Search Results: pilot helmet

Japanese robot works like a hi-tech ‘puppet’ controlled via a virtual reality suit

• Suit lets ‘pilot’ see through robot eyes and feel with its hands
• VR-controlled robot could be used in Fukushima-style disasters
• Robot controls are so sensitive it can pick up objects

By Rob Waugh

Last updated at 6:46 PM on 15th February 2012

A new robot from Japan is a metal ‘avatar’ that is controlled via a virtual reality suit – letting users remote-control the robot and see through its eyes.

The Telesar V mimics the movements of its pilot – and is so realistic it can even pick up objects. Scientists hope similar robots could venture into dangerous areas such as contaminated reactors.

The controller dons a 3D head display that covers his whole vision and can ‘see’ through a robot’s eyes. Wheenever he moves sensors replicate that movement on the robot.

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‘Pilots’ of the robot can ‘see’ what the robot sees through its video camera eyes and ‘feel’ what it feels through its metal hands via sensors in their control suit’s gloves

The robot mirrors the movement of the person wearing its ‘control suit’ – with movements so precise it can even pick up objects

Pressure simulators within the control suit’s gloves allow the ‘driver’ to feel what the robot is touching

The Telesar’s temperature sensors are so precise they tell how hot something is when the robot touches it.

It can also feel the shape of something as small as a lego brick – with corresponding impulses being sent back to the controller.

The robot’s makers believe it could be extremely useful in situation like the Fukushima disaster when radiation levels are too deadly for humans and the current wheeled robots are not responsive enough.

It could also have applications for bomb disposal, space exploration or for surgery.,

The Telesar V has been developed by Japanese researchers at Keio University and has been made as life-like as possible.

It has eight joints on its neck and seven on its arms, like like humans do.

The pilot simply moves their arms fingers and head to pilot Telesar V

The screen on the top right shows what the ‘pilot’ is seeing through her VR helmet – the same pink teddy that is directly in front of the robot, bottom right

The body can also move in seven different directions and it has video cameras in its head that are linked up to the 3D head display so the user can ‘see’ what it is looking at.

Sensory data is sent back via gloves fitted with semiconductors and motors which mimic touch, pressure, texture, heat and cold.

Mashahiro Furukawa of the Telesar team said the aim was to ‘make it really feel as if you are in another place’.

He said: ‘What you can do with this telexistence robot is you can see things you normally see, even in a remote location.

‘If you are a physician, for example, to examine a patient you need to extend your hands.

‘With this system you have hands that you can move just like your own.

‘You can also hear what’s going on around you. Those are the first things that we achieved with this system.

‘Now we have added sensors that communicate what the robot’s fingers are touching and a system to feed the touch sensation back to the operator.

‘The technology makes it possible to operate the robot as your avatar and feel what you are touching, even if you are a long distance away.’

Pofessor Susumu Tachi of Keio university’s graduate school of media and design added that the research could allow humans to go into areas that are too dangerous for them but ‘require human skills’.

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‘Thought-controlled’ weapons could become a reality in the near future, says scientist

By Rob Waugh

Last updated at 12:39 PM on 7th February 2012

Weapons operated by thought control and helmets that stimulate soldier’s brains for more accuracy could become a reality in the not-too-distant future, according to a leading scientist.

Professor Flower, a biochemist at the William Harvey Research Institute, Queen Mary, University of London chaired a Royal Society working group looking at the potential military impact of recent scientific advances in neuroscience.

The group’s report said that fast-moving advances in neuroscience mean that hardware such as pilotless attack planes controlled by an operator’s thoughts are entirely feasible.

Air Force MQ-9 Reaper drone: But a new generation of ‘thought-controlled’ UAVs could pose a threat of war crimes, says a London professor

Other developments Professor Flower looked at include electrical currents and EEG machines being used to improve target-spotting and the use of drugs to enhance the performance of soldiers or extract information from prisoners.

But he warned that such technology brings ethical concerns with it, especially over the use of drone weapons.

Gadgets such as Mattel’s MindFlex toy already use brain waves as a controller, and the military are highly interested in the technology.

Brainwave controlled drones could require less effort and few remote pilots to keep in the air.

The CIA’s use of drones to ‘take out’ alleged al Qaida terrorists in Pakistan, Afghanistan and elsewhere has already stirred up a storm of controversy, with claims of numerous innocent civilians being killed.

