Adarsha’s Star

Please refer to my previous blog post at http://newstudentresearch.blogspot.in/2017/02/what-are-we-hurtling-towards.html

I believe I have given enough time to readers to examine AJ's answer and to discuss it. Over a hundred people have visited the post above. So, it is time now for me to comment on the answer.

AJ (Adarsha Joisa) is right on both counts - the main answer as well as the answer to the sub-question. I had referred to a list of 92 stars brighter than magnitude 2.49. One of these can be said to be “nearest” to Adarsha’s Direction, defined as the intersection of the local meridian and the ecliptic at 6 AM that day. But the star may not be very close to the direction, and may even be more than ten degrees away. 

So, let us change the way we define Adarsha’s Star: On a given day, it will be the star closest to Adarsha’s Direction provided it is in the list of the 170 brightest stars (Visit http://stars.astro.illinois.edu/sow/bright.html ). The dimmest stars in this list are of apparent magnitude 3.0.

The direction of the earth’s orbital velocity around the Sun changes even during the day. So, what is Adarsha’s Star on a given day at 6 AM in Tokyo may not be the one that is Adarsha’s Star at local time 6 AM in Los Angeles on the same day. I am not going to worry about refining the designation of Adarsha’s Star any further now, particularly when none of the 170 brightest stars may be within 5 degrees of Adarsha’s Direction at a given moment.

Let us ask what the purpose of this exercise is. We want to be able to point in a direction in the sky and say that it is the direction of earth’s orbital velocity. Ten degrees of accuracy is good enough for this purpose.

What about planets? The five planets visible to the unaided eye are useful in visualizing what we are hurtling towards at a given time. They have high visibility and are always close to the ecliptic.

Let us look at the sub-question. Many of the 92 stars above magnitude 2.49 are well away from the ecliptic. Since the ecliptic is fairly stable with respect to the stellar background, many of them have no chance in my lifetime, or yours, of being Adarsha’s Star!

What is Adarsha’s Direction today? At Bangalore, the Local Sidereal Time (LST)at 6 AM today (March 9, 2017) was 16 h 53 minutes, as per https://www.iiap.res.in/personnel/reks/software/javascript/calclst.php

(All points in the sky having Right Ascension = LST are on the local meridian, by definition). I looked up a sky map to find a point on the ecliptic which had the right ascension of 16 H 53 Minutes approximately.  I found that this point is within five degrees of the bright star Antares in the constellation Scorpius. That much accuracy will do for me. I am now very happy to know I am hurtling at 110,000 kilometers per hour, roughly towards Antares!

I hope that any policeman who stops me for speeding would have a sense of proportion, and not bother about an extra twenty kilometers per hour or so!    

What are we hurtling towards?

Outline of Virgo Author: AugPi at en.wikipedia, 

Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

This is not a project idea, but an interesting question. It will help you exercise your reasoning and visualizing skills.
 

At any moment, the earth, as a whole, has a velocity in relation to the solar system due to its orbital motion around the Sun. Consider the stars as providing a frame of reference. If you represent earth’s velocity as a vector, it is pointing roughly in the direction of some star. Given that there are 92 relatively bright stars in the sky (the Wikipedia lists 92 stars brighter than magnitude 2.49), it would be nice to find a way of mapping the earth’s orbital velocity on any given night to one of these 92 stars. Then we can tell anyone interested that the earth is hurtling that night roughly in the direction of that star.  What a simple way to do this mapping? 

The first satisfactory answer posted as a comment on this blog will earn the author an honor. If the first name of the author is, say Herman, we will name star concerned as “Herman’s Star”. (Don’t make a mistake; “Herman” is used only to give an example. The star is going to be named after you!) A second clarification: Herman’s Star is not one particular star. At any given moment, there is one star which qualifies to be called thus. Over a period of time, different stars would qualify to be called Herman’s Star, one after another. To use another example, on any given date there is one Mayor in a given city, but the Mayor is replaced periodically.

A sub-question: Can every one of the 92 stars mentioned above be a Herman’s Star during your lifetime?

Let me not say more, I do not want to give you too many hints!

Your fingerprint is not your own! Meaning of privacy in India!

Photo:  https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Francis_Galton,_Finger_prints,_1892_Wellcome_L0032701.jpg

A website I often use made an offer recently – a free SIM that I could use for free for a couple of months. My wife was interested and we decided to try it. Everyone has heard of the well-known promotional offer by a cell phone company.

