Archive for December, 2007

It has always been a goal to improve our military strength and skill over our soldiers. DARPA has been at the fore-front of technology that is taking this to a new level. A robotic exoskeleton that would let GIs run faster, leap further and carry more is starting to materialize and become reality. A very practical and ambitious idea that is allowing many more options for our military.

According to DARPA, the exoskeletons will be delivered for Army testing in 2008. After 14 companies and universities initially (circa 2001) came up with different designs, they have selected the firm that will build the beast: Sarcos of Salt Lake City in Utah, US.

Sarcos has come up with a system that uses just one engine instead of lots of them. The engine, and a tank containing a 24-hour supply of fuel, will be slung ‘beneath your rear end’ says Main. The engine (a turbine, two-stroke or four stroke - they haven’t decided yet) will then drive hydraulic fluid via high pressure lines to servo valves on each joint, amplifying the force used to move each limb when the wearer’s motion is sensed.

“It makes you feel really, really strong. You get the sensation that you have a lot of strength. I sort of felt like The Hulk and I’m a skinny guy. I wore a 100-pound weight on my back and it felt I was carrying nothing like that amount,”

In 2006, Engineers in Japan were perfecting a wearable power suit that amplifies human strength to help lift hospital patients or heavy objects. It was driven by portable batteries, micro air pumps and small body sensors that pick up even the slightest muscle twitch. Lead by project researcher Hirokazu Noborisaka, the Stand-Alone Wearable Power Assist Suit was designed to help nursing home workers lift patients of up to 180 pounds while cutting the amount of strength required in half.

However, that suit needed to be more flexible for easier movement and protective cover that shrouds the suit’s sensitive or sharp areas.

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Humans have a limited capacity to remember those insignificant streams of letters and digits often used as passwords; as a result, many people choose or change their passwords so they are easier to remember.

Memorable passwords, however, can easily be hacked when faced with dictionary attacks or logical guesses. Information based on birth dates, family members or place names are an easy target for most hacking software and the time it takes for these programs to ‘guess’ your password decreases considerably if it is simple and unsecured.

A recent meeting of the Computer and Communications Security interest group of the Association for Computing Machinery saw an improved description of a password security system called ‘Draw a Secret’.

This system is based on the fact the humans excel at image recognition and memory, for this reason passwords should be designed to leverage this ability. The Draw a Secret password method incorporates a touch screen and stylus for the user to sign freeform shapes as their password. This can be anything from pictures to graffiti style tags.

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In the past these types of industrial and large format printers have mainly been reserved for businesses rarely available on the consumer market. Despite the fact that oversized prints appeal to a rather small group of target customers, HP has released their Scitex TJ8300 and TJ8500 for anyone who has the money - And the space!

These monsters are capable of printing 140 posters 1.5m X 1.8m per hour, that’s approx 400sqm/hr at 336 dpi or 100sqm/hr in apparent 600dpi. They can print on just about anything including paper, self-adhesive vinyl, banner, canvas and paperback flag. The TJ8500 also prints on uncoated synthetic media (uncoated Yupo, Tyvek, etc.). They print on both coated and uncoated materials up to a maximum size of 165 x 370cm (65 x 145″).The difference between the TJ8300 and the TJ8500 is the ink they use. The TJ8300 opts for high quality, solvent based inks specially formulated for high productivity and high quality printing. The TJ8500 uses environmentally friendly UV inks with an internal dryer that meets regulatory requirements. The TJ8500 also prints on uncoated specialized synthetic media (uncoated Yupo, Tyvek, etc.) but apart from these differences the specifications of both models remain the same.

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