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Convergent TechWeek 9/18

The Ultimate Drone?

Qualcomm Technologies, the $26 billion (2014 sales) wireless chip company is looking for a new market to consume Snapdragon 800 series SoCs (system on a chip), in large part due to the persistent market strength of the iPhone which only makes use of some of Qualcomm’s technology (even though there is usage of the chip in the Android phone market). As a result, the company intends to release a chip platform aimed at drones, and it’s aptly named Snapdragon Flight.

Qualcomm drone

Snapdragon Flight™, a highly optimized 58x40mm board targeted specifically for consumer drones and robotics applications, is based on a Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ 801 processor, along with robust connectivity, advanced drone software and development tools, bringing cutting-edge mobile technologies to create a new class of consumer drones.

The Snapdragon 801 processor powers some of the world’s most popular phones and includes a 2.26GHz quad-core Qualcomm® Krait™ CPU, Qualcomm® Adreno™ 330 GPU, Hexagon DSP, dedicated video encode engine and dual image signal processors (ISP). Snapdragon Flight is designed to enable such features as 4K video, advanced communication and navigation, robust camera and sensor support and Qualcomm® Quick Charge™ technology — supporting fast battery charging in between video/picture sessions.

snapdragon_800_chip

“Today, drones are made from multiple component vendors providing separate solutions for photography, navigation and communications, adding to the cost and bulk of consumer drones,” said Raj Talluri, senior vice president, product management, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. “The Qualcomm Snapdragon Flight brings together the technologies that have defined the mobile industry onto a single board, enabling OEMs to build drones that are lighter, smaller, easy to use and affordable with long battery life and superior functionalities.”

Qualcomm Technologies has also announced that Yuneec, a leading developer of consumer and professional drones with a long history of innovation in electric aviation, will be one of the first companies to embrace the Snapdragon Flight. Yuneec plans to release a drone based on the platform in 2016.

<re/code>: Qualcomm Wants to Do for Drones What It Did for Smartphones

Qualcomm Press Release: Qualcomm Announces Reference Platform with High-end Performance Capabilities to Advance Consumer Drones

Big Blue’s New Cloud-Based Solution Aimed at Improving Automotive Data Analysis 

IBM has launched a new cloud-based service specializing in connected car data in order to improve real-time services and data analysis.

As revealed in a press release on Tuesday (*), IBM introduced their Internet of Things (IoT) for Automotive solution to help automakers turn driver and vehicle data into actionable insights for predictive vehicle maintenance, real-time diagnostics on engine trouble, and to guide drivers to the most efficient traffic routes. Data collected from individual sensors as well as third-party information (such as traffic conditions and accident alerts), will be sent to the cloud and analyzed for the benefit of drivers and companies.

Connected cars data

“With the significant increase in connected cars, automotive manufacturers have the ability to take near-real time data and put it to good use for drivers in a variety of ways — from finding the nearest parking space and most efficient route, to maintenance alerts that help drivers expect the unexpected,” said Dirk Wollschlaeger, general manager, global automotive industry at IBM.

In discussing desired results from implementation of this service, Wollschlaeger added, “By combining data directly from the car with other sources, the insights derived through the IBM IoT for Automotive solution have the potential to change how we interact with our vehicles moving forward.”

ZDNet: IBM boosts connected car data analysis with service launch (*) Press Release: IBM Helps Automakers Build Internet of Things Connected Vehicles

Intelligent visual navigation, app control and Wi-Fi® connectivity — the new Roomba

This week iRobot Corp. a leader in robotic technology-based solutions, announced the Roomba 980 vacuum cleaning robot — reported by the company to be their most capable and best cleaning robotic vacuum to date. Roomba 980 is the first to combine adaptive navigation with visual localization, cloud connected app control, and increased cleaning power on carpets, helping people to keep cleaner floors throughout the entire home at the push of a button.

Roomba 980Roomba 980 is the next big step as it marks iRobot’s first cloud connected product with mapping capabilities for the consumer market. Leveraging the cloud and mapping technologies, robots gain a better understanding of their environment, and customers are provided with more control. By combining iRobot’s iAdapt® Responsive Cleaning Technology with new sensors, it independently cleans an entire floor level in a home. With Roomba 980, iRobot is implementing its proprietary visual simultaneous localization and mapping (vSLAM®) technology for the first time in a consumer product.

According to Colin Angle, chairman and chief executive officer of iRobot, “Roomba 980 is the next big step as it marks iRobot’s first cloud connected product with mapping capabilities for the consumer market. Leveraging the cloud and mapping technologies, robots gain a better understanding of their environment, and customers are provided with more control. Looking ahead, these technologies will also enable expanded capabilities for connected robots in the smart home.”

