American student finds GPS tracker stuck to car, FBI shows up to reclaim its 'federal property'

Mechanics spot strange things stuck under cars all the time, but when 20-year-old Yasir Afifi's ride was put up on lifts his shop found something that hadn't been kicked up from the road: a cylindrical tube connected to a device with an antenna. An extremely paranoid person would think they'd found a bomb, but the truth isn't much better. It was an FBI tracking device. Afifi posted pictures and his story on Reddit while a friend contemplated cunning things to do with it, sticking it to someone else's car or selling it on Craigslist. They didn't have long to ponder before long two "sneaky-looking" people were spotted outside his apartment. Afifi got in his car and drove off, only to be pulled over by FBI agents who demanded the device back, threatening "We're going to make this much more difficult for you if you don't cooperate."

Now, we've already given our opinions on using GPS technology like this and, while it's unknown whether these agents had a warrant to place this device, the 9th US Court of Appeals recently made one unnecessary for this sort of thing. The ACLU is working with Afifi to fight that ruling, and for now we're hoping that he, who is an American with an Egyptian father, is currently able to hit the town without agents following his every move. However, at this point they may not need a tracker: one agent who retrieved the device took the time to list off his favorite restaurants and even congratulated him on his new job.

Just Listening To Cell Phones Significantly Impairs Drivers, Study Shows

Carnegie Mellon University scientists have shown that just listening to a cell phone while driving is a significant distraction, and it causes drivers to commit some of the same types of driving errors that can occur under the influence of alcohol.

The use of cell phones, including dialing and texting, has long been a safety concern for drivers. But the Carnegie Mellon study, for the first time, used brain imaging to document that listening alone reduces by 37 percent the amount of brain activity associated with driving. This can cause drivers to weave out of their lane, based on the performance of subjects using a driving simulator.

The findings, to be reported in an upcoming issue of the journal Brain Research, show that making cell phones hands-free or voice-activated is not sufficient in eliminating distractions to drivers. "Drivers need to keep not only their hands on the wheel; they also have to keep their brains on the road," said neuroscientist Marcel Just, director of the Center for Cognitive Brain Imaging.

Just listening to a cell phone while driving is a significant distraction, and it causes drivers to commit some of the same types of driving errors that can occur under the influence of alcohol. (Credit: iStockphoto/Dennis Oblander)

Other distractions, such as eating, listening to the radio or talking with a passenger, also can divert a driver. Though it is not known how these activities compare to cell phone use, Just said there are reasons to believe cell phones may be especially distracting. "Talking on a cell phone has a special social demand, such that not attending to the cell conversation can be interpreted as rude, insulting behavior," he noted. A passenger, by contrast, is likely to recognize increased demands on the driver's attention and stop talking.

The 29 study volunteers used a driving simulator while inside an MRI brain scanner. They steered a car along a virtual winding road at a fixed, challenging speed, either while they were undisturbed, or while they were deciding whether a sentence they heard was true or false. Just's team used state-of-the-art functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) methods to measure activity in 20,000 brain locations, each about the size of a peppercorn. Measurements were made every second.

The driving-while-listening condition produced a 37 percent decrease in activity of the brain's parietal lobe, which is associated with driving. This portion of the brain integrates sensory information and is critical for spatial sense and navigation. Activity was also reduced in the occipital lobe, which processes visual information.

The other impact of driving-while-listening was a significant deterioration in the quality of driving. Subjects who were listening committed more lane maintenance errors, such as hitting a simulated guardrail, and deviating from the middle of the lane. Both kinds of influences decrease the brain's capacity to drive well, and that decrease can be costly when the margin for error is small.

"The clear implication is that engaging in a demanding conversation could jeopardize judgment and reaction time if an atypical or unusual driving situation arose," Just said. "Heavy traffic is no place for an involved personal or business discussion, let alone texting."

Because driving and listening draw on two different brain networks, scientists had previously suspected that the networks could work independently on each task. But Just said this study demonstrates that there is only so much that the brain can do at one time, no matter how different the two tasks are.