I filled in a form online, which said to keep the Aadhar card ready and wait for the delivery rider. He turned up in a day and asked if we had received an SMS message. We had and my wife brought her cell phone to read out that SMS. Meanwhile, the man pulled out a fingerprint reader. What was that for? He said that she should have her fingerprint recorded and that their system would get it verified. We said we did not wish to give the finger print as we were not confident that it would be safely handled. Instead we offered other ID and address proof and were willing to give a Xerox copy. The man said that would not be acceptable and we spoke to his supervisor about it over phone. The supervisor said that “this” was a government scheme and the alternative was not acceptable.

In that case, we said, we did not want the SIM!

The Aadhar card was devised by well-meaning people who had thought of various safeguards to avoid misuse. However, this is a country in which privacy means little. A person sharing a train ride could strike up a conversation with you and within minutes, ask you where you work and at what salary!

No wonder, anyone could walk in and have you give them your fingerprint to be used by some app on their cellphone! How does the customer know that the fingerprint will not be stored and used on a different occasion to “prove” his/her presence at some strange place? Does the law provide any safeguards? After all, the delivery man need not even be a staff member of the cell phone company, but be an agent hired on daily wages. You may not even learn his name or ask for his ID.

This poses major risks in a country in which over 25% of adults are illiterate.

We need researchers to find ways and means of making identification possible without any risk of abuse of the technology.  

Secure voting Protocols for Online Elections

Photo by: Simon A. Eugster, Sealing wax on letters, CC BY-SA 3.0

Please refer to http://obvioustruths.blogspot.in/2017/01/failure-modes-of-internet-based.html for a short post on risks in online voting. This is a follow-up article discussing a few interesting technical issues. The post quoted above deals with the current state of the art and says

“A service provider usually makes available the software and related infrastructure for running an election to the entity holding the election over the Internet. The service provider is selected to be a trusted partner, and is beyond suspicion”.

It is quite unnecessary and undesirable to use systems that require the service provider to share secrets with the voters. A cryptographic technique named  

Homomorphic_encryption

enables voters to encrypt and publish their votes. Election results can be computed using the encrypted votes without decrypting individual votes. We can expect such techniques to be in practical use in future. A whole variety of safeguards are, however, required to ensure that an election is carried out in a fair and transparent manner without any mischief-makers being able to alter the results.

Discussions of some of the considerations involved can be found in

Swiss Online Voting Protocol  (select from the displayed page the PDF document with this name and download it) and in 

A Review of the Underlying Concepts of Electronic Voting

Creating an online service and an app for conducting secure elections and persuading organizations to use them is not mere technical work. It requires entrepreneurial spirit, management & marketing abilities in addition to technical knowledge and skills. A student project involving a team of three or four students could address this problem.

Straightforward engineering is not sufficient to implement a system in which a service provider does not have to share secrets. The need for advanced cryptographic techniques and the need to design a system free of weaknesses make this project a special one. If it was any simpler, many software houses would be marketing their solutions by now.

Can You Invent a Better World through Technology?

  

(Don’t worry! The competition described below is quite different from the one illustrated by the photograph above!)

IEEE Computer Society offers you an exciting opportunity to participate in a global student competition. Students are invited to create an innovative solution, based on the IEEE Computer Society 2022 report, that will solve a real-world issue. Visit

https://www.computer.org/web/membership/student-challenge?lf1=7391628140d264316068135c61505191

The IEEE report mentioned above focuses on 3D printing, big data and analytics, open intellectual property movement, massively online open courses, security cross-cutting issues, universal memory, 3D integrated circuits, photonics, cloud computing, computational biology and bioinformatics, device and nanotechnology, sustainability, high-performance computing, the Internet of Things, life sciences, machine learning and intelligent systems, natural user interfaces, networking and interconnectivity, quantum computing, software-defined networks, multicore, and robotics for medical care. Visit

https://www.computer.org/cms/ComputingNow/2022Report.pdf

Surely, the world will change a lot in the coming years and the 23 technologies covered in the IEEE Report will contribute to much of that change. Your challenge is to visualize an innovative solution based on some of these technologies and describe it briefly. Reward to the winner?  Travel expenses and some money!

Making Small Payments Work

Cashless payments are getting a lot of attention nowadays, but have you seen an auto not affiliated to Ola which accepts a cashless payment? I haven’t seen one! I believe that the notion of cashless payments is a bit forbidding for a significant fraction of the people, including many auto drivers. When I talk about auto drivers, it includes people manning small shops as well. I had filed a related post earlier. Visit

http://newstudentresearch.blogspot.in/2016/07/the-challenge-of-small-payments.html

A society that does not facilitate cashless transactions is a senseless society. The issue is not merely one of black money; it is also about avoiding waste of people’s time.

