Category Archives: Blog

Thanks to the pandemic, we missed out last year on the 400^th anniversary of the voyage of the Mayflower from Plymouth, England to Plymouth, Massachusetts. The Mayflower left port in September 1620 and landed in what was to become Massachusetts in December of that year. But, better late than never, there’ll soon be a more modern Mayflower setting sail – well, sail may not be the right wording exactly – and this one will have zero humans on board. (Projected launch date: early June.)

The original Mayflower packed in 102 Pilgrims, plus 30 crew members, and the technology they had was pretty rudimentary. Astrolabe, quadrant, cross staff, compass. That and a primitive map were, at best, how the Mayflower made its way across the Atlantic. (I suspect that the Pilgrims were also praying their way to the New World while contending with terrible conditions: poor food, overcrowding, lack of water – they drank beer instead, seasickness, bad weather, cold, damp, foul air, rats, and, of course, the uncertainty about what they’d find when they reached the other side.)

In contrast to the thin technology available in 1620, the Mayflower Autonomous Ship (SA) is just packed to the gills with technology.

What’s on board this baby?

• 6 AI powered cameras
• 30 onboard Sensors
• 15 edge devices

And, as noted, no captain, no crew:

With no human captain or onboard crew, MAS uses the power of AI and automation to traverse the ocean in its quest for data and discovery.

The ship’s AI Captain performs a similar role to a human captain. Assimilating data from a number of sources, it constantly assesses its route, status and mission, and makes decisions about what to do next. Cameras and computer vision systems scan the horizon for hazards, and streams of meteorological data reveal potentially dangerous storms. Machine learning and automation software ensure that decisions are safe and in-line with collision regulations.

Small, lightweight edge devices provide just enough local compute power for the ship to operate independently, even without connectivity or remote control. When a connection becomes available, the systems sync with the cloud, enabling updates and data upload. (Source: MAS400.com)x

While this excursion is tied to a belated celebration of the four-hundredth anniversary of the original Mayflower, its purpose is scientific exploration. It will be gathering all sorts of data that will help researchers better understand what’s going on with the oceans. And, given the critical role that the oceans play when it comes to the earth’s climate, we can use all the data and understanding we can get. The information the Mayflower will gather, and the analyses this will enable, will also help improve navigation safety. And, of course, it will help bring us closer to the day when all modes of autonomous transportation – from cars, to trucks, to planes, to ships at sea – are deployed. (No, I’m not ignoring trains here. There are already autonomous trains in operation in a number of places, largely for rapid public transportation and freight hauling.)

The website for the Mayflower AS is well worth a look. Among other things, it lays out a scenario and details the sensory inputs, real time analytics, and outcomes for managing the scenario, based on the data and analysis.

I’ll be following the voyage of the Mayflower AS with interest, and wish them, as the sailors say, “fair winds and following seas.”

Each year, the MIT Technology Review publishes a list of the most important technologies on the scene. This year, they lead off with what, by anyone’s reckoning, has to be THE technology of the year, if not the decade: Messenger RNA. This technology has been under development for 20 years, but had not been used in any drug on the market – until last year, when both Moderna and Pfizer used mRNA to jumpstart development of coronavirus vaccines. Unlike vaccines that use a weakened version of germ to set off an immune response, mRNA-based vaccines “teach” cells how to create a protein that will trigger immunity.

Beyond potentially ending the pandemic, the vaccine breakthrough is showing how messenger RNA may offer a new approach to building drugs.

In the near future, researchers believe, shots that deliver temporary instructions into cells could lead to vaccines against herpes and malaria, better flu vaccines, and, if the covid-19 germ keeps mutating, updated coronavirus vaccinations, too.

But researchers also see a future well beyond vaccines. They think the technology will permit cheap gene fixes for cancer, sickle-cell disease, and maybe even HIV.

After a year now of life on semi-hold for so many of us, a year that’s seen so much illness and death, it would be enough if “all” that mRNA did was help end the pandemic. That it holds so much promise to take on so many other illnesses is definitely a bonus.

This blog post was NOT written using GPT-3, the natural language computer model that’s been producing the written word that, to date, is the closest to what an actual human could do. “Trained on the text of thousands of books and most of the internet, GPT-3 can mimic human-written text with uncanny – and at times bizarre realism, making it the most impressive language model yet produced using machine learning.”

That’s the good news, I guess. The not so good news? The realistic-sounding text produced may be pure nonsense, or it may be out and out misinformation. And if there’s one thing we don’t need out there, it’s more misinformation. Another downside is the tremendous amount of computational power it consumes. So far, the human writer has a far smaller carbon footprint. Still, we can certainly expect that this technology will continue to be perfected, and that chatbots will be getting more authentically chattier.

