The next generation of portable navigation devices
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Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Windows Embedded NavReady Overview
Windows Embedded 'Quebec' Due In 2010
Although it hasn’t said much about its plans for a Vista-based successor to its Windows XP-based embedded operating system, Microsoft already is working on one.
Microsoft released during the first week of June a new test build of its latest Windows XP-based embedded operating system, known as “Windows Embedded Standard 2009,” the final version of which is slated to ship by the end of 2008.
However, Microsoft also is readying the 2010 successor to this product — another Windows Embedded release codenamed “Quebec.” Unlike the 2009 release of Windows Embedded, the Quebec product will make use of a number of features that are part of Windows Vista.
Microsoft is on tap to share some information about the Vista-based embedded release at its TechEd Developers Conference this week in Orlando. A first widescale Community Technology Preview (CTP) test build of Quebec is due out next year.
Microsoft’s Windows Embedded family of products, which Microsoft sells to device makers, is designed to power thin client terminals, point-of-service terminals, gaming devices, medical-imaging systems, DVRs and industrial-automation systems, among other products. Windows Embedded is not at the core of cell phones or ultra-low-cost PCs (ULPCs), however. Windows Mobile phones currently are built on top of a Windows CE-based core and ULPCs run full-fledged Windows. (Microsoft has OK’d ULPC makers shipping Windows XP on their systems through 2010.)
The forthcoming Quebec embedded release will include BitLocker drive encryption, Windows Firewall, Windows Defender, Address-Space Load Randomization — and on the memory-management front, support for SuperFetch, ReadyBoost and Dynamic System Address Space. On certain devices, the Quebec release will also provide as optional components Aero user-interface, Windows Media Player 11 and various Internet Explorer 7 features. Unlike Microsoft’s XP-based embedded releases, which are 32-bit only, Quebec will support both 32-bit x86 and 64-bit x64 processors.
Not surprisingly, support for all these features comes at a cost — size. According to a slide deck available to TechEd attendees, while Windows XP Embedded core’s minimum image size is around 40MB, according to a slide deck to be presented at TechEd on June 6, Quebec’s core is expected be around 300MB — not counting all the optional add-ons like Media Player, IE 7, etc.
The other cost is Quebec will require product activation; XP Embedded does not. The Quebec release will require basic retail activation or OEM activation. There will be a default evaluation product key that will allow the Quebec image to run for 30 days without activation.
Military Developing Robot-Insect Cyborgs
Instead of creating robots, researchers hope to augment actual insects
Instead of attempting to create miniature robots as spies, researchers are now experimenting with developing insect cyborgs or "cybugs" that could work even better. So far scientists can already control the flight of moths using implanted devices.Miniature robots could be good spies, but researchers now are experimenting with insect cyborgs or "cybugs" that could work even better.
Scientists can already control the flight of real moths using implanted devices.
The military and spy world no doubt would love tiny, live camera-wielding versions of Predator drones that could fly undetected into places where no human could ever go to snoop on the enemy. Developing such robots has proven a challenge so far, with one major hurdle being inventing an energy source for the droids that is both low weight and high power. Still, evidence that such machines are possible is ample in nature in the form of insects, which convert biological energy into flight.
It makes sense to pattern robots after insects — after all, they must be doing something right, seeing as they are the most successful animals on the planet, comprising roughly 75 percent of all animal species known to humanity. Indeed, scientists have patterned robots after insects and other animals for decades — to mimic cockroach wall-crawling, for instance, or the grasshopper's leap.
Mechanical metamorphosis
Instead of attempting to create sophisticated robots that imitate the complexity in the insect form that required millions of years of evolution to achieve, scientists now essentially want to hijack bugs for use as robots.
Originally researchers sought to control insects by gluing machinery onto their backs, but such links were not always reliable. To overcome this hurdle, the Hybrid Insect Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems program is sponsoring research into surgically implanting microchips straight into insects as they grow, intertwining their nerves and muscles with circuitry that can then steer the critters. As expensive as these devices might be to manufacture and embed in the bugs, they could still prove cheaper than building miniature robots from scratch.