Why do so many of our people insist on continuing to use cash? I believe that that technical people involved should study the difficulties new users of technology face and work to eliminate these difficulties. Using technology should make transactions easier, not harder! The app on a mobile phone should require very little from the customer making a payment or the driver receiving it. You should be able to touch the app’s icon, point the phone’s camera at the auto’s meter or a similar display in a shop and touch the icon a second time. That should transfer money from your bank account to the recipient’s bank account or digital wallet. Who has a wallet, who uses a bank account, what is the name of the bank, etc., should be irrelevant at the moment the transaction occurs. Neither the customer nor the recipient of the payment should have to enter any numbers or addresses into a phone.

Character recognition is robust enough to let the app read off the amount to be paid as displayed; the app should similarly read the recipient’s Unified Payments Interface address from a sticker on the meter. (For information on UPI, visit Unified Payments Interface). 

While the front end described above has to be implemented, UPI already provides you the infrastructure to support it. I believe that student projects can easily achieve the goal of demonstrating such a user-friendly front-end for cashless transactions, integrated into the UPI network. A word for those who wish to carry out this project: print information to be read by the app using an Optical Character Recognition (OCR) font. This may not be necessary if you use a standardized font carefully chosen for the purpose, but it may simplify your task.  

Research related to financial inclusion

                              A socio-economic survey camp, Howrah, West Bengal

                           Report by Devinder Sharma, http://indiatogether.org/poverty-in-rural-india-poverty 
                                          Picture: Wikimedia Commons

There is a desire in India that the country should soon become a “cashless economy”. It is important that researchers in the fields of banking, commerce, management, ethnography, design, computer science should look into the problems that need to be addressed in taking banking to the poor and the illiterate.

The following questions are worth studying in this context:

What are the skills and knowledge required to operate a bank account, to use a debit card, and to use an ATM? Can any literate person manage these tasks? What level of literacy does one require? Can we do surveys to find out if people with low levels of education have (or do not have) useful access to banking? What are the practices for issuing cheque-books, debit cards etc.? Have any studies answering questions like these? Where have they been published? 

These are problems of major interest in India. “India currently has the largest population of illiterate adults in the world with 287 million”, said a 2014 report in “The Hindu” newspaperhttp://www.thehindu.com/news/national/indias-illiterate-population-largest-in-the-world-says-unesco-report/article5631797.ece

“A 2015 Unesco report said that in terms of absolute numbers, India - with 28.7 crore illiterates - was the country with the largest number of adults without basic literacy skills in 2010-11 compared to 2000-01 when it had 30.4 crore illiterates”. Visit http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Literacy-rate-up-but-so-is-illiteracy/articleshow/50749744.cms

A publication by the Indian Banks Association said “Normally no cheque book facility is provided to illiterate persons and blind persons. However, to meet periodic repayment of retail loans, utility bills etc. we will consider issuing of cheque book with safeguards to protect your interest”. Visit http://www.iba.org.in/bcsbi_code.asp and look for the paragraph with the heading “8.1.5 Special Accounts”.

Compare the change mentioned in the Unesco/Times-of-India reference cited above. Illiteracy declined by only 1.7% from 30.4% to 28.7% over the first decade of the 21st century. We hear the phrase “financial inclusion” fairly frequently. Unless the plight of the 28.7 Crore is well understood and documented, it would be difficult to extend the benefit of banks accounts, ATMs and cards to them. We should also find out if all those that are said to be literate do in fact benefit from banking. Are there several crores among them who find banking too intimidating to use in any significant manner?

Using ATMs to do currency tracking

                                   Photo: "ProjectManhattan", From Wikimedia, 

          Published under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0license.

This post is a sequel to the one at http://newstudentresearch.blogspot.in/2016/11/the-real-big-data-sources-and-laundries.html I will assume that the reader has read that post before reading this one.

Most ATMs do not keep track of who was issued which currency note. Here I will argue that this can be done with suitable software modifications. Let me make one question at the outset. Limits set for withdrawals and deposits using ATMs do not permit large transactions. So, why bother about ATM transactions? The answer is that not including ATMs in surveillance could create loopholes that would be quickly exploited. For instance, that a fair amount of “black money” is likely to be “white-washed” by using paid intermediaries to deposit smaller amounts (say, Rs 40,000 each) into their own bank accounts. These will be withdrawn later and given back to the holders of black money. So, ATM transactions should also be covered by currency tracking. How can this be done?