Most of us have an awful lot of personal data out there. We do a lot of shopping on Amazon. We bank online. We’re on social media. We take those online quizzes to see what Harry Potter character we’re most like. (Some of us do, anyway: not me!) We do Yelp reviews. We spit and swab so that we can find out what village in Italy our great-grandparents hailed from. And whether “our information has been leaked, hacked, [or] sold and resold”, who knows what organizations are using that data, and for what purposes.

Data trusts offer one alternative approach that some governments are starting to explore. A data trust is a legal entity that collects and manages people’s personal data on their behalf. Though the structure and function of these trusts are still being defined, and many questions remain, data trusts are notable for offering a potential solution to long-standing problems in privacy and security.

Improved privacy and security? Bring it on!

Electric or other alternative fuel vehicles are certainly the automotive future, but for now, for all the hype, they’re not for everyone. The lithium-ion batteries that run e-vehicles are just too problematic. They’re costly, have relatively limited range, and plug-in “refueling” is a) not as available as gas stations; and b) takes too long when compared to the quick convenience of pulling up to a pump and filling ‘er up. Lithium-metal batteries may be the answer. A company called QuantumScape says that its battery “could boost the range of an EV by 80% and can be rapidly recharged.” They’re still a way off from ready for prime time, but QuantumScape has inked a deal with Volkswagen, and hopes to be selling EV uses this new technology by 2025. So not that far off.

Digital contact tracing was a breakthrough technology that, frankly, hasn’t panned out all that well in terms of helping halt covid’s spread, even though a number of companies were out the gate with applications early on during the pandemic. The reasons had less to do with the technology than with messaging, adoption, privacy concerns, and other issues that had nothing to do with whether Bluetooth could ping nearby phones. We’ll have to keep this in mind if and when the next pandemic rears its ugly head. Technology on its own isn’t going to be the answer.

That’s it for the first five breakthrough technologies. Next time, we’ll take a look at the other five technologies that the Tech Review has on their list.

As I suspect is true of many folks, since the pandemic hit, I’ve been watching more TV than is my norm. So I’m grateful that there are so many options to choose from – you really can’t ever say that “there’s nothing on.” And I’m grateful for the quality of the TV’s themselves.

I don’t remember the days of black & white only, of three channels, of TV’s embedded in mahogany consoles. But my parents would talk about the “good old days” of the aluminum antenna on the roof that was always blowing over. Of tinfoil on rabbit ears to improve the blurry, snowy reception. And I am old enough to remember big boxy TV’s that didn’t always have a clear picture. There’ve been so many improvements over the years: the proliferation of cable services, the introduction of flat screen TVs, entertainment on demand, the advent of high definition…

All of this made the TV watching experience more enjoyable, that’s for sure. When I sit here watching Syracuse basketball or a movie I always wanted to see but never got around to, I’m happy that the resolution is so precise, the colors so true, the detail so amazing.

While I’m grateful for the quality, I’m satisfied with what I can get off the shelf at Best Buy – without having to pay big bucks for the latest technology (organic light-emitting diode (OLED) television). Let alone going for the LG rollable OLED, which was rolled out last year with a hefty $87,000 price tag.

The LG rollable apparently had a major flaw. While it could be rolled up, you had to stow it in a box to keep it out of sight. Which was seemingly too much effort for some consumers. So C SEED, responding to what no doubt was overwhelming demand from the market, has come out with a 165-inch TV – That’s nearly 14 feet! How big is your living room? – that disappears into your floor when not in use.

Rather than OLED screen technology, which is flexible – and thus lets the LG OLED roll up – C SEED’s new M1 TV uses microLEDs.

MicroLEDs, which many consider to be the future of screen technology, combine the best features of the current leading screen technologies with self-illuminated RGB pixels that don’t require a backlight, andwithout the degrading organic compounds that are used to manufacture OLED displays. The new screen tech is also more energy efficient, allows for slimmer screens, and can produce whites and blacks that rival the best TVs currently on the market.

The only downside is that microLED displays can’t fold like OLEDs can—at least yet. So to make a 165-inch TV disappear into the floor, C SEED has instead designed the M1 to first separate into five separate panels that fold into each other like a giant fan. That’s the other advantage of microLED screen technology: It allows much larger TVs to be assembled from smaller panels while perfectly hiding all the seams, so the final result looks like one giant uniform display. (Source: Gizmodo)

Looks like there are a couple of other downsides. One is the construction work you’d need to do to get the TV to disappear into the floor. The other is the price: $400,000. And, yes, you read that right. Talk about sticker shock! Makes the $87K prices tag for the LG rollable almost (but not quite) seem reasonable.

