steering-wheel position, brake status, and other data to other vehicles within a few hundred meters. The other cars can use such information to build a detailed picture of what’s unfolding around them, revealing trouble that even the most careful and alert driver, or the best sensor system, would miss or fail to anticipate.

Already many cars have instruments that use radar or ultrasound to detect obstacles or vehicles. But the range of these sensors is limited to a few car lengths, and they cannot see past the nearest obstruction.

Car-to-car communication should also have a bigger impact than the advanced vehicle automation technologies that have been more widely heralded. Though self-driving cars could eventually improve safety, they remain imperfect and unproven, with sensors and software too easily bamboozled by poor weather, unexpected obstacles or circumstances, or complex city driving. Simply networking cars together wirelessly is likely to have a far bigger and more immediate effect on road safety.

Creating a car-to-car network is still a complex challenge. The computers aboard each car process the various readings being broadcast by other vehicles 10 times every second, each time calculating the chance of an impending collision. Transmitters use a dedicated portion of wireless spectrum as well as a new wireless standard, 802.11p, to authenticate each message.

Krishnan took me through several other car-to-car safety scenarios in the company’s parking lot. When he started slowly pulling into a parking spot occupied by another car, a simple alert sounded. When he attempted a risky overtaking maneuver, a warning light flashed and a voice announced: “Oncoming vehicle!”

More than five million crashes occur on U.S. roads alone every year, and more than 30,000 of those are fatal. The prospect of preventing many such accidents will provide significant impetus for networking technology.

Just an hour’s drive west of Warren, the town of Ann Arbor, Michigan, has done much to show how valuable car-to-car communication could be. There, between 2012 and 2014, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the University of Michigan equipped nearly 3,000 cars with experimental transmitters. After studying communication records for those vehicles, NHTSA researchers concluded that the technology could prevent more than half a million accidents and more than a thousand fatalities in the United States every year. The technology stands to revolutionize the way we drive, says John Maddox, a program director at the University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute.

Shortly after the Ann Arbor trial ended, the U.S. Department of Transportation announced that it would start drafting rules that could eventually mandate the use of car-to-car communication in new cars. The technology is also being tested in Europe and Japan.

There will, of course, also be a few obstacles to navigate. GM has committed to using car-to-car communication in a 2017-model Cadillac. Those first Cadillacs will have few cars to talk to, and that will limit the value of the technology. It could still be more than a decade before vehicles that talk to each other are commonplace.

Nintendo NX developer kits are shipping; device will be both handheld and console

E3, and the Nintendo NX’s full review, are still months away, but news around Nintendo’s next-generation console has been hot lately. Today, we’ve got a new pair of rumors around the device: Nintendo is supposedly seeding software development kits already, and the platform will combine a full-fledged handheld device with console play.

According to the WSJ via Geek.com, analyst Hiroshi Hayase, from IHS Technologies, expects “a small recovery in shipments of flat-panel displays for game devices because of Nintendo’s new game hardware expected to be released in 2016.” Hayase expects shipments of 3.1 – 5-inch panels to increase from 14.1 million units in 2015 to 16.5 million units this year.

Nintendo’s NX: Console hardware, standalone handheld?

Like the Wii U, the NX will supposedly combine a handheld gamepad with a living room console. Unlike the Wii U, however, the NX controller will supposedly be an independent unit. Instead of being tethered to the base console by an invisible wireless leash, gamers can take the handheld gamepad anywhere they want.

Sony has tried an approach like this with the PlayStation Vita, with mixed results. Since the PS4 has a different controller from the Vita, not all titles map well to handheld. From what we’ve heard, the Vita is technically capable of streaming a game over the Internet, but you’ll realistically want WiFi and a local PS4 to use the features.

As for the NX controller, a recent patent granted to five Nintendo employees show a rather odd device:

The entire face of the device is one screen, with embedded thumbsticks on the left and right. While Nintendo loves being edgy and trying new things, I’m deeply dubious of this design. First, there’s the practical question of how well any display would survive rigorous gameplay sessions day after day. I’ve never cracked an iPhone screen from touching it, but I’ve never tried to play Smash on my iPhone for hours at a time, either.

The patent in question also describes virtual buttons that would sit beside the two thumbsticks and could be updated and changed depending on what the game called for. Again, we’ve seen the idea of a virtual joystick + buttons in mobile before, and it’s never been a satisfying solution.