The study emerges from the new field of neuroergonomics, which combines brain science with human-computer interaction studies that measure how well a technology matches human capabilities. Neuroergonomics is beginning to be applied to the operation of vehicles like aircraft, ships and cars in which drivers now have navigation systems, iPods and even DVD players at their disposal. Every additional input to a driver consumes some of his or her brain capacity, taking away some of the resources that monitor for other vehicles, lane markers, obstacles, and sudden changes in conditions.

"Drivers' seats in many vehicles are becoming highly instrumented cockpits," Just said, "and during difficult driving situations, they require the undivided attention of the driver's brain."

The project was funded by the Office of Naval Research. Other members of the research team included post-doctoral research associate Timothy Keller and research assistant Jacquelyn Cynkar.

Let Your Fingers Do the Driving: If You Don't Hear Directions, You Can Feel Them

If drivers are yakking on cell phones and don't hear spoken instructions to turn left or right from a passenger or navigation system, they still can get directions from devices that are mounted on the steering wheel and pull skin on the driver's index fingertips left or right, a University of Utah study found.

The researchers say they don't want their results to encourage dangerous and distracted driving by cell phone users. Instead, they hope the study will point to new touch-based directional devices to help motorists and hearing-impaired people drive more safely. The same technology also could help blind pedestrians with a cane that provides directional cues to the person's thumb.

Nate Medeiros-Ward, a University of Utah psychology doctoral student, operates a driving simulator with a steering wheel equipped with two touch devices that pull the skin on his index fingertips left or right (counterclockwise or clockwise) to tell him which way to turn. A new University of Utah study found that navigation information can be conveyed to a driver through the fingertips as accurately as through audio instructions from a navigation system. And when drivers are distracted by talking on a cell phone, the fingertip instructions are followed more accurately than audio instructions. The touch-based devices could help improve safety for motorists and hearing-impaired drivers, and also lead to navigational canes that provide navigation information to blind pedestrians. (Credit: Justin Lukas, University of Utah)

"It has the potential of being a safer way of doing what's already being done -- delivering information that people are already getting with in-car GPS navigation systems," says the study's lead author, William Provancher, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Utah.

In addition, Provancher says he is "starting to meet with the Utah Division of Services for the Blind and Visually Impaired to better understand how our technology could help those with vision impairments. It could be used in a walking cane for the blind," with a moving button on the handle providing tactile navigation cues to help the person walk to the corner market, for example.

The system also could help hearing-impaired people get navigation information through their fingertips if they cannot hear a system's computerized voice, says University of Utah psychology Ph.D. student Nate Medeiros-Ward, the study's first author. "We are not saying people should drive and talk on a cell phone and that tactile [touch] navigation cues will keep you out of trouble."

Medeiros-Ward is scheduled to present the findings Tuesday, Sept. 28 in San Francisco during the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society's 54th annual meeting.

The study "doesn't mean it's safe to drive and talk on the cell phone," says co-author David Strayer, a professor of psychology at the University of Utah. "It was a test to show that even in situations where you are distracted by a cell phone, we can still communicate directional information to the driver via the fingertips even though they are 'blind' to everything else."

Provancher, Medeiros-Ward and Strayer conducted the study with Joel Cooper, who earned his psychology Ph.D. at the University of Utah and now works in Texas, and Andrew Doxon, a Utah doctoral student in mechanical engineering. The research was funded by the National Science Foundation and the University of Utah.

'Channels' Carry Information to the Brain

Provancher says the study was based on a "multiple resource model" of how people process information, in which resources are senses such as vision, hearing and touch that provide information to the brain.

"You can only process so much," he says. "The theory is that if you provide information through different channels, you can provide more total information. Our sense of touch is currently an unexplored means of communication in the car."

But does humanity really need yet another way to provide information to drivers who already are blabbering on cell phones, texting, changing CDs or radio stations, looking at or listening to navigation devices and screaming kids -- not to mention trying to watch and listen to road conditions?

"The point is, it will help everybody," Provancher says. "We all have visual and audio distractions when driving. Having the steering wheel communicate with you through your fingertips provides more reliable navigation information to the driver."