In the report, one of a series from the Royal Society looking at the field of neuroscience, the experts call on the UK Government to be as ‘transparent as possible’ about research into military and law enforcement applications.

Hi-tech: Brain devices and drugs could be used to enhance the performance of soldiers in the future

All in the mind: Technology has already been developed that allows stroke patients to control their limbs with ‘brain cap’ headwear, demonstrated here by University of Maryland student Harsha Agashe

They also urge scientists to be aware that their work could be used to harm as well as help and heal.

One such area of cutting edge research involves the development of ‘mind-control’ systems to aid people severely disabled by illness or injury.

Scientists have already demonstrated how a patient’s thoughts can be used to move prosthetic limbs or a cursor on a computer screen.

Prof Flower said it may not be long before thought control technology is applied to military machines.

At the same time, drones were becoming increasingly autonomous, raising serious ethical questions.

Speaking at a press conference in London, Prof Flower said: ‘At the moment, drone control is like controlling a model aircraft, but supposing some time in the not too distant future a drone was controlled by your thoughts.

‘The drone may even have some self-defence capability. You could see a situation where what you think and what the drone interprets you thinking is very, very blurred. So where does the responsibility for blowing up a wedding party lie? Is it with your brain or the software in the drone?’

The working party focused mainly on chemical weapons designed to incapacitate temporarily rather than kill.

Scientific evidence suggested it would not be possible in the foreseeable future to develop a ‘safe’ incapacitating agent.

The death of more than 100 hostages in 2002 after Russian forces used a knock-out gas to storm a theatre seized by Chechen terrorists showed how the use of such weapons can go disastrously wrong.

Yet there were worrying indications of moves to develop incapacitating chemicals for use in domestic law enforcement and riot control, said the working group.

Although the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), which the UK has signed, forbids the military use of incapacitating agents, it permits their use for ‘law enforcement including domestic riot control purposes’.

In 2009 the British Government issued a statement suggesting that employing such agents for law enforcement could comply with CWC. Previously it had seemed to accept that CS gas and other ‘riot control agents’ were the only chemicals permissible for law enforcement.

The working group urged the Government to publish a new statement clarifying its position.

Prof Flower said: ‘We know that neuroscience research has the potential to deliver great social benefit – researchers come closer every day to finding effective treatments for diseases and disorders such as Parkinson’s, depression, schizophrenia, epilepsy and addiction.

‘However, understanding of the brain and human behaviour coupled with developments in drug delivery also highlight ways of degrading human performance that could possibly be used in new weapons, especially incapacitating chemical agents.

‘This is why it is so important that the UK Government is clear about its reasons for the changes made to its interpretation of the law enforcement exemption in the CWC.’

Pilots could soon be monitored with remote ‘mind-reading’ helmets

• Miniature EEG scanners now fit in helmet
• Can ‘read’ electrical activity in the brain
• Monitor pilots for signs of sleep – or panic

By Rob Waugh

Last updated at 5:24 PM on 30th January 2012

Pilots’ brains will soon be remotely monitored to see if they are in control using brain scanners built into their helmets.

Military commanders will be able to see if a pilot is not responding to a warning light and take over the plane if they are about to crash.

The advanced sensors – in the pilot’s helmet – could also give an indication if they have gone unconscious and allow base control to step in.

Fighter pilot helmets could soon include miniaturised EEG brain scanners which would monitor a pilot’s state of mind while at the controls

The development has been possible thanks to a breakthrough in electroencephalographic (EEG) brain monitoring technology.

Until now the process involved test subjects wearing a heavy cap with lots of wires attached to it in order to be scanned.

Users also had to stay still as movement of parts of the face could interfere with the signal.

The new developments were lead by Scott Makeig, director of the University of California, San Diego’s Swartz Centre for Computational Neuroscience.

He said that his headset weighs around 3.5kilograms and the machinery is still quite heavy, but light enough to transport.

Now the sensors are controlled over a wireless Internet connection and are much more precise because they use better algorithms.

Livescience reported that the difference was ‘akin to listening to a single speaker’s voice in a crowded room’ as opposed to all the noises.

Child undergoing an EEG brain scan: Previous generations of the technology were cumbersome and too unwieldy to be worn – but the idea of brain scanning helmets is no longer far-fetched

EEG does not read minds but instead monitors the electrical fields that are created by nerves in the brain.

It was first used to monitor brain waves in 1926 but has advanced so much it is now being used in computer games, such as a headset from San Francisco technology company Emotiv.

