The Mil & Aero Blog

Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Is robotics revolution the first glimpse of a fundamental change in human evolution?

Posted by John Keller

THE MIL & AERO BLOG, 24 Sept. 2013. Robots of one kind or another seem like they're everywhere these days. I note with interest, for example, that DARPA is asking Boston Dynamics to build an enhanced version of the company's experimental Legged Squad Support System (LS3) robot that eventually could provide soldiers and Marines with a mechanical mule that not only would help warfighters carry heavy loads, but also charge their batteries.

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are becoming so commonplace that the FAA is hard-pressed to come up with regulations to enable these flying robots to operate side-by-side with commercial passenger jets in congested airspace.

There was a time when people would recoil in horror at the thought of flying robots sharing the same airspace as the jetliners carrying their families. Today, though, no one's really batting an eye.

Unmanned marine vehicles, meanwhile, are becoming a hot technology topic, as military researchers push a program forward to develop a long-endurance unmanned underwater submarine that would function as a mothership for other unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs), as well as launch and recover UAVs.

On a separate front, medical experts are developing high-tech prosthetics with robotic capabilities for wounded warfighters. These robotic replacement limbs often are more useful and capable than the natural arms and legs that were lost in battle.

Historically, warfighters mangled in battle would beg doctors not to remove the damaged limbs out of fear of being a lifelong cripple, and of being forced to depend on the charity of others.

Today, however, it's different. I'm hearing more and more stories of wounded warfighters given the choice of keeping a damaged-but-patched-up limb or getting a new high-tech prosthetic device. In an increasing number of cases they're choosing the prosthetics out of the promise that they'll be better than ever before.

Human beings are more accepting of robotic technology than they've ever been. Wheeled and legged robots are becoming essential pieces of the warfighter's gear. Swimming robots help chart the depths of the world's oceans and gather data in powerful hurricanes. Ever-more-accessible UAVs are becoming a tool for spying on the neighbor's wedding reception.

Now, as humans start to accept the notion of robotic limbs to replace those lost in accidents, might this be the first glimmer of a fundamental transformation in human evolution? More to the point, will the typical human of the future be a combination of biological, mechanical, and electronic subsystems?

We've all seen the movies, but what used to be science fantasy quickly is becoming science fact.

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Obsolescent parts: are we enhancing military readiness or creating a hollow force?

Posted by John Keller

THE MIL & AERO BLOG, 17 Sept. 2013. I've been noticing what seems to be a large number of military orders lately for old, obsolescent electronic components for potentially mission-critical warfighting equipment.

I don't know if this is out of the ordinary -- actually, I suspect it's business as usual -- but it's got me thinking about today's tight Pentagon budgets and how might influence long-term military readiness.

Over the past week or so I've seen Navy orders for 160 obsolescent PCI mezzanine card (PMC) Ethernet controllers that the Navy purchased originally a decade ago, as well as for 180 6U VME single-board computers, which first were introduced nine years ago and are no longer recommended by the manufacturer.

I don't fault the Navy for this -- quite the contrary. Navy officials have to keep the equipment they have functioning at the best possible levels of performance. Much of the military's equipment has been fielded for years, yet still performs the job adequately.

Oftentimes systems upgrades that can accommodate the latest generations of electronic components require costly systems redesigns, and there's precious little money in the Pentagon's budget these days for things like that.

Buying old parts to keep military systems in working order is nothing new. It's simply reality in a world where military systems must perform in the field for decades or longer, and where many electronic components are replaced with new generations every 18 months or so.

Moreover, the military's electronics suppliers keep parts available for their defense customers far longer than they do for their commercial customers. Keeping military parts in inventory for a long time simply is part of doing business with the Pentagon.

Still, here's what's got me concerned: as the military increasingly opts for buying old parts to keep systems working, rather than for systems redesigns, upgrades, and technology insertion, do we risk going into battle predominantly with decades-old technology that ages more as each day goes by?

Think about how quickly electronics technology advances. More to the point, think about the desktop computer and cell phone you were using 10 years ago, and how those devices compare and contrast with what you have today?

Is this really what we want for our fighting forces? I ask this because this is how it's looking to me. I know military budgets are tight, but are we risking creating a hollow force like we saw back in the 1970s before the Reagan buildup?

As our nation's leadership ponders the ramifications of tight military budgets, these kinds of prospects should be part of their decision making.

Tuesday, September 10, 2013

For the high-tech warfighter, the future of electronics-laden uniforms is here

THE MIL & AERO BLOG, 10 Sept. 2013. The soldier's uniform isn't what it used to be. Not much later this decade, elite warfighters such as U.S. Special Forces could be wearing high-tech battle suits that offer flexible armor to protect against bullets and shrapnel, exoskeleton technology that offers super-human strength, heating and air conditioning to withstand the elements, wearable computers and displays, and conformal radio equipment and antennas for situational awareness.