Provancher says motorists already get some feedback through touch: vibration from missing a gear while shifting or a shimmying steering wheel due to tire problems.

"You can't look at two things at the same time," says Strayer. "You can't look at graphic display of where you should go and look out the windshield. It [touch-based information] is a nicer way to communicate with the driver without interfering with the basic information they typically need to drive safely. They need to look out the window to drive safely. They need to listen to the noise of traffic -- sirens, horns and other vehicles. This tactile device provides information to the driver without taking their attention away from seeing and hearing information they need to be a safe driver."

The new study says automakers already use some tactile systems to warn of lane departures by drowsy drivers and monitor blind spots. But these devices generally twist the steering wheel (assisted steering), rather than simply prompting the driver to do so.

Drivers on Cell Phones Often Don't Hear Directions, but Can Feel Them

The study was conducted on a driving simulator that Strayer has used to demonstrate the hazards of driving while talking or texting on a cell phone. Two of Provancher's devices to convey information by touch were attached to the simulator's steering wheel so one came in contact with the index finger on each of the driver's hands.

During driving, each index fingertip rested on a red TrackPoint cap from an IBM ThinkPad computer -- those little things that look like the eraser on the end of a pencil. When the drivers were supposed to turn left, the two touch devices gently stretched the skin of the fingertips to the left (counter clockwise); when a right turn was directed, the TrackPoint tugged the skin of the fingertips to the right (clockwise).

Nineteen University of Utah undergraduate students -- six women and 13 men -- participated in the study by driving the simulator. The screens that surround the driver's seat on three sides displayed a scene in which the driver was in the center lane of three straight freeway lanes, with no other traffic.

Four driving scenarios were used, each lasting six minutes and including, in random order, 12 cues to the driver to move to the right lane and 12 more to move left.

In two scenarios, the simulator drivers did not talk on cell phones and received direction instructions either from the simulator's computer voice or via the fingertip devices on the steering wheel. In the two other scenarios, the drivers talked on cell phones with a person in the laboratory and also received direction instructions, either from the computer voice or from the touch devices on the steering wheel.

Each participant did all four of the scenarios. The results:

• In the two scenarios without cell phones, the drivers' accuracy in correctly moving left or right was nearly identical for those who received tactile directions through their fingertips (97.2 percent) or by computerized voice (97.6 percent).
• That changed when the drivers talked on cell phones while operating the simulator. When drivers received fingertip navigation directions while talking, they were accurate 98 percent of the time, but when they received audio cues to turn right or left while talking on a cell phone, they changed lanes correctly only 74 percent of the time.

Strayer says the findings shouldn't be used to encourage cell phone use while driving because even if giving drivers directional information by touch works, "it's not going to help you with the other things you need to do while driving -- watching out for pedestrians, noticing traffic lights, all the things you need to pay attention to."

A Touch of Product Development?

Provancher has patents and wants to commercialize his tactile feedback devices for steering wheels and other potential uses.

"If we were approached by an interested automaker, it could be in their production cars in three to five years," he says, noting he already has had preliminary talks with three automakers and a European original equipment manufacturer.

In addition to possible devices for the vision- and hearing-impaired, Provancher says the technology could be used in a handheld device to let people feel fingertip-stretch pulses -- rather than hear clicks -- as they scroll through an iPod music playlist. He also says it might be used as a new way to interact with an MP3 music player in a vehicle, or to control games.

Provancher set the stage for the tactile navigation devices in two research papers this year in the journal Transactions on Haptics, published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. Haptics is to the sense of touch what optics is to vision.

In one of those studies, Provancher tested a haptic device that stretched the fingertip skin in four horizontal directions (right, left, front, back) and found that relatively faster and larger (one twenty-fifth of an inch) movements conveyed direction information most accurately.

In that study, Provancher also mentioned other possible uses for such devices, including allowing command centers to direct emergency responders and urban soldiers to incident locations, or directing air traffic controllers' attention to important information on a computer screen.