The oblong aspect ratio would be difficult for developers to target, since you wouldn’t want the game to display critical information under the player’s thumb. In short, I’m hoping these patent diagrams were filed to throw people off the scent of what Nintendo wants to do.

What about the hardware?

If the Wall Street Journal is correct, one of the major features of the Nintendo NX will be the ability to transfer a game session to a gamepad and take it with you. A 5.1-inch panel would actually be smaller than the current Wii U Gamepad, though far larger than the 3DS.

The big question is how Nintendo would handle the local rendering and associated battery life hit. If the console has a target of 60 FPS and 900p, the handheld version may be able to get away with a somewhat lower resolution target. But would the handheld the same hardware as the console (albeit likely at a lower clock rate) Would save game sessions you completed locally synchronize with the NX when you stepped back in range? If the console offloads gaming sessions to handheld hardware, can a family take advantage of this to use the NX console for an entirely different game?

If the game controller contains a significant amount of standalone hardware, that will drive up costs and weight. The final product wouldn’t need to be as complex or expensive as a modern smartphone, but it would still need physical interface buttons, some type of operating system, storage, wireless radios, and at least a moderately powerful SoC. While there have been rumors that AMD is building the NX, the focus of those rumors was that AMD would be building the console, not the handheld.

Finally, there’s the business concerns. Right now, the 3DS market is considerably healthier than the Wii U, with an estimated 57.9 million units shipped, compared to just 12.5 million for Nintendo’s latest console. Combining the console and handheld businesses would give Nintendo a common platform for all titles, but it could also poison the handheld market if gamers don’t see the NX as an appropriate replacement. Cost is also a major concern — the 3DS launched at $249 before falling to $169, while the Wii U was $250. It’s hard to see how Nintendo could build a competitive console and a standalone gamepad in a $250 budget — the Nintendo NX may debut at price ranges that compete with Sony and MS, as opposed to undercutting them as its done the last two console cycles.

Verizon Gears Up To Pilot Blazing-Fast 5G Technology In US This Year

Verizon boasts that it will be the first mobile data network in the United States to offer 5G technology, and it aims to fulfill the promise in 2020.
As LTE cellular technology is already prevalent, the American carrier sees 5G as the next generation logical step to the interconnected tomorrow. Big names in the tech industry expect to see this technology become an official standard in 2020, so the race is on for mobile operators to have everything needed in place by that time.

For example, NTT DoCoMo wants to provide 5G for its customers before the Summer Olympics in Tokyo makes its debut in 2020, while SK Telecom is more ambitious. The wireless telecom operator says that its 5G network will be operational before the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea.

Verizon recently revealed its fourth-quarter financial results, and investors should be satisfied with the evolution.

The consolidated revenue of the company for 2015 clocked in at $131.6 billion, an increase of 3.6 percent when compared to 2014. The breakdown results also show 449,000 postpaid phones and 960,000 tablets during Q4 2015.

At the public results call, the company's Chief Financial Officer Fran Shammo reassured its clients of the carrier's dedication to bringing the 5G into their lives as soon as possible.

Although he was discreet about the details of the new technology, he did mention that tests will take place in two Verizon facilities located in San Francisco and Waltham, Massachusetts.

He also pointed out that the uses and scope of 5G technology goes way beyond the mobile industry as we know it today. One direction that the new network promises to take is the Internet of Things, a field that Verizon dabbles in. As LTE focused mainly on fast connection speeds for mobile devices, 5G has the potential to connect smart home devices that communicate with each other through data packets.

Verizon already tapped into the IoT market and it fares better each quarter.

"New revenue streams from IoT are growing, with revenues of approximately $200 million in fourth-quarter 2015 and about $690 million for the full year. This is a year-over-year increase of 18 percent," the carrier's results show.

Preliminary testing shows that 5G connections can work 40 times as fast as today's 4G LTE networks. Tasks such as downloading a BluRay disc will take seconds. In comparison, an optical fiber link such as the one offered by Google Fiber downloads the file within minutes.

Reports indicate that Verizon's 5G future network should match Google Fiber's 1Gbps internet service.

Verizon appealed to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (USFCC) to create the legal infrastructure for the upcoming groundbreaking speeds. Last year, the regulator looked into offering higher frequencies for 5G networks in an effort to help carriers offer better broadband coverage to densely populated areas.

For the 5G technology to work as promised, Verizon and its competitors needs the support of the federal regulator.