U.S. Special Operations Command at MacDill Air Force Base, Fla., have approached industry for technologies that could be applied to such futuristic warfighter apparel as part of the technologies for a tactical assault light operator suit (TALOS).

For now, this integrated battle suit would be strictly for special operations warfighters who must operate silently and unseen behind enemy lines, but if successful and affordable, this kind of electronics-embedded battle suit could see wider use.

SOCOM officials envision a future warfighter's battle suit that not only makes broad use of embedded electronics, but also that generates much of its own power. the TALOS solicitation specifically calls out the need for power scavenging, renewable energy, and power distribution.

These technologies might include conventional renewable energy sources like conformal solar panels on clothing and helmets, but also newer approaches that can harvest electrical power from the action of a person walking, running, and jumping.

A future warfighter of this caliber might look like something out of Star Wars -- half man and half machine that takes advantage of electrical, mechanical, and biological entities.

Companies interested in participating in this program have until September 2014 to make their expertise known.

Tuesday, September 3, 2013

New generation of embedded computing thermal management in development at GE

Posted by John Keller

THE MIL & AERO BLOG, 3 Sept. 2013. High-performance embedded computing (HPEC) designers may get a new tool over the next couple of years to in their quest to control the internal temperatures of increasingly sophisticated embedded computing systems.

Thermal management experts at the General Electric (GE) Global Research Center in Schenectady, N.Y., are working on a convection-cooling approach that reduces the size of traditional fans while improving cooling capability.

Designed originally with high-performance laptop computers in mind, the GE Dual Piezoelectric Cooling Jets (DCJ) technology may offer embedded computing designers not only advanced convection cooling, but also lower power consumption and higher reliability than traditional cooling fans.

The DCJ technology can be packaged into a cooling fan that measures 1.5 by 3 inches, and half an inch thick, while consuming 350 to 400 milliwatts, says senior GE researcher William Gerstler.

The advanced electronics thermal cooler moves one cubic foot of air per minute in a laminar flow. "It has a multiplier effect on the air it moves," explained Gerstler at last month's Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) conference and trade show in Washington.

The DCJ technology, which has been likened to the expansion-and-contraction action of the human lung, "creates a low-pressure area that entrains the air," Gerstler says.

The technology works with two piezo-electric elements, and so should last longer and be less susceptible to shock and vibration in deployed embedded computing systems than traditional fans.

This technology also could enable designers of rugged embedded systems to blend convection and conduction cooling in the same chassis to improve the performance of sophisticated digital signal processing without resorting to exotic thermal-management approaches like liquid cooling.

Companies interested in this technology may not have long to wait. Gerstler says GE officials are looking at product introductions that involve DCJ technology as early as 2015.

Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Trading bus stops for credit cards: how far embedded computing has come in three decades

Posted by John Keller

THE MIL & AERO BLOG, 27 Aug. 2013. Sometimes I have to stop and marvel at how far embedded computing has come since I started paying attention back in the mid-1980s as I first started out as a trade press reporter.

Those were the days of Cray X-MP supercomputer -- something that literally had benches around it, was taller than a man, and looked a lot like a bus stop. Its theoretical peak performance was 800 million floating point operations per second (800 megaflops).

The Cray X-MP and its successor, the liquid-cooled Cray-2, were considered to be the fastest computers of their day, and their use was confined largely to government research centers for things like nuclear weapons simulation, advanced sonar research, and computational fluid dynamics -- or simulating a wind tunnel in a computer.

There was little, if any, practical use for these kinds of supercomputers for actual deployed military applications. You couldn't fit them on a ship, submarine, or aircraft, and the delicate machines most likely couldn't have withstood the shock, vibration, and other environmental rigors of the field.

There was hope, though. The Holy Grail for DARPA embedded computing scientists was to package one billion floating point operations per second of performance in something deployable. The mantra, at first, was "a megaflop in a shoe box," which evolved to "a megaflop in a coffee can", and eventually to "a gigaflop in a soup can."

Some of the best minds in industry and academia were put to work by research groups like DARPA to make the megaflop-in-a-shoe-box dream a reality.

It would appear their success has surpassed even their wildest dreams. Today we're seeing gigaflop performance on single-board computers and mezzanine modules the size of credit cards that are available off the shelf. We no longer talk about supercomputing, and now describe that kind of technology as high-performance computing (HPC).

Companies like Curtiss-Wright Controls Defense Solutions, GE Intelligent Platforms, Mercury Systems, and others embedded computing firms routinely offer today what DARPA computer scientists were only dreaming about a few decades ago.