It is also used in the Star Wars toys Mindflex by Mattel and Uncle Milton’s Force Trainer, which let would-be Jedi practice their light sabre technique just like Luke Skywalker does in the films.

In tests, he and his team have attached it to a jogger on a treadmill and successfully scanned his brain using a wireless Internet connection.

They are still however using conductive gel on the helmet which is something that Emotiv has got around, although it uses fewer electrodes.

Makeig said that what had been developed so far is just the ‘tip of the iceberg’.

Built to last: Guns of Spitfire buried in peat bog for 70 years fire first time

• Recovered Spitfire ‘one of the first ever made’
• U.S. pilot lost American citizenship to fight for Britain
• Roland Wolfe later fought for U.S. in Vietnam war
  
• Allied troops and German opponents mixed together at ‘relaxed’ World War Two prison camp

By Richard Hartley-parkinson

Last updated at 9:30 PM on 10th November 2011

A Browning machine gun found in a downed Spitfire has been fired for the first time in 70 years.

The weapon worked despite being buried in peat since the aeroplane that housed it plummeted to earth in Donegal in 1941.

A team from the BBC went to the site and dug the guns from where the Spitfire had crashed and could even smell aviation fuel in the air.

Six Browning machine guns were found in good nick thanks to the ideal clay, soil and peat condition

Despite being buried for the last 70 years, the Browning machine gun worked perfectly

There were six guns that presenter Dan Snow reported were in ‘great shape, with belts containing hundreds of gleaming .303 rounds.’

They even found pilot Roland ‘Bud’ Wolfe’s leather helmet among the wreckage.

The guns were cleaned and a couple of pieces were straightened out after suffering some damage on impact.

The soil, clay and peat had provided the perfect conditions for the artefacts to be preserved and, when fired, they worked like a treat.

Mr Snow continued: ‘The gun fired without a hitch. There can be no greater testament to the machinists and engineers in UK factories in the 1940s who, despite churning out guns at the rate of thousands per month, made each one of such high quality that they could survive a plane crash and 70 years underground and still fire like the day they were made.’

Excavation work at the site on the moors above Donegal uncovered the wreckage of the Spitfire – much of it was still intact

Hundreds of bullets were found with the Browning machine gun

When Wolfe crashed his British Spitfire into a peat bog in Ireland during World War Two, few thought it would ever be seen again.

The pilot who bailed out immediately wanted to climb into the cockpit of another military aircraft and continue fighting for the allies.

Knowing that his fighter was doomed, the young RAF officer had radioed: ‘I’m going over the side’ before parachuting to safety moments before impact.

Historian Dan Snow led the project to dig the Spitfire out of the peat bog almost 70 years after the pilot bailed out of the doomed plane

But instead of fighting again the serviceman was interned in a camp – where captured UK and U.S. troops mixed freely with the German enemy.

Despite managing to escape from Ireland, neutral during the war, and making his way back to Britain, the 23-year-old was sent back to the camp.

Fearing a diplomatic row, the British Government returned Wolfe to the most relaxed of ‘prison’ camps in Ireland where he was kept for a further two years.

The pilot from Nebraska had been stripped of his U.S. citizenship after agreeing to fight for the British because the Americans had not yet joined the war.

Now almost 70 years after the pilot from the 133 ‘Eagle’ Squadron crash-landed in the north of Ireland in November 1941, his crashed plane has been recovered.

The Spitfire was the first of 20 made with a donation from a Canadian millionaire called Willard Garfield Weston who wanted to support the Allies in the Battle of Britain with a £100,000 donation.

Remarkably large parts of the plane have been recovered from the bog.

Six machine guns and about 1,000 rounds of ammunition were also discovered by archaeologists searching the Inishowen Peninsula in Co Donegal.

American Spitfire pilot Roland ‘Bud’ Wolfe lost his U.S. citizenship in 1941 when he signed up to fight for the RAF

The excavation was carried out as part of a BBC Northern Ireland programme.

Historian Dan Snow said: ‘The plane itself is obviously kind of wreckage and the big pieces survived. We’re expecting to find things like the engine and there still may be personal effects in the cockpit.

Wolfe pictured here at the internment camp where he was held

‘It’s just incredible because it’s just so wet here that the ground just sucked it up and the plane was able to burrow into it and it’s been preserved.

‘It’s in amazing condition,’ he told RTE radio.