Currency notes are loaded into ATMs in multiple trays. New currency notes being delivered to banks can be in tray-sized stacks with contiguous serial numbers. Old notes to be loaded into ATM trays can be counted by modified currency counting machines (CCMs) so that modified ATM software can keep track of what high denomination notes were issued to which customer. Most computations and data storage can be done on centralized servers on a network that drives the ATMs. This will require that each ATM reports to a central server before a transaction how many high denomination notes are remaining in each tray loaded into it. They should also report how many high denomination notes are issued to which customer from which tray, every time a withdrawal takes place. The ATM need not handle the serial numbers at all, as they will be stored on the server. So, if an ATM has reported that its Tray No 3 has 630 notes left, and that it is now issuing 20 notes from that tray to the customer carrying out the transaction, the server can find out the 20 serial numbers of the notes issued, from its own files. Deposits through ATMs can be reported easily, as bank staff have to count notes in such deposits anyway; they can use a modified CCM.

Do we need to modify ATM hardware to do currency tracking? No. There seems to be no reason to do that.

So, we conclude that it is not very difficult track currency notes being handled by an ATM. Software changes necessary do not have to be done nationwide in a few weeks. The changes being made do not change the primary functions of an ATM; they only add a few additional functions.

The Real Big Data – sources and laundries of black money

The recent demonetization raises interesting questions that can trigger student research. What can we do with currency counting machines that read serial numbers of high denomination notes they handle and send them to a computer? Cash being deposited by customers can be counted and read by them keeping track of which notes are being deposited into which bank account. They can send a list of serial numbers to a computer, to link them to a given account. Payments of any significant amount of money over the counter can also be covered similarly. I will deal with serial number tracking of notes handled by ATMs in my next post; for the moment, assume that those notes can also be tracked.

Will this lead to draconian surveillance? What risks does such a technology pose?

Visualize a currency tracking system in which every bank branch reports serial numbers of notes it issues, or receives from, customers to a central authority identifying the customer involved. This could have many uses. For instance, suppose the police have found 10,000 Rs with a terrorist who was apprehended or killed. If an individual or organization had received those notes from a bank branch in the previous week, investigators would love to have that information.

A single note going from A to B may not mean much; A might have paid his milkman, who bought chappals from B with that money and B might have deposited the cash in his bank account. However, if ten notes had all gone from A to B within about a week there is some probability that A transferred them to B directly. What we are talking about is a system that will show currency flow from any given account A to another given account B over a given period. Flow through random middlemen would not explain a significant number of notes that were issued to A turning up in account B by sheer accident. In any case, a high flow of identified currency notes from A to B could flag it for the attention of Income Tax authorities, even if it is not dependable evidence of wrong doing. 

The research question is this: Can we identify a dozen economically significant applications that would justify the cost of this surveillance? We have thousands of students who are studying the use of big data techniques. They could be students of management, economics or engineering. Some of them could perhaps investigate this question.

A couple of concepts that may be relevant to research. We can define a bank account as a possible source of “black money” if a significant number of high denomination notes issued to it do not turn up in the banking system for a specified period. The presumption would be that A has paid it to someone who hoards cash. Similarly, we can define C as a “possible laundry” if high denomination notes not in circulation for a long time turn up in C’s bank account frequently!

To give an example, it would be worth finding out if employees in specific types of economic activities such as trading in gold and jewellery, or construction, are potential laundries. The presumption is that they could be paid in cash, using (unaccounted) money received in cash from customers. Similarly, if A is a possible source of black money it would be worth asking if he invests a lot in real estate or in jewellery.

Now, come to the feasibility of reading the serial numbers. Automated reading of numeric characters in a few known fonts has always been easy. This becomes easier when those numbers occur in specific locations on precisely cut sheets of paper and are in a unique colour contrasting with the background. In some series, the Reserve Bank of India has printed serial numbers using varying size font instead of uniform height numerals. That does not pose a major problem for automated reading of numbers.

There are some commercial products that handle serial numbers on currency notes: http://www.made-in-china.com/showroom/fionafocusbanker/product-detailIeaJGNTChXfy/China-Fb-810-Money-Counter-with-Serial-Number-Reading-Function.html

What about the serial numbers being unique or otherwise? It does not matter. We are looking at the probability of a currency note traveling from A to B. Rare coincidences of a large set of notes with the same numbers (as set mentioned above) traveling from some C to some D at about the same time is statistically improbable.