"For technical trials themselves, we have what we need," Roger Gurnani, chief information and technology architect for Verizon, pointed out.

In order to move beyond the testing phase, Gurnani believes that the 5G needs a "big band of spectrum."

One tricky thing about deploying 5G technology at an accelerated pace is the lack of a universal agreement on what exactly 5G is. In principle, it uses extremely high frequencies for sending data bursts over short distances, but this could mean a huge effort for carriers. They would have to pepper urban areas with thousands of relays in order to give clients a decent, homogenous network.

This is one of the reasons why some see 5G as a complement, rather than a successor to 4G.

Normally, network technology needs a couple of years from the testing lab to the consumer service. Verizon started to test 4G connections in 2008, but the network opened for regular customers as late as 2010.  

To bolster its chances to deliver the promised 5G network until 2020, Verizon teamed up with important OEMs such as Cisco, Ericsson, Alcatel-Lucent, Nokia, as well as mobile technology giants Samsung and Qualcomm. 

Pocket-sized photo printer for smartphone photogs

The Polaroid Zip printer is an inexpensive pocket size wireless photo printer that converts your smartphone pictures to full-color 2x3-inch prints. Simple to set up and use, it doesn't require any consumables beyond Polaroid's Zink paper.

Prints are small and cost about 25 cents each (£0.15, AU$1). The print quality is good all things considered, but don't expect inkjet or dye-sub printer quality. Built-in rechargeable battery lasts for 25 prints.Simple and fun to use, the Polaroid Zip is a great accessory for freeing your photos from your smartphone.

The Polaroid Zip is a small box a bit larger than a deck of playing cards, just under an inch thick (2.5cm) and weighs 186 grams (6.6 ounces). And it's a photo printer.

Similar to the Fujifilm Instax Share SP-1 , the Zip mobile printer, which sells for$129.99 (about £110 or AU$170), connects to your iOS or Android device via Bluetooth and, using a free app, turns photos from your phone or tablet into small, 2x3-inch borderless prints.

Ammunition, the firm that designed Polaroid's Cube camera, worked on the Zip too, and it shows. Like the Cube, the Zip is an attractive, simple device that looks more like a portable hard drive than a printer. The glossy plastic body quickly gets hairline scratches and fingerprints, so you'll want to hunt down a microfiber pouch to keep it looking its best since none is included.

The only button is for power and the only port is Micro-USB for charging. The battery is built-in and lasts for about 25 prints, which means for a long event like a wedding, you might have to plug it in to keep the prints coming. The top slides off -- a little too easily, revealing a compartment that holds 10 sheets of paper.

The printer uses Polaroid's Zink zero-ink printing technology, which uses special Zink paper embedded with cyan, yellow and magenta dye crystals. The crystals start off colorless, but as the print is being made, heat activates the crystals, changing them into the appropriate colors.

Unlike the instant film the Fujifilm Instax uses, there is no time waiting for the Zip's prints to develop and the prints are less expensive; a pack of 100 sheets of Zink paper runs about $25 (£15, AU$65). The paper is the only consumable, so you don't have to worry about ink cartridges, and the prints come out dry and smudge-proof because there's no ink involved.

Again, your phone or tablet connects to the Zip over Bluetooth. Using an iOS device, you can just go into settings, hit Bluetooth and select the printer. If you have an Android device with near-field communication (NFC), you can tap your device to the top of the Zip and it will start the connection and launch the Zip app.

With the app you can pull photos straight from your device's gallery or launch your camera to take a fresh shot. There are some basic editing options including filters, frames, stamps and stickers and you can add text or draw on the photos.

Once you have your picture selected and ready to print, you can hit the print icon in the app, or tap your Android device to the top again for an automatic print. From hitting print to actually having one takes 50 seconds give or take a few seconds

Along with regular prints, you can create basic photo ID cards and make mini collages. You can also make private edits to a picture that are only revealed by scanning a QR code printed on the original image. For example, if you wanted to attach a voice message to a print, you select a picture with the Zip app and record the message. The photo will then be printed with a QR code which, when scanned with the app, you'll be able to play the attached audio.

The tiny sticker-backed prints aren't the best quality. They're more novelty than anything else and can't (nor are they intended to) compete with a traditional inkjet or dye-sub photo printer. If quality is most important to you, you'll likely want a Canon Selphy or similar printer.