Mr Snow said Mr Wolf was forced to abandon his Spitfire over the Republic when its engine overheated about 13 miles from his base at RAF Eglinton, now Derry International Airport, in Northern Ireland.

Aviation archeologist Simon Parry told the Irish Independent that it was highly significant that the doomed plane had been recovered.

‘The pilot was lucky to survive that day because if his engine had failed a few minutes earlier he would have ended up in the sea,’ he said.

Landing on neutral soil, the 23-year-old pilot was interned at Curragh detention camp in Co Kildare for two years.

With fishing trips, fox hunts and football matches it sounded almost like a holiday camp – and seemingly the ideal place to be holed up as war raged across the rest of Europe.

The guards were only issued with blank rounds, visitors were permitted and there were frequent excursions to nearby pubs.

Around 40 RAF pilots who crashed in Ireland were held in the corrugated iron huts alongside the German enemy.

The crew of destroyed U-boats and Luftwaffe planes also ended up at the camp.

A team of Irish recruits at the Curragh Camp, just outside Dublin, where Wolfe was held for two years during World War Two

The warring nations even played football matches against each other – with the Germans defeating the largely English team 8-3, in a precursor to their repeated post-war footballing triumphs over their North Atlantic enemy.

Spitfires fly over Britain – the recovered fighter had been remarkably well preserved by the bog

But although servicemen were free to come and go from the camp Wolfe, who died in 1994, was determined to fight on.

In December 1941, just two weeks after his crash, the serviceman made his way into Dublin before hopping onto a train to Belfast which was British territory.

As his doomed plane came down he parachuted out before watching it plunge into the ground half a mile away.

Although he made his way back to RAF Eglinton, he was returned to the Irish camp where he spent a further two years before it was closed.

Belatedly he got his wish, and in 1943 he was allowed to return to frontline action as the tide of the war turned in the Allies direction.

It is only because of the unusually soft ground that the crashed Spitfire could be recovered in the 70th year after the crash.

The Irish Defence Forces said the six Browning .303 machine guns and approximately 1,000 rounds of ammunition were discovered by a team of archaeologists from Queens University buried up to 30 feet in the bog.

‘The six machine guns and ammunition have been removed by the bomb disposal team to a secure military location where they will be decommissioned and cleaned before being handed over to the Derry Museum,’ a spokesman added.

The plane will now be preserved and go on display at the Tower Museum in Derry.

Wingsuit stuntman Jeb Corliss shoots through narrow slit in Tianmen mountain at 75mph

By Gareth Finighan

Last updated at 1:18 AM on 25th September 2011

A wingsuit pilot has taken the sport of sky diving to new heights after hurtling through a narrow slit in a mountainside.

Jeb Corliss launched himself from a helicopter at 6,000ft today, zooming through the air at 75mph towards the imposing Tianmen mountain in Hunan Province, China.

The stuntman’s wingsuit, which has thin membranes between the limbs and torso, allowed the 35-year-old to glide through the air while losing altitude gradually instead of plummeting directly towards Earth.

Tight squeeze: Spectators watch as Jeb Corliss hurtles though the mountain’s natural arch hundreds of feet in the air

He was able to travel for two-thirds of a mile – and through the 4,265ft mountain’s natural archway – before releasing his parachute and descending gently to the ground. The arch measures less than 100ft across and left the daredevil with little margin for error.

Bird’s eye view: A still from a camera mounted on the helmet of Jeb Corliss as he sweeps through the corridor of rock

Stunning: The stuntman keeps his nerve as he glides through the narrow alley

Up in smoke: Corliss, seen here with another flyer, made an earlier attempt to glide through the mountain but had to perform a detour after his smoke canisters malfunctioned

Corliss, who has jumped from the Eiffel Tower and flown through a waterfall in the Swiss Alps, is the first wingsuit stuntman to fly in China. He carried out a test flight from the top of the mountain earlier this week and described conditions as ‘perfect’.

But his first attempt to fly through the Tianmen arch this afternoon had to be abandoned after smoke canisters attached to his ankles developed mechanical problems. Corliss was forced to abandon the attempt in mid-flight and had to make a detour to avoid slamming into the side of the cliff face.

On a high: Back on terra firma, Corliss described the flight as one of the greatest of his career

After completing the second, successful jump, which was broadcast on China’s television networks, the Californian said: ‘That was one of the greatest wingsuit flights of my entire life.

‘Thank you China, that was amazing. I love it, oh my God.’