Another research question. Traditionally, currency notes are said to be fungible. The presence of machine readable serial numbers threatens this fungibility. Payments in cash are generally believed to ensure privacy. So, would currency tracking threaten this privacy? If I was a college student buying a bottle of whiskey, would I be worried that the authorities would inform my mom and dad about it? Surely, they have others things to do! I need not worry. Who should? Those who use the privacy of cash flow to evade taxes? Should we protect their privacy?

One last question: What would be the utility of a partial system in which deposits and payments over the counter are the only ones tracked, and that too only if the amounts exceed a certain value? Does the reporting of serial numbers of notes involved in such transactions add value? Or is it enough to identify the bank account holder and the amount involved?

My aim here is to share what I think are interesting questions. Not to provide answers!    

Good old tiles with embedded solar panels

I wish to trigger several student projects around the idea of using roof tiles to tap solar energy.  I think that students of architecture, design, or civil/electrical engineering would find this most interesting.

At the higher end, Tesla Motors in the US has showcased advanced batteries for home use to store solar energy as well as efficient and attractive solar tiles. Visit

https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/31/why-teslas-new-solar-roof-tiles-and-home-battery-are-such-a-big-deal/

However, affordability in countries like India makes it necessary for them to develop their own solutions. I urge students in such countries to try their own designs. The greatest value would be in areas where power failures/cuts are frequent, and of course in rural areas which are not electrified. As the cost of electrical power keeps going up at the consumer end, many rural homes may choose solar solutions to cut expenditure. 

Look at what is called a Mangalore Tile in India: 

http://www.btiles.com/roofing-tiles/mangalore-roof-tiles.html

It is usually made of clay and is 10 to 16 inches in size. I think that there is some logic in making solar tiles of the same size. Such solar tiles can be used along with the traditional Mangalore Tiles to build a roof and use only a fraction of the roof area to produce electricity. An alternative would be to make a big tile 20 x 32 inches in size, to replace four Mangalore Tiles. A large tile would be more susceptible to breaking during transportation and installation. So, some reinforcement should be considered to make them less fragile. Ideally, the tile should provide a connector on the lower side, that is inside the dwelling, to minimize wiring required. It would be great if the tile provides for supporting a lithium ion battery below it. This would enable keeping the battery inside the house. Care would have to be taken to insulate the battery from the heat that would emanate from the tile during daylight hours. An air gap between the tile and battery would help. It would be nice if the tile also provides mechanical support for suspending a small ceiling lamp with a reflector and LED. Then the wiring required would be minimal. 

How would you turn the lamp on or off? A hanging power cord with a switch at the lower end? Or a remote-control mechanism that responds to the TV set’s remote control when it is pointed at the tile? 

If you manage to get all this done, you can then consider if you can buy a DC driven small fan and incorporate that as well into the system. By then you might consider using two or more big tiles connected in parallel. The tile design should provide for serial or parallel connection of individual tiles.  

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) of the US provides information about solar energy incident at different places in North West India.  http://mnre.gov.in/National%20Renewable%20Energy%20Laboratory/contents/solar_products.html

In general, most places in India seem to receive about 4 to 7 kWh/m² per day. That means that a big tile (as defined above) would generate only a fraction of this energy. Such a tile would have energy generating area somewhat less than 20x32 sq. inches, which is about 0.4 sq. meter.  A tiled roof would receive direct sunlight only for a few hours per day, and the energy it receives would depend upon the place it is in, the slope of the roof and the direction it is facing. Then there is the efficiency of energy conversion, perhaps about 10%. My guess is that with good engineering one could expect to get about 0.05 kWh per big tile, enough to power one or two 6W LED lamps for a few hours a day.

There are solar lighting solutions in the market that could provide parts for experiments with tile based solar energy system. Visit, for instance, 

_{http://www.amazon.in/Lighting-Belifal-Electric-Charger-charging/dp/B0132IAGDW?tag=googinhydr18418-21&tag=googinkenshoo-21&ascsubtag=77e5dfcc-31a2-4f56-bfb6-221423773093 or} 

_{http://ledsolar.in/product/solar-home-lighting-system-dc-12v-by-belifal-with-2-led-bulbs-electric-charger-battery-usb-port-for-mobile-charging-and-20w-solar-panel/}

_end

Personal Health Records on cell phones

I bought a new cell phone recently and was happy to find a facility it provided for creating a simple Electronic Health Record (EHR) for myself. EHRs can be quite complex as you can find by looking through the document http://www.nhp.gov.in/NHPfiles/Comments_invited_on_the_draft_of_Revised_EHR_Standards_for_India.pdf

What will work in the near future are simple forms of records that can be created on one’s cell phone by oneself or by a hospital. Typically, the EHR should provide for capturing information such as:

•      Name, date of birth, blood type, and emergency contacts
•      Name and phone number of doctor
•      Major illnesses and surgeries (giving dates)
•      A list of medicines being taken with dosages
•      Any allergies
•      Any diseases one has had over many years
•      Major illnesses suffered by one's parents, brothers or sisters
•      Habits such as smoking and alcohol consumption 

I urge students to experiment with simple apps to enable the creation and use of EHRs. Why an app? Why not a simple file created with a text editor?