As these cyborgs heal from their surgery while they naturally metamorphose from one developmental stage to the next — for instance, from caterpillar to butterfly — the result would yield a more reliable connection between the devices and the insects, the thinking goes. The fact that insects are immobile during some of these stages — for instance, when they are metamorphosing in cocoons — means they can be manipulated far more easily than if they were actively wriggling, meaning that devices could be implanted with assembly-line routine, significantly lowering costs.
The HI-MEMS program at the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has to date invested $12 million into research since it began in 2006. It currently supports these cybug projects:
* Roaches at Texas A&M.
* Horned beetles at University of Michigan and the University of California at Berkeley.
* Moths at an MIT-led team, and another moth project at the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research.
Success with moths
So far researchers have successfully embedded MEMS into developing insects, and living adult insects have emerged with the embedded systems intact, a DARPA spokesperson told LiveScience. Researchers have also demonstrated that such devices can indeed control the flight of moths, albeit when they are tethered.
To power the devices, instead of relying on batteries, the hope is to convert the heat and mechanical energy the insect generates as it moves into electricity. The insects themselves could be optimized to generate electricity.
When the researchers can properly control the insects using the embedded devices, the cybugs might then enter the field, equipped with cameras, microphones and other sensors to help them spy on targets or sniff out explosives. Although insects do not always live very long in the wild, the cyborgs' lives could be prolonged by attaching devices that feed them.
More details here...
Miniature Robot Crawls Through Veins
The Technion - Israel Institute of Technology has unveiled a miniature crawling robot (ViRob) that measures just 1 mm in diameter and 14 mm in length. The ViRob has the potential to perform precise medical procedures inside the human body in order to diagnose and potentially treat artery blockage and cancer.
The Technion researchers, led by Professor Moshe Shoham, Head of the Kahn Medical Robotics Laboratory, have developed a basic prototype of the robot, which can move as fast as 9 mm per second.
Using tiny arms which allow it to withstand blood pressure, it can crawl through the inner walls of blood vessels, the digestive tract and the respiratory system in order to progress through veins and arteries. The robot is powered by an external magnetic field allowing it to be controlled for an unlimited amount of time during medical procedures.
The team at the Technion is examining the possibility of using the ViRob as a treatment for lung cancer. ViRob could assist in targeted drug delivery to lung tumours as well as take samples from different areas within the body.
In addition, a number of these micro robots could simultaneously treat a variety of metastases. Researchers also plan to install additional equipment on the robot, including electrodes, miniature drug capsule and other miniature equipment.
Prof. Moshe Shoham said, “This robot is a breakthrough in the biomedical industry, as it allows doctors to access inaccessible areas in the body with minimal invasion. The technology enables a targeted treatment without scattering materials to unnecessary areas in the body."
Military Robot Could Feed on Dead Bodies
It could be a combination of 19th-century mechanics, 21st-century technology — and a 20th-century horror movie.
A Maryland company under contract to the Pentagon is working on a steam-powered robot that would fuel itself by gobbling up whatever organic material it can find — grass, wood, old furniture, even dead bodies.
Robotic Technology Inc.'s Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot — that's right, "EATR" — "can find, ingest, and extract energy from biomass in the environment (and other organically-based energy sources), as well as use conventional and alternative fuels (such as gasoline, heavy fuel, kerosene, diesel, propane, coal, cooking oil, and solar) when suitable," reads the company's Web site.
That "biomass" and "other organically-based energy sources" wouldn't necessarily be limited to plant material — animal and human corpses contain plenty of energy, and they'd be plentiful in a war zone.
EATR will be powered by the Waste Heat Engine developed by Cyclone Power Technology of Pompano Beach, Fla., which uses an "external combustion chamber" burning up fuel to heat up water in a closed loop, generating electricity.
The advantages to the military are that the robot would be extremely flexible in fuel sources and could roam on its own for months, even years, without having to be refueled or serviced.
Upon the EATR platform, the Pentagon could build all sorts of things — a transport, an ambulance, a communications center, even a mobile gunship.
In press materials, Robotic Technology presents EATR as an essentially benign artificial creature that fills its belly through "foraging," despite the obvious military purpose.
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