Overall, though, the Zip is excellent for what it is: a pocket-sized photo printer to use with your smartphone or tablet. It could easily fall into that category of gadgets you use a couple times and then stick in a drawer, especially if you don't keep a supply of paper on hand. But if you frequently find yourself wanting to decorate your home or office or belongings with pictures from your phone, it's worth the investment.

The Polaroid Zip is a great little accessory for freeing your photos from your smartphone. It's not a device everyone will have a use for, but if you can already imagine plastering your stuff with small prints of your friends and family and pets, go ahead and grab one and stock up on paper.

'Li-fi 100 times faster than wi-fi' test reveals

A recent means of delivering data,that makes use of the visible spectrum rather than radio waves, has been tested in a working office.

Li-fi is able to deliver internet access 100 times more faster than traditional wi-fi, with speed of 1Gbps (gigabit per second).

It needs a  source of light, just like a standard LED bulb,internet connection and a light sensitive photo detector.
It was tested by Estonian start-up Velmenni, in Tallinn.

Velmenni used a li-fi  fitted light bulb to send data at speeds of 1Gbps. Laboratory tests have indicated theoretical speeds up to 224Gbps.

It was tested in an office, to allow workers access the internet and in an industrial space, where it provided a smart lighting solution.


Speaking to the International Business Times, chief executive Deepak Solanki said that the technology would reach consumers "within three to four years".

The term li-fi was coined by Prof Harald Haas from Edinburgh University, who demonstrated the technology at a Ted (Technology, Entertainment and Design) conference in 2011.

His speech, which has now been viewed nearly two million times, showed an LED lamp streaming video.
Prof Haas described a future when billions of light bulbs could act as wireless hotspots.

One of the main advantage of li-fi is that, unlike wi-fi, it does not interfere with other radio signals, so it could be used in aircraft and in other places where interference is a major problem.

While the spectrum for radio waves is not scarce, the visible light spectrum is 10,000 times larger,so it is unlikely to run out any time soon.
But the technology also has its setbacks - most known is the fact that it cannot be deployed outdoors in direct sunlight, because that would interfere with its signal.

Neither can the technology penetrate walls so its initial use is limited to places where it can be used to supplement wi-fi networks, such as in congested urban areas or places where wi-fi is not secure, such as hospitals

'X-Ray Vision' Employs Radio Waves to 'See' Through Obstacles

"X-ray vision" able track people's movements behind walls employing radio signals could be the next for smart homes, gaming and health care, researchers hinted.

A recent system built by computer scientists at MIT is able to beam out radio waves which bounce off the human body. Receivers pick up the reflections, which are processed using computer algorithms to track people’s movements in real time, they added.

Unlike other motion-tracking devices, however, the new system takes advantage of the fact that radio signals with short wavelengths can travel through walls. This allowed the system, dubbed RF-Capture, to identify 15 different people through a wall with nearly 90 percent accuracy, the researchers said. The RF-Capture system could even track their movements to within 0.8 inches (2 centimeters). [10 Technologies That Will Transform Your Life]

Researchers say this technology could have applications as varied as gesture-controlled gaming devices that rival Microsoft's Kinect system, motion capture for special effects in movies, or even the monitoring of hospital patients' vital signs.

"It basically lets you see through walls," said Fadel Adib, a Ph.D. student at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab and lead author of a new paper describing the system. "Our revolution is still nowhere near what optical systems can give you, but over the last three years, we have moved from being able to detect someone behind a wall and sense coarse movement, to today, where you can see roughly what a person looks like and even get a person’s breathing and heart rate."

The team, led by Dina Katabi, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT, has been developing wireless tracking technologies for a number of years. In 2013, the researchers used Wi-Fi signals to detect humans through walls and track the direction of their movement.

The new system, unveiled at the SIGGRAPH Asia conference held from Nov. 2 to Nov. 5 in Japan, uses radio waves that are 1,000 times less powerful than Wi-Fi signals. Adib said improved hardware and software make RF-Capture a far more powerful tool overall.

"These [radio waves used by RF-Capture] produce a much weaker signal, but we can extract far more information from them because they are structured specifically to make this possible," Adib told Live Science.

The system uses a T-shaped antenna array the size of a laptop that features four transmitters along the vertical section and 16 receivers along the horizontal section. The array is controlled from a standard computer with a powerful graphics card, which is used to analyze data, the researchers said.

Because inanimate objects also reflect signals, the system starts by scanning for static features and removes them from its analysis. Then, it takes a series of snapshots, looking for reflections that vary over time, which represent moving human body parts.