I think an app can provide many advantages such as the following:

• The app will enable content to be created with prompting, and to be displayed when necessary. Users with sufficient knowledge may handle the app themselves. In other cases, someone else could handle the app on the user’s behalf. The app may protect the contents by going through a dialog that prevents careless handling by users who cannot cope with the complexity of handling medical information using a text editor.
• The app may allow a hospital staff member to access the data using Bluetooth connection and update it. Design issues that arise include safeguards to protect privacy.
• A well-designed app may allow the storage of doctor-generated information on the cell phone, replacing handwritten notes. This may include a section on medicines to be issued by a pharmacy giving dosages and directions for use.
• The app may allow a display of directions for taking the medicines and may also provide an alarm at the right time, once a day or more often as required.
• The app may give information in the patient’s own language whenever this is possible.

Different apps may provide different levels of capabilities, but should ideally be able to handle migration of essential information between apps at different levels as the user changes his cell phone or app. An interesting question that arises is that of securely storing doctor-generated information. Perhaps this can be digitally signed in apps running on smart phones with adequate resources.

The important point to note is that projects like this work best in environments in which the developer works closely with a doctor or hospital. Pure technology is not enough.  

end

A book and an article about remarkable innovators in the space race

You must read the blog post by Prof Vivek Wadhwa of CMU, at

http://wadhwa.com/2016/09/19/the-renegade-who-dreamed-of-going-into-space-and-started-a-race/  

It tells us about the Penguin book How to Make A Spaceship by Julian Guthrie.

It also talks about the great aircraft designer (visit About Burt Rutan and  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burt_Rutan ).  I had passed through the Seattle Airport a few days ago and had spent a few minutes admiring the mock up of the Voyager aircraft Rutan had built for flying around the world non-stop, without refueling, thirty years ago. (Visit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutan_Voyager ) So, I was doubly thrilled to read Vivek Wadhwa’s article today.

There is a great quote from Burt Rutan I would like to bring to your attention as I conclude this short note:

“breakthroughs help define our species – without them, we get boredom and mediocrity and low expectations for the future” (Visit http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2006/10/14/burt-rutan-on-breakthrough-innovation/ ).

Auditory cues for directions and distance

Smart phones provide facilities that can be used in new ways to help the visually challenged. They can also be used to help vehicle operators like pilots and car drivers. They could be important in special environments like space and underwater. 

Cartoon: https://pixabay.com/en/boy-dance-music-headset-headphone-1271898/

Imagine a visually challenged student on the school playgrounds. A beep-beep sound at a set frequency can give him information about the direction and distance of the entrance of the main building from his current position. Assuming that he listens to this information through stereo earphones, the directional cue could be given by a suitable, short delay between the signals sent to the two ears. Further, the signal sent to the ear facing the school main gate could be louder by a computed amount. Important locations like the main building entrance could be marked by a cell phone acting as a GPS beacons for this purpose, broadcasting an ID number and a code indicating the nature of auditory cue that the listener should receive. The student’s smartphone would have a good compass that gives the software a reading of the direction the student is facing at a given instance. In future there could be a gyroscopic sensor to provide short term accuracy in direction sensing. 

It is possible to represent a direction, say north, by a steady whistle at a low volume. This could be in the form of a common complex waveform sent to the two ears, but one of them being delayed in a suitable manner, enabling the user to sense where north is in relation to the direction he is facing.

Multiple locations can be represented simultaneously by different types of beeps. Two dimensions are available to uniquely identify a signal – one being the number of beeps/second, and the other, the frequency of the underlying sub-carrier that carries the beep. Either one of these cues could give distance information. 

Some interesting research questions are:

1.   How many different locations can be signaled effectively?

2.   Can we offer training to increase the number of locations that a user can be aware of at a given time?

3.   What are the best ways of presenting distance/direction information to a user?

4.   Do we always need earphones? Or, can we use stereo-speakers in a car to give the driver some information about cars near him that he cannot see?

