DARPA Successfully Tests A-10 Close Air Support Strike Called in by Android Tablet

With a few taps on a specially configured Android tablet, a joint terminal attack controller called in an airstrike from an A-10 gunship, the Pentagon’s research arm announced.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, better known as Darpa, for the first time tested the so-called Persistent Close Air Support, or PCAS, technology on an A-10 Thunderbolt II attack aircraft from April through June near Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, the agency announced this week in a press release.

The evaluations “showed that a warfighter serving as a joint terminal attack controller (JTAC) on the ground could, in seamless coordination with a pilot, successfully command an airstrike with as few as three clicks on a tablet,” the release states.

The program aims to develop easier, faster and more precise coordination between ground forces and air crews while conducting strikes against nearby targets, according to Darpa. The goal is to use smaller munitions to hit multiple or moving targets to minimize the incidence of friendly fire and collateral damage, according to the agency.

“We have shown that a flexible architecture and extensible technology toolsets are key to making groundbreaking improvements in air-ground coordination,” Dan Patt, DARPA program manager, said in the release.

The prototype system involves two components: PCAS-Ground software, called the Android Tactical Assault Kit; and PCAS-Air, an automated targeting system on board the aircraft to determine the timed release of laser– and GPS-guided munitions, according to the release.

link.

Tablet Market Contracting, Phablets, Apple to Blame?

Did Apple just murder the tablet market?

That’s the conclusion reached by Boy Genius Report, based on data assembled by analytics firm Flurry. That data suggests that Apple “won” the holiday season, with the company’s hardware accounting for 51.3 percent of device activations worldwide (followed by Samsung with 17.7 percent, Nokia with 5.8 percent, and Sony with 1.6 percent).

Much of those activations came from oversized phones. “As we reported in September (pre-iPhone 6 Plus), phablets were gaining share,” Flurry wrote in a blog posting accompanying its data. “This Christmas, it appears even more consumers are switching to the larger phone now that there is an iOS option.”

According to Flurry’s numbers, full-sized tablets accounted for only 11 percent of new devices in 2014, a decline from 2013, when that form-factor totaled 17 percent of the new-device market; small tablets experienced a smaller decline, falling from 12 percent to 11 percent of new devices between 2013 and 2014. Meanwhile, phablets expanded from 4 percent of new devices in 2013 to 13 percent this year.

link.

Intel has Developed RealSense: a 3d Scanner Built Into a Tablet

Intel has been working on a 3D scanner small enough to fit in the bezel of even the thinnest tablets. The company aims to have the technology in tablets from 2015, with CEO Brian Krzanich telling the crowd at MakerCon in New York on Thursday that he hopes to put the technology in phones as well.

"Our goal is to just have a tablet that you can go out and buy that has this capability," Krzanich said. "Eventually within two or three years I want to be able to put it on a phone."

Krzanich and a few of his colleagues demonstrated the technology, which goes by the name "RealSense," on stage using a human model and an assistant who simply circled the model a few times while pointing a tablet at the subject. A full 3D rendering of the model slowly appeared on the screen behind the stage in just a few minutes. The resulting 3D models can be manipulated with software or sent to a 3D printer.

"The idea is you go out, you see something you like and you just capture it," Krzanich explained. He said consumer tablets with built in 3D scanners will hit the market in the third or fourth quarter of 2015, with Intel also working on putting the 3D scanning cameras on drones.

link.

heh.  Betcha this or a version after gets banned from art galleries.