Dr. Dobb's Journal September 2000
The International Telecommunication Union (http://www.itu.int/) has agreed on a new set of standards to enhance the current V.90 Standard for modems operating at speeds of up to 56 kbps. The enhancements will result in higher maximum data rates of 48 kbps on good connections, faster startup times on recognized connections, and an option for using voice response facilities when browsing the Web. A new data compression implementation, based on the LZJH compression algorithm developed at Hughes Network Systems, will result in at least a 25 percent improvement in data compression over the current V.42bis Standard, which will significantly improve data-transfer rates for downloads and browsing. The ITU working group expects the new standards to come into effect in November of this year.
With the assistance of teams at Stanford University and other colleges, researchers at Linköping University (http://www.linkoping .se/) are developing an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) capable of full autonomy. Instead of a remote-controlled device, the "WITAS" helicopter (http://www.ida.liu.se/ ext/witas/) will be a self-guiding robot, able to construct its own mission plan, react intelligently to changes in its surroundings, and communicate with its controllers.
A typical scenario for the UAV consists of searching for and locating a particular vehicle, tracking the vehicle, identifying its behavior (noticing, for instance, that it weaves across lanes), communicating with ground control for instructions, and returning to home base after a certain amount of time.
The UAV needs to be able to predict and act upon the behavior of other objects in its vicinity in real time. If it's flying, for instance, it has to be able to quickly recognize and adapt to upcoming buildings or shifts in air turbulence. If it's tracking a car, it should be able to keep following even if the car passes under a bridge or through a tunnel.
Stanford's Center for the Study of Language and Information (http://www-csli .stanford.edu/semlab/index.html) is working on the conversational interface between the helicopter and ground operators. The problems in modeling human dialogue include all the indeterminate referents that people use in everyday speech ("Follow the white Bronco!"), the asynchronous dialogue that can result from overlapping events in the world ("Follow him! Avoid that tree!"), and the need for speech to repair, correct, and negotiate action ("No, wait! Follow the truck instead!"). To address these problems, the dialogue interface consists of a "community" of software agents, each responsible for some subtask in the conversational interaction, like updating context, classifying language, or choosing responses. A "meta-agent" can allow either side in the conversation to interrupt.
The helicopter hardware is being built in Sweden. A Scandicraft Systems Apid Mk III had a test flight in October, and the Yamaha RMAX Aero Robot is also under consideration for the UAV platform. (The unmodified Yamaha is a remote-controlled helicopter.) A working prototype of the UAV is expected to fly mid year.
Users of cellphones and other handheld devices will soon be able to charge up their gadgets simply by taking a walk. A team of British inventors is developing a pair of boots that converts the mechanical energy of walking into electrical energy. While this idea is not entirely new, the "Electric Shoe" may be the first implementation that releases the electrical energy in a controlled way capable of powering a device such as a cellular phone.
Developed by Dr. Jim Gilbert, a lecturer in engineering at Hull University, and Trevor Baylis, the inventor of the clockwork radio, the Electric Shoe will be brought to market in a joint venture of Baylis's Electric Shoe Company and Texon International, a British footwear manufacturer. Baylis plans to make a 100-mile trek across the Namibian desert wearing a prototype of the shoe, and to call British Prime Minister Tony Blair in the first phone call powered by the energy of walking. See http://www.texon.com/ for more information.
The competition to build the fastest supercomputer is similar to the battle over which city has the highest skyscraper -- the leader changes frequently. Recently, Cray claimed to be fastest with a 64-bit application on a Cray T3E system running at a sustained speed of more than one trillion calculations per second. Now, IBM claims to have taken first place decisively with its RS/6000 SP supercomputer called "ASCI White," which supposedly delivers 12 trillion calculations (teraflops) per second.
The ASCI White will be used by the Department of Energy in its Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative to simulate nuclear weapons testing. The machine is about the size of two basketball courts and will require 28 tractor trailer trucks when it is moved from Poughkeepsie, New York, to Lawrence Livermore Labs in California.
A team from Cambridge Display Technology and Seiko Epson demonstrated the first color video screen to use light-emitting polymers (LEPs). LEP displays have a wider viewing angle than LCD displays and require no backlights, filters, or polarizers -- making them cheaper to manufacture. LEP technology is based on a polymer called "PPV," which emits light when a voltage is applied. The benzene ring in the PPV molecule allows electrons to move through the molecule to form the basis of a light-emitting diode. The LEP technology was pioneered at Cambridge University in England, and Cambridge Display Technology has formed alliances with a variety of companies including Hewlett-Packard, Dupont Chemical, and Seiko. The demonstration showed a mobile-phone sized 6.3 cm LEP display with 270,000 pixels, displaying a TV-quality color image. Future LEP displays may be produced on flexible material that could be rolled up and put in your pocket. Seiko is working on an ink-jet deposition process for manufacturing cheap LEP displays.
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has moved XLink, the XML Linking Language, from draft status to "candidate recommendation" status and is urging developers to implement it when linking pages. The candidate recommendation status will last three months, during which the W3C developers can implement the specification, test it, and offer comments. XLink will then move to the "proposed recommendation" stage. The XLink working group includes representatives from Sun, Microsoft, Brown University, Fujitsu Labs, Arbortext, and Commerce One. For more information on XLink, see "XML Linking Language (XLink) Version 1.0" (http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/CR-xlink-20000703/) and "XLink: The XML Linking Language," by Sean McGrath (DDJ, December 1998).