5.   Can the car speakers also give the driver information about other vehicles approaching or receding from his own? Can this, for instance, be done by change of the sub-carrier frequency carrying the beeps representing one of the nearby cars?

6.   What is a good auditory code to represent a section of a street? For instance, could a street be represented by a few virtual objects moving up and down the street, sending appropriate beeps?

end 

A Beacon in a Balloon to Broadcast Alerts after an Aircraft Mishap

An AN 32 aircraft of the Indian Air Force was reported lost over the Bay of Bengal on July 22, 2016. Visit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Indian_Air_Force_An-32_disappearance 

Incidentally, Wikipedia offers a very interesting article on the aircraft AN 32; it mentions that the “estimated price for a modernized AN-32 version is 15 million US dollars”.

This made me revisit a posting in this blog dated March 22, 2014. Visit http://newstudentresearch.blogspot.in/2014/03/the-need-to-invent-secondary-data.html

I have another possibility to explore in this posting. Is it possible to design and develop a device that, like an ejection seat, would be released after an aircraft mishap to carry information and broadcast it in the short wave band? The device, possibly mounted in an external pod, would monitor data such as the flight path, altitude, attitude and acceleration and store them in a secondary data recorder (SDS). Ideally, it would have its own sensors and operate independently of the aircraft’s instruments. The flight path would be recorded as a series of points in terms of GPS coordinates. The device, after ejection, would inflate a helium balloon and release it. The SDS would constitute one part of the payload of the balloon, along with a short wave transmitter. The alerts would be broadcast using a non-directional shortwave antenna sending out essential information giving GPS coordinates of where the device was ejected as well as the current position of the balloon. If, after a couple of days, the balloon comes down due to leakage of helium, its payload would continue sending wireless signals to enable its recovery. It would float if it lands on water.

Such a solution would present many challenges to a designer. What would be the difficulties in launching a helium balloon from a device ejected from a flying aircraft? What would be the security risks in using such a device with military aircraft? What should be done to make the SDS easily recoverable? Can the balloon drop it with a small parachute on wireless command? What would the transmitter power be, and what antennas would it require?

The proposed solution has several attractive features. The alert could be received at multiple airports within minutes of a mishap, enabling the quick launch of missions to recover any survivors. The system will work over land and sea. Search aircraft and ships would not have to spend weeks searching over tens of thousands of square kilometers. 

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The challenge of small payments

The huge population of India and the tradition of making small payments in cash only has created a problem. It is difficult to get 5 Rupee coins leave alone smaller ones. It is very common for shop keepers and auto rickshaw drivers to tell you they do not have change. I suspect that the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) finds it costly to mint coins and to print small denomination notes.

Innovation is called for. Imagine you can “beam up” amounts such as Rupees 57.50! All you should be doing is to enter 57.50 into an app, point your cell phone at a device in the shop and click a button. The amount should be transferred and a receipt in the name of the merchant, giving a transaction reference number, should be saved in your app. The app implementer can choose the mode of signaling, using the LED flash on the cell phone, or using Bluetooth or WiFi. Ideally the app should automatically turn on Bluetooth or WiFi even if the customer has not switched them on. The app can switch them off after the payment.

What about the transaction cost at the Bank’s end? Don’t worry, the banks know various ways of passing this cost on to the merchant! In any case, this cannot be very high; further any such cost will be more than compensated by faster handling of small payments at the merchant end.  

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Research Science Initiative - IIT Madras

The following post by Dr Sasikumar of CDAC would be of value to every young student interested in scientific research.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/rsic-amazing-initiative-iit-madras-m-sasikumar?trk=mp-reader-card

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Unfriendly human-machine interfaces

A few days ago, my wife got a text message from an app-based cab company. It told her she had not used their cabs for some time and offered her an incentive. It gave her some code like MYCAB and indicated that if she used it at the time of making her “next” booking she could get Rs 50 off from the bill. This incentive was offered for the next two rides.

I wondered what was wrong. The designer of this scheme must have gone to some extradinary design school! Anyone else would have implemented a mechanism to give her Rs 50 off for the next two rides without a code.

There is a possible reason. Their software provides for special codes to be recognized for giving discounts, but does not provide for marking a set of customers as qualifying for a specified discount for a specified number of times. If this true, we have to blame the software designers and not the company that uses the software.

I should, however, say that the design of the software did some good to the company. My wife did not remember the text message and the code it mentioned, when she booked a cab. Further she discovered that when she did another booking later on, the system did not accept the code. Remember, the message had said your “next” two rides! I don’t know what had happened.  I suspect that the system had invalidated the code on the grounds that she had booked a cab without using the code! So, the later booking did not qualify as the “next” booking! Surely a very smart and endearing practice to enforce using your software!