Not only are today's gigaflop-performance embedded computing devices setting new speed records, but they also are being developed to be practical for a wide and growing variety of applications. The Curtiss-Wright Fabric40 program is only one example of an emerging ecosystem of embedded computing products with gigaflop performance, and the data throughput to keep these high-performance processors fed with data.

I thought about this earlier this month at the Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) conference and trade show in Washington. For what the best and brightest could only dream about years ago, anyone could walk down those aisles at AUVSI and write a check.

Take a look at the photo above of that Cray X-MP, taken in the 1980s. What that check wold buy today would fit in the guy's shirt pocket, and would be more than 10 times the computing power of the supercomputer behind him.

Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Unmanned vehicle industry stands at the doorstep of a fundamental transformation

Posted by John Keller

THE MIL & AERO BLOG, 20 Aug. 2013. The unmanned vehicles industry is in the midst of a fundamental transformation -- one that will see designers of unmanned vehicles that operate in the air, on the ground, and at sea move from a Wild-West startup mentality to a mature, self-regulating business model.

This transformation may not be apparent at first glance. Last week's Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) conference and trade show in Washington had plenty of the Wild West on display, such as a plethora of quad-propeller radio-controlled helicopters with camera packs that have become popular of late.

The unmanned vehicle industry has been wide-open for quite a while, but the increasing use of these devices and its inevitable clash with concerns for public safety and individual privacy will bring this phase to a close, and probably sooner rather than later.

We are seeing the first step in this industry transformation with the unmanned vehicle community's embrace of open-system standards-based design. As the industry matures, and as an increasing number of unmanned vehicles are built to operate in public airspace, design standards are necessary to design reliable systems at affordable costs.

Don't get me wrong; I value individual initiative in unmanned vehicle design. The ability to design and build a small unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) inexpensively, mount it with a small HD camera, and fly it close to the ground is breakthrough technology.

Still, UAVs increasingly must operate in public airspace alongside manned commercial fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters. It's unacceptable for UAVs to fall out of the sky and hurt people on the ground, much less collide with a commercial aircraft and kill perhaps hundreds of innocents.

The same issues apply for public waterways and land expanses. Unmanned vehicle designers must ensure that their devices operate safely, reliably, and at affordable costs. All this means industry standards, as well as industry and government certifications.

"This whole industry is becoming more standards-based," observed Chip Downing, senior director of business development for aerospace and defense at real-time software specialist Wind River Systems in Alameda, Calif., last week at the AUVSI trade show.

Downing has been watching the unmanned vehicle industry transformation close-up, as his company has broad expertise in safety-critical real-time software for manned and unmanned aircraft. Safety and reliability, he says is driving change.

"The real industry expansion is using these UAVs in civil airspace," Downing says. "The next generation will have communications among all aircraft," which will involve manned and unmanned aircraft for sense-and-avoid capability.

"All-digital, and all-automated is the next step," Downing says. While some might consider such a step to be unsafe, Downing points out that UAVs, if operated safely and according to established procedures, even might be safer in the long run than manned aircraft.

"There is no reaction time on an unmanned aircraft," Downing points out. The notion of pilot error most likely will be unheard of in future fleets of UAVs.

Although it may represent a cultural leap for the public to accept unmanned aircraft operating nearby manned commercial aircraft in civil airspace, this would seem to represent the wave of future. We will see a day when there are too many aircraft operating in the same airspace for human pilots and human air traffic controllers to handle safely.

We are on the verge of a day when unmanned vehicles will handle their own safety, control, and obstacle avoidance, similar to the way flocks of birds and schools of fish operate.

One day, moreover, we will wonder how we ever had a functioning commercial air transport system that relied on primitive technology like human pilots, human air traffic controllers, and voice radio links.

Tuesday, August 13, 2013

AUVSI 2013, one of the biggest unmanned vehicles shows in the world, opens this week in Washington

Posted by John Keller

THE MIL & AERO BLOG, 13 Aug. 2013. Unmanned vehicles that operate in the air, at sea, and on the ground never have been more important than they are today. Increasingly dangerous military missions can use the growing number of unmanned vehicles to keep human warfighters out of harm's way.

This week is the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) conference and trade show in Washington, which is among the largest exhibitions of unmanned vehicle technology in the world.

Exhibitors from all over the globe will be in Washington this week to show systems and components for unmanned aerial vehicles (UUVs), unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs), unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs), and unmanned surface vehicles (USVs), as well as for the all-important sensor and communications payloads for existing and future unmanned vehicles.

Military & Aerospace Electronics, an AUVSI media partner, will be at AUVSI this week to find the latest technology developments. Watch Military & Aerospace Electronics online at www.militaryaerospace.com for coverage from the show, and keep an eye on news announcements from the show online at http://topics.vpoinc.com/events/AUVSI_UnmannedSystems13.