For more information on Provancher's work on conveying information by touch, see:http://heml.eng.utah.edu/index.php/Haptics/ShearFeedback

For video of the touch-based navigation devices on a driving simulator, see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8ESEjWqIvg

Robotics Timeline

Robotics Timeline

• Robots capable of manual labour tasks--
  • 2009 - robots that perform searching and fetching tasks in unmodified library environment, Professor Angel del Pobil (University Jaume I, Spain), 2004^[2]
  • 2015-2020 - every South Korean household will have a robot and many European, The Ministry of Information and Communication (South Korea), 2007^[3]
  • 2018 - robots will routinely carry out surgery, South Korea government 2007^[3]
  • 2022 - intelligent robots that sense their environment, make decisions, and learn are used in 30% of households and organizations - TechCast^[4]
  • 2030 - robots capable of performing at human level at most manual jobs Marshall Brain^[5]
  • 2034 - robots (home automation systems) performing most household tasks, Helen Greiner, Chairman of iRobot^[6]
• Military robots
  • 2015 - one third of US fighting strength will be composed of robots - US Department of Defense, 2006^[7]
  • 2035 - first completely autonomous robot soldiers in operation - US Department of Defense, 2006^[7]
  • 2038 - first completely autonomous robot flying car in operation - US Department of Technology, 2007^[7]

• Developments related to robotics from the Japan NISTEP ^[8] 2030 report :
  • 2013-2014 — agricultural robots (AgRobots^[9], ^[10]).
  • 2013-2017 — robots that care for the elderly
  • 2017 — medical robots performing low-invasive surgery
  • 2017-2019 — household robots with full use.
  • 2019-2021 — Nanorobots
  • 2021-2022 — Transhumanism

NASA Spacecraft Ready To Explore Outer Solar System

The first NASA spacecraft to image and map the dynamic interactions taking place where the hot solar wind slams into the cold expanse of space is ready for launch Oct. 19. The two-year mission will begin from the Kwajalein Atoll, a part of the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean.

Called the Interstellar Boundary Explorer or IBEX, the spacecraft will conduct extremely high-altitude orbits above Earth to investigate and capture images of processes taking place at the farthest reaches of the solar system. Known as the interstellar boundary, this region marks where the solar system meets interstellar space.

"The interstellar boundary regions are critical because they shield us from the vast majority of dangerous galactic cosmic rays, which otherwise would penetrate into Earth's orbit and make human spaceflight much more dangerous," said David J. McComas, IBEX principal investigator and senior executive director of the Space Science and Engineering Division at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio.

An artist's impression of NASA's IBEX spacecraft exploring the edge of our solar system. (Credit: NASA/GSFC)

The story of the outer solar system began to unfold when the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecrafts left the inner solar system and headed out toward the boundary between our solar system and interstellar space.

"The Voyager spacecraft are making fascinating observations of the local conditions at two points beyond the termination shock that show totally unexpected results and challenge many of our notions about this important region," said McComas.

Other spacecraft have continued the exploration of the interstellar boundary region. Recently, a pair of NASA sun-focused satellites, the Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory mission, detected a higher-energy version of the particles IBEX will observe in the heliosphere. The heliosphere is an area that contains the solar wind. It stretches from the sun to a distance several times the orbit of Pluto.

IBEX is poised to thoroughly map this interstellar boundary region of the solar system. The images will allow scientists to understand the global interaction between our sun and the galaxy for the very first time.

IBEX will be launched aboard a Pegasus rocket dropped from under the wing of an L-1011 aircraft flying over the Pacific Ocean. The Pegasus will carry the spacecraft approximately 130 miles above Earth and place it in orbit.

"What makes the IBEX mission unique is that it has an extra kick during launch," said Willis Jenkins, IBEX program executive at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "An extra solid-state motor pushes the spacecraft further out of low-Earth orbit where the Pegasus launch vehicle leaves it."

The IBEX mission is the next in NASA's series of low-cost, rapidly developed Small Explorers spacecraft. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., manages the Explorers Program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The mission was developed by Southwest Research Institute with national and international partner participation.