Next Generation of War: Flying saucers and tiny helicopters

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Written on Monday, May 05, 2008 by Gemini

Emotion-detecting robot cars will face off against eavesdropping flying saucers in the English countryside later this year, as scientists and school children compete with their designs for the next generation of military equipment. It’s the British Ministry of Defence’s first ever “Grand Challenge’’, aimed at encouraging scientists, inventors and academics to turn ideas into machines for army use in urban environments.


It gave six finalists funding to build machine prototypes, such as mini-helicopters and disc-shaped flying robots fitted with heat and motion sensors that can be controlled remotely from a bunker. And the finalists, who each received 3,00,000 pounds (Rs 2.4 crore), came to London last week to display their models.

“This project has really allowed us to broaden our vision and look at what other work is being done out there in our field,’’ said Norman Gregory, business manager for the Silicon Valley Group PLC, a small research company in southeast Britain. His company teamed up with the Bruton School for Girls in Somerset to build an unmanned buggy that can analyse gunmen’s movements to determine whether they are angry or nervous. “We are a small company and would not have been able to put together a consortium to develop such a sophisticated system without this competition. The government made it clear it wanted consortiums to get schools involved, and since the Bruton school already ran its own robot design competitions, we asked them if they wanted to have a look at our research,’’ Gregory said.


Another group, Swarm Systems Ltd, has built a set of tiny helicopters that fly in formation into a village, recording images and audio tracks to beam back to headquarters. Finalists will take part in a mock battle in August in Copehill Down, a village that was modelled on an East German one when it was built for military training during the Cold War. Copehill Down is near Stonehenge, about 150 kms from London. The contestants will have their machines search for pretend gunmen and mock bombs, earning points for each find and losing points for hitting civilians or transmitting data too slowly. The winner gets a trophy made from the recycled metal recovered from a WWII fighter jet. The best designs will also get financial backing from Britain’s defence ministry.

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Take Your Office at Home with Revolutionary GoToMyPC

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Written on Friday, April 25, 2008 by Gemini

At home your family’s waiting… At work, your boss is frowning as usual… But you have not yet finished working on the file in your desktop.

This is a quite a familiar scenario with most of the working people. How often have we heard them wish, ‘if only we could complete this at home’… Accessing from home the files which are saved in your office computer was just a dream till now. However, it is now possible to access files saved in any computer from any other computer!!!

GoToMyPCGoToMyPC allows you to remotely access your computer (assuming it is connected to the Internet) from any other computer (connected to the Interner) in the world. This means that one can seamlessly access / send e-mails, work on projects, documents, or network resources, without physically present in that location! This site offers simple yet powerful software that has to be installed in both the computer you wish to access and the computer you would be accessing it from. The process of registration is quite simple and post-registration, you can choose from the personal, premium and corporate options. While the personal option allows you to access two remote computers, the premium enables access to five computers and you can access the whole office if you subscribe for the corporate plan.

The corporate account is a conscious effort by the company to help its employees access their office work from a remote computer. Don’t worry about the security! This software is quite secured and can be used with the existing firewall setup without disturbing its integrity. An access code resides on the host computer and is never saved onto the website’s servers, so no more leaks. You’d also get notified if someone is trying to break in. There is a built-in lockout protection where you can even disable the keyboard and screen in such cases. This is just like virtual private network (VPN) that has been in use in many companies. However GoToMyPC is the first third party VPN service that’s being used. It is a convenience tool that many software companies are using so their employees can look at their files from home.

Try GoToMyPC now!!!

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