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Mobile Monitor for Drivers’ Safety

sparky3887 — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 01:18:16 +0000

Abu Dhabi University (ADU) researchers have developed Driver Riskometer, a smartphone application that tracks a user’s mobile phone activity while driving. The application records the vehicle’s top and average speed, the number of calls made, the time spent on calls, and the time spent tapping the phone’s keys. The driver’s performance is scored at the end of a trip on a scale of one (very safe) to seven (very risky). Studies have found that drivers using mobile phones are four times as likely to cause a crash as those not using a phone. “The idea is to give people feedback about their risk on the motorway and get them to enhance their driving,” says ADU professor Ashraf Khalil. Drivers can check their records for a single journey or for a given day or month. After each trip, the overall risk score is recalculated based on the more recent performance.
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Michigan State Collaboration Spawns Robotic Fish to Monitor Water Quality

sparky3887 — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:02:11 +0000

Michigan State University professors Xiaobo Tan and Elena Litchman are developing robots that swim like fish to explore underwater environments. “Fish are very efficient,” Tan says. “They can perform very efficient locomotion and maneuvering in the water.” Robotic fish could be used to collect precise data on aquatic conditions. “The robotic fish will be providing a consistent level of data that hasn’t been possible before,” Litchman says. “Such data are essential for researchers to have a more complete picture of what is happening under the surface as climate change and other outside forces disrupt the freshwater ecosystems.” The robotic fish will contain sensors to monitor temperature, dissolved oxygen, pollutants, and algae. Tan is also developing electronics so the devices can navigate and communicate underwater. To mimic how fish swim, Tan developed fins for the robotic fish that use electro-active polymers that change shape when exposed to electricity. Similar to actual muscle tissue, ion movements twist and bend when voltage is applied to the polymer. The effect also works in reverse, which would allow for slender “feelers” to signal maneuvering circuits, creating an electro-active central nervous system. The robotic fish will wirelessly communicate with a docking station after surfacing at programmed intervals, and could be linked with other robotic fish for coordinating maneuvers or a single relay.

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EU Funding ‘Orwellian’ Artificial Intelligence Plan to Monitor Public for ‘Abnormal Behaviour’

sparky3887 — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 02:27:02 +0000

The European Union-funded Project Indect is developing software that monitors and processes information collected from Web sites, discussion forums, file servers, peer-to-peer networks, and individual computers in an effort to automatically detect threats, abnormal behavior, or violence. The project involves researchers from more than 10 European countries and is part of the EU’s effort to expand its role in fighting crime and terrorism and managing migration. Project Indect, which started earlier this year, is developing a platform for the registration and exchange of operational data, multimedia content, intelligent processing of information, and automatic detection of threats. Researchers in York University’s computer science department say their goal is to develop “computational linguistic techniques for information gathering and learning from the Web.” Another EU project, Automatic Detection of Abnormal Behavior and Threats in crowded Spaces (Adabts), aims to develop models of suspicious behavior so that closed-circuit TV and other surveillance methods can be upgraded to automatically detect suspicious behavior. The Adabts system would track individuals in a crowd and analyze their body movements and the pitch of their voice. Adabts project coordinator Jorgen Ahlberg, of the Swedish Defense Research Agency, says the system will make it easier for security personnel to spot problems. However, Open Europe analyst Stephen Booth says the projects sound “Orwellian” and raise serious questions about individual liberty and rights. “These projects would involve a huge invasion of privacy and citizens need to ask themselves whether the EU should be spending their taxes on them,” Booth says.

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