Just in case you’re interested in the tech specs, there they are from the C SEED M1 brochure.

PHYSICAL DIMENSIONS TV

LED TV size (diagonal) inch/mm 165 / 4196

LED TV size (width) inch/mm 144 / 3657

LED TV size (height) inch/mm 81 / 2057

Standard LED screen (depth) inch/mm 3.9 / 100

LED TV area sq.ft./m² 81 / 7.53

Total system weight kg 1,350

TV SYSTEM

Resolution 4K (UHD)

Brightness nits 1000

Pixel pitch mm 0.9

Processing depth bit 16 per color

Color spectrum colors 64 billion

Refresh rate Hz 1,920

Lifespan LED h 100,000

Contrast ratio 30,000:1

Color temperature K 6,500 – 9,000

Viewing angle- horizontal | vertical degrees 160 | 140

Operating temperature range °C 0 – 40

Broadband speaker peak out W 2 x 250

Broadband speaker frequency range Hz 40 – 22,000

Subwoofer peak out W 1 x 700

Subwoofer frequency range Hz 24 – 200

INPUT / OUTPUT

Video input 1 x HDMI, HDCP 2.2 support

Serial in/output 2 x USB, 1 x RS232

Audio output 11.2, independent sub

Network connection 1 x RJ45

OPERATION

Power supply LED screen 3 x 400V+N+PE/32A/50-60Hz AC (3~)

Input power max | typical W/m² 480 | 160

Power consumption max | typical kW 3,6 | 1,2

SPECIFIC FEATURES

Adaptive Gap Calibration (AGC)

Automatic TV Cover with Flush Mount Floor Option

Sound system 2.1

4 individual colors (black, silver, gold, titanium)

C SEED calls the TV watching experience with the M1 “breathtaking.” For $400K it ought to be!

I’ve been following the terrible weather situation in Texas, watching as the people there have been struggling with fierce cold, snow, and ice that’s well beyond what they’re used to. Of course, the big story in Texas is the inability of their power grid to keep up with demand.

Wind is a big part of that grid, and accounts for a bit under one-quarter of Texas energy use. The adverse weather conditions have put a crimp in the wind supply, as turbines have frozen up, but wind has actually done better than natural gas (the main source of energy there) and nuclear in terms of meeting winter output expectations.

Anyway, since wind power is in the news, I thought I’d read up a bit on it. And ended up deciding to do a little primer on it.

Wind power has, of course, been around for a good long time. Think of all those windmills in the Netherlands. And those windpumps you see in pictures of farms and ranches, used to help water the stock. What those big wind turbines we see popping up are not used for a specific mechanical task, but are used, via a generator, to turn wind into electricity.

The US Department of Energy has a lot of good, basic info on wind, which is where I found this overall definition of how things work:

A wind turbine turns wind energy into electricity using the aerodynamic force from the rotor blades, which work like an airplane wing or helicopter rotor blade. When wind flows across the blade, the air pressure on one side of the blade decreases. The difference in air pressure across the two sides of the blade creates both lift and drag. The force of the lift is stronger than the drag and this causes the rotor to spin. The rotor connects to the generator, either directly (if it’s a direct drive turbine) or through a shaft and a series of gears (a gearbox) that speed up the rotation and allow for a physically smaller generator. This translation of aerodynamic force to rotation of a generator creates electricity. (Source: energy.gov)

There are two main types of wind turbines. I was most familiar with the horizontal-axis version. That’s the one that’s usually pictured, and the one used at the wind farm in my area in Upstate New York. The horizontal-axis turbines face the wind. On the other hand, vertical-axis turbines – which include this “egg-beater” type – are omnidirectional.

Wind turbines are land-based or offshore, and distributed or not. What we mean by land-based or offshore is pretty obvious. (One if by land, two if by sea…) And they’re generally aggregated into farms that provide bulk energy. Distributed turbines that are for smaller scale use. They’re “installed on the ‘customer’ side of the electric meter or are installed at or near where the energy they produce will be used.”

Texas is actually an excellent place for wind energy because, with its topography, they have an awful lot of wind. And once they’ve invested in hardening their turbines so they can better operate under harsh weather conditions, they’ll be in great shape to withstand future bouts of awful weather. Wind turbines can obviously stand up to the rigors of cold and snow, as they work well in cold places. How do they do it?

In Canada, where wind turbines can experience icing up to 20% of the time in winter months, special “cold weather packages” are installed to provide heating to turbine components such as the gearbox, yaw and pitch motors and battery, according to the Canadian government. This can allow them to operate in temperatures down to minus 22 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 30 Celsius).