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Articles and videos introducing computer science topics

You have some time free and would like to spend it on learning something interesting? Here are some recommendations. This list was originally put together for use by a few students who are going to engineering school in a couple of months. However, it would be useful to a variety of people, young and old, who are interested in learning some computer science, irrespective of the subject they studied, or are studying, for their degree.

1.       https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-computer-science-mitx-6-00-1x-7
You can audit any EDX course and pay no fees. Video lectures are good. You do not have any commitment to complete the course. You can take online exams and get your mark sheets

2.       Introduction to cellular technology. A very useful introduction. http://www.radio-electronics.com/info/cellulartelecomms/cellular_concepts/mobile-basics-concepts.php  A set of URLs for more information on specific topics is given at the end. They are useful to get additional information.

3.       http://vfu.bg/en/e-Learning/Computer-Networks--Introduction_Computer_Networking.pdf    

4.       http://www.ucl.ac.uk/archaeology/cisp/database/manual/node1.html

5.       Linear Algebra http://www.math.northwestern.edu/~len/LinAlg/

The books on Linear Algebra and on Discrete Maths do not have to be completed at a stretch. You can read one or more chapters at a time.

6.       http://www.cse.iitd.ernet.in/~bagchi/courses/discrete-book/fullbook.pdf

For most topics the Wikipedia chapter is usually the best introduction. Books, articles and other forms of text are not the only sources of scholarly information. Selected videos from Ted talks and YouTube are very useful too. I find the videos at  www.edx.org providing serious coverage of a topic most useful for learning from. Ted talks and YouTube videos are shorter and provide introduction, inspiration and overviews. 

In general, I trust sites that are in the .edu domain more than the ones in .com domain. But there are many useful articles on .com sites as well; for example, https://www.batterystuff.com/kb/articles/solar-articles/solar-info.html

You will find the following items interesting.

7.       http://inventionconvention.com/americasinventor/dec97issue/section2.html

8.       http://ed.ted.com/lessons/the-turing-test-can-a-computer-pass-for-a-human-alex-gendler

9.       http://ed.ted.com/lessons/the-turing-test-can-a-computer-pass-for-a-human-alex-gendler#review

10.   https://www.ted.com/talks/steve_jobs_how_to_live_before_you_die

11.   https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLF7032F8EB1A4F9E2

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A Computer Vision Challenge

Some people type into some food log a list of items they ate and get an estimate daily calorie intake. Some, find it impractical. My daughter says that she would like her activity tracker look at her plate of food at each meal and update its log! I thought it was crazy to ask for that when I heard it two years ago. I am wiser now, and think this can be achieved by a number of steps of innovation. As a first step, I announce this challenge, named Preethi’s Challenge in honor of the original thinker!

1.   The challenge is to recognize the items and quantities of food from their photographs. I visualize that you would use a tablet to take the picture and run the app on the same device. However, you are free to do it any other way, like using a webcam or a smart phone for picture taking and a laptop to run the app.

2.   If you have bought ready-to-eat food and its container has a bar code to identify it, the app is welcome to scan it and use the info.

3.   The app would use pictures with training information entered into “learning software” that will use machine learning techniques to recognize the food item and estimate its quantity and calorie content.

4.   You will train the app, giving it photographs of named objects annotating them with weight and information like calories/hundred-grams. Don’t worry about the training effort. Training one app would serve millions of users who are going to use copies of that app!

5.   You can use a standard plate of known diameter.

6.   You could also have only one item of food on the plate at a given time (at least at the start of the project).

7.   A good solution is to have the photographs taken by looking down, say at 45 degrees below the horizontal. This would give information about the item of food in X, Y and Z dimensions. The plate’s outline provides information on the scale. If the app finds it difficult to estimate calories from that photograph, it could ask you for a second photograph taken from another angle.

8.   The app should calculate the calorie content to some reasonable accuracy, say 10%.

9.   You can allow the app to ask for additional information when it finds it necessary, for instance, when it sees a plate with vegetables. It could ask, say, if it is boiled potatoes.

10.If you want to cheat, you could use a small plate that sits on a kitchen weighing device showing the total weight in digital form. Your app should recognize the numbers.  It could of course use stored information on the weight of the plate and deduct that.

11.You can make a second version of the app, which should take in more complex photographs, say with multiple food items, to make the app easier to use.

One last word: Use every trick you can think of to make this an easy-to-use app. Technology alone may not provide the best solution!