Sys.Con Media: iRobot Enters the Smart Home with Roomba® 980 Vacuum Cleaning Robot

Telepresence Robot Gives Videoconference Application Customers the Ability to Look Around on a Tablet

See related  Q-SYS Readies Control for Zoom Rooms App

This week, Revolve Robotics announced seamless integration between the controls for their innovative Kubi robotic telepresence platform and Zoom’s cloud video collaboration software — and with this Zoom has added greater engagement via robotic telepresence.

Kubi, which users can experience within a Zoom meeting or webinar, leverages the conferencing capabilities of today’s tablets by introducing a robotic platform or cradle on which the tablet sits. The resulting telepresence robot is then remotely driven by the video-conferencing participant, creating a “look around the room” presence and allowing for active engagement with meeting participants.Kubi doc-home

“With more than 115,000 businesses and 3,200 educational institutions using our solutions, we’re always looking for extra capabilities to keep them happy and push the innovation envelope,'” said Eric Yuan, founder and CEO of Zoom. “The added engagement that Kubi delivers enables us to deliver more value to our customers in education, healthcare, and the enterprise.”

Marcus Rosenthal, Revolve Robotics’ co-founder and CEO added, “Imagine homecare providers now with the ability to truly interact with clients. With Zoom’s broad support for multiple OS and the quality of its video client, they make an excellent complement to our robotic telepresence platform.”

Yahoo Finance: Kubi From Revolve Robotics Is Now Integrated Into Cloud Video Conferencing Leader Zoom

NASA Shows the World Its 20-year Virtual Reality Experiment to Train Astronauts

Space is beautiful — but unforgiving. In space, an astronaut’s next minutes are never guaranteed. They have to adjust to the drastically modified rules of physics, and to a calmness and a slowness that masks danger.

This is explained in an article written by Erin Carson of Tech Republic, who was given full access to one of NASA’s Johnson Space Center’s most important tools which it uses to train astronauts for work on the International Space Station — virtual reality.

The familiarity of the VR lab is a quick comfort for Astronaut Doug Wheelock as well as for many other astronauts tasked to float hundreds of miles above the Earth at the International Space Station (ISS), trying to get a job done in one of the most hostile working environments imaginable. For NASA, virtual reality has matured and developed into a mission-critical training tool, and while their solution isn’t flashy, it’s immensely powerful. And it does work.

NASA VR lab

The VR Lab, including mass handling robot Charlotte (on the left)

In the lab there’s a tall cart with electronics, two office chairs EVA trainees can sit in, and on each side of the space are two metal cubes suspended from the floor and ceiling by wires. The wires look like a web, which is why those cubes, which are really robots, are called Charlotte. There are the head-mounted displays/HMDs (see image below) that are black with a band around the back, and are always a work in progress — in fact the one pictured below received a revamp in August. The OLED displays now show 1920x1080p per eye at 20 to 60Hz, depending on the load, task and complexity of the scene being rendered.

NASA VR lab headmounted displayThese days, the graphics engine that powers NASA’s virtual reality training is the Dynamic Onboard Ubiquitous Graphics, or DOUG for short. One of the most impressive aspects of DOUG is that it’s an incredibly detailed 3D graphical replica of the ISS. Each piece is its own module — with more than 5 million polygons — and it changes every time the space station does.

The main reasons for the success of NASA’s VR experiment? Watch the video.

Tech Republic: NASA shows the world its 20-year virtual reality experiment to train astronauts: The inside story

A New Tool To Help Bring “Shadow IT” Under Control

IBM does it again here, this time with a new tool called IBM Cloud Security Enforcer, whose purpose is in helping IT to root out unauthorized cloud apps inside organizations. Shadow IT is a term often used to describe information-technology systems and solutions built and used inside organizations without explicit organizational approval.

shadowITThe thought process behind the new tool is that sensitive data could be leaking through such rogue cloud applications and that the enterprise IT “powers that be” need to get a direct handle on this, find the ones that people like and block the ones that are the worst security offenders. Gartner has even defined a category around such software called “Cloud Access Security Brokers.”

Caleb Barlow, vice president, IBM Security stated, “Other vendor technology in the market today manages just the discovery of which cloud apps employees are using. IBM Cloud Security Enforcer goes well beyond just discovery – it actually gives employees a path for using the third-party cloud apps they want as it centrally manages access via secure log-in credentials.”

While IT may have to walk a certain fine line here, it’s possible that tools like this one can help companies and employees find the middle ground where IT gets the security it strives for and employees get the simplicity and ease of use from cloud applications.

TechCrunch: New IBM Tool Wants To Bring Shadow IT Under Control

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