To prevent icing on rotor blades — which cause the blades to catch air less efficiently and to generate less power — heating and water-resistant coatings are used.

One Swedish company, Skellefteå Kraft, which has experimented with operating wind turbines in the Arctic, coats turbine blades with thin layers of carbon fiber which are then heated to prevent ice from forming. Another method used by the company is to circulate hot air inside the blades. (Source: Forbes)

As with so many things in life, there’s a risk-reward calculation at play here.

Meanwhile, my thoughts are with the people in Texas who have been enduring so much. Winters are no trip to the beach in Upstate New York, but we’re pretty well used to it. Sure, there are occasional power outages, but we mostly get through our admittedly brutal winters without having to worry about heat, light, and flushing the toilet.

Hard to imagine that we’re already into February, but it’s still not too late to take a look at the technology trends for the new year. So here’s my summarization of the trends list created by Anis Uzzaman on Inc. which I recently came across.

Not surprisingly, the first trend is the advances in vaccine development and COVID testing sparked by the pandemic. Testing approaches, while not 100% perfected, have improved, and affordable home testing kits are on the near horizon. Technological breakthroughs are enabling more rapid vaccine development, and the mRNA vaccines now out (from Pfizer and Moderna) represent significant innovation.

Videoconferencing and work-from-home technology have been progressing for years now. But it took COVID to make Zoom a household word: noun, verb, adverb, adjective, participle, gerund… There are many other conferencing and collaboration platforms out there that let groups meet, “create and share content, interact, track projects, train employees, run virtual team-building activities, and more.” I’m hoping that 2021 is the year in which organizations can resume having employees working in person, but the ability to work remotely isn’t going anywhere, and there’s a lot of excellent technology making it all possible.

Contactless delivery and shipping aren’t going anywhere, either. While many of us have gotten use to the delivery guy texting us that our take-out dinner is on the doorstep, a Chinese company, Meituan, is taking things a step further. It’s now begun “using autonomous vehicles to help fulfill grocery orders to customers.”

With people looking to minimize their exposure to COVID, telehealth and telemedicine has taken off, and “telehealth visits have surged by 50 percent compared with pre-pandemic levels.” There’s no substitute for an in-person visit to the doctor, and obviously many health problems can’t be solved remotely. No home MRIs, no setting a broken leg over the Internet. But routine patient chats can take place online, man problems can be monitored remotely, and offerings for “A.I. avatar-based diagnostics, and no-contact-based medication delivery” mean that more and more problems can be taken care of remotely.

Our kids are grown, so my wife and I haven’t had to become home schoolers, but the pandemic has certainly been a boon for online education and e-learning. Classes and even athletic coaching are being conducted using Zoom and other videoconferencing platforms, but there are many elearning platforms, purpose-built for learning (as opposed to business meetings) are coming to the fore, for higher-ed and K-12.

Homeschooling (mostly involuntary) and working from home are compounding the demand for 5G infrastructure, new applications, and utilities that was already coming from smart homes, smart businesses, smart cities, and autonomous mobility. The IoT really is becoming the Internet of Everything. 5G is now deployed in many countries, and expanding rapidly. And 6G is on the horizon.

Building on the development of the last several decades, A.I., robotics, the IoT, and industrial automation all continue to grow rapidly. Post-pandemic,

“As manufacturing and supply chains are returning to full operation, manpower shortages will become a serious issue. Automation, with the help of A.I., robotics, and the internet of things, will be a key alternative solution to operate manufacturing.”

Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technologies usage is rising. With entertainment options diminished due to COVID, interest in VR and AR is naturally increasingly. But “immersive technologies from AR and VR innovations enable an incredible source of transformation across all sectors.” Real estate “house tours”. Remote support. Virtual trade shows. There are a growing number of VR/AR application areas. And the acceleration of VR/AR will, in turn, spur demand for (and the development of) 5G networks.

As demand for fossil-fuel based transportation decreases, micromobility continues to grow. If you’re not familiar with micromobility – and it’s not something I have a lot of interest in – we’re talking about e-bikes and e-scooters. This is mostly a young folks, urban game – an e-scooter isn’t going to work for grocery shopping for the family – but, along with the likes of Uber and Zipcar, they’re part of the growing menu of transportation alternatives.

But cars will continue to be on the menu, as well. And some of them will be autonomous vehicles. The technology isn’t fully here yet, but automakers have been introducing incremental self-driving features for years. (Think automatic braking and hands-free parking.) But autonomous cars will likely be generally available in the coming decade.

In his trends piece, Anis doesn’t introduce anything particularly innovative or game-changing, “just” technology that builds on earlier development. But isn’t that the way most technological advances occur? Anyway, it’s always fun to see what those in the know anticipate for the coming year.