However, unless a person’s body parts are at just the right angle in relation to the antenna array they will not redirect the transmitted beams back to the sensors. This means each snapshot captures only some of their body parts, and which ones are captured varies from frame to frame. "In comparison with light, every part of the body reflects the signal back, and that's why you can recover exactly what the person looks like using a camera," Adib said. "But with [radio waves], only a subset of body parts reflect the signal back, and you don't even know which ones."

The solution is an intelligent algorithm that can identify body parts across snapshots and use a simple model of the human skeleton to stich them together to create a silhouette, the researchers said. But scanning the entire 3D space around the antenna array uses a lot of computer power, so to simplify things, the researchers borrowed concepts from military radar systems that can lock onto and track targets. [6 Incredible Spy Technologies That Are Real]

Using a so-called "coarse-to-fine" algorithm, the system starts by using a small number of antennas to scan broad areas and then gradually increases the number of antennas in order to zero in on areas of strong reflection that represent body parts, while ignoring the rest of the room.

This approach allows the system to identify which body part a person moved, with 99 percent accuracy, from about 10 feet (3 meters) away and through a wall. It could also trace letters that individuals wrote in the air by tracking the movement of their palms to within fractions of an inch (just a couple of centimeters).

Currently, RF-Capture can only track people who are directly facing the sensors, and it can't perform full skeletal tracking as traditional motion-capture solutions can. But Adib said that introducing a more complex model of the human body, or increasing the number of arrays, could help overcome these limitations.

The system costs just $200 to $300 to build, and the MIT team is already in the process of applying the technology to its first commercial application — a product called Emerald that is designed to detect, predict and prevent falls among the elderly.

"This is the first application that's going to hit the market," Adib said. "But once you have a device and lots of people are using it, the cost of producing such a device immediately gets reduced, and once it's reduced, you can use it for even more applications."

The initial applications of the technology are likely to be in health care, and the team will soon be deploying the technology in a hospital ward to monitor the breathing patterns of patients suffering from sleep apnea. But as the resolution of the technology increases, Adib said, it could open up a host of applications in gesture control and motion capture.

"We still have a long path to go before we can get to that kind of level of fidelity," he added. "There are a lot of technical challenges that still need to be overcome. But I think over the next few years, these systems are going to significantly evolve to do that."

Leave your wallet at home, Iowa is implementing digital driver’s licenses

Here in the United States, we’re quickly hurdling towards a future where all you need to carry with you is a smartphone. No cash, no credit cards, and now no driver’s license needed. The state of Iowa will soon be releasing a dedicated app that will effectively serve as a complete replacement for the traditional plastic driver’s license, and other states will likely follow suit. Both police and airport security will accept this new digital license, so feel free to leave your wallet or purse at home.
Starting next year, this digital driver’s license will be an option for all Iowa drivers. It’s currently unclear as to which platforms will be supported, but it’s a safe bet that iOS and Android will be the priority. Will Windows Phone and Blackberry users be left out in the cold? That still remains to be seen, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see them get snubbed. Of course, Iowa will continue to issue old-fashioned plastic licenses, so even those of us without smartphones will still be able to properly identify ourselves.

Earlier this year, Apple introduced the Apple Pay system that enables secure payment transactions using only your iPhone and your fingerprint. It uses the built-in Touch ID fingerprint sensor to confirm your identity, and effectively shields your raw credit card data from merchants. Considering how often major security breaches happen these days, it’s clear that additional safeguards are desperately needed. Those same concepts could easily be applied to your digital ID card, but that doesn’t seem to be happening just yet.

 


Iowa’s DOT Director Paul Trombino claims that this “identity vault app” will be secure, but then proceeds to brag about the use of PINs. If we really want to up the ante on security, we need to be thinking much bigger than a JPEG of your driver’s license behind a 4-digit password. Why not partner with Apple and Google to use the biometric data stored on your phone? You could easily verify your identity without ever needing to hand over your fingerprints to the state. It seems like a no-brainer to me, but maybe in the current political climate, that would be perceived as a bit too invasive.
As it stands, this initiative is mostly focused on the convenience factor, but it could be so much more than that. Moving away from simple plastic cards opens up many opportunities to increase security and privacy, but it can also be abused by the powers that be if we’re not careful. These digital driver’s licenses in Iowa are a small step forward, but it leaves me hopeful for the future of digital IDs.
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