Tag Archives: ieee

Visualized: a look inside iRobot’s gadget-filled ‘cool stuff room’ (video)

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Visualized a look inside iRobot's gadgetfilled 'cool stuff room'

We've all seen a Roomba at one point or another, be it picking up debris around our feet in a friend's living room or chauffeuring a courageous kitty for an entertaining clip on YouTube. Likely far less familiar, however, is iRobot's gadget-filled Massachusetts headquarters, including the museum-like "cool stuff room" in the lobby. There you'll find a large variety of autonomous devices, ranging from an early Roomba prototype that subs in a removable cloth for the vacuum to the relatively creepy My Real Baby -- an $89 doll that cries for food and offers realistic reactions to tickling. There's also plenty of industrial and military gear on hand, including a long cylindrical bot used for repairing oil rigs as they continue to operate, a full-size self-driving vehicle and a wall-climbing robot that uses suction cup wheels to ascend vertically. Some of the exhibits are downright creepy, such as a crab-like prototype which an iRobot employee referenced as being "inspired by nature," though the company's familiar household gadgets help to balance out the eerie. Sadly, the collection doesn't appear to be open to the public, though IEEE was granted a tour, which it graciously filmed for your enjoyment -- you'll find that video walkthrough just past the break.

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Visualized: a look inside iRobot's gadget-filled 'cool stuff room' (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 19 Jul 2012 21:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Gizmodo  |  sourceIEEE Spectrum  | Email this | Comments

Arthur P. Stern, instrumental in inventing the color television and GPS, passes away

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Arthur P Stern, instrumental in inventing the color television and GPS, passes away

Engadget learned that Arthur P. Stern passed away on May 24th, 2012, but just this week, The Los Angeles Times has published a laudable look back at a man that had an enormous impact on the technology that we rely on -- and, quite frankly, take for granted -- each and every day. Born in 1925 in Budapest, Hungary, Arthur went on to obtain an M.E.E. from Syracuse University, joining General Electric in 1951 and making a near-immediate impact in the realm of television. He's widely credited with pioneering the color TV that we're familiar with today (and holding a related patent -- number 2920132 -- granted in December of 1953), while also publishing initial technical papers on transistor radios. As if that weren't enough, he was also instrumental in the progress of GPS, spearheading the development of key elements in the latter portion of his career.

As fantastic as Stern was as an inventor, he was also a beloved grandfather to Joanna Stern, one of the industry's premiere technology reporters. Currently, Joanna works at ABC News, though she has spent time at LAPTOP Magazine, The Verge and right here at Engadget prior. From the entire staff, our deepest sympathies go out to a wonderful colleague and peer. The world has lost a brilliant mind, but on a personal level, a friend has lost much more.

Arthur P. Stern, instrumental in inventing the color television and GPS, passes away originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 08 Jun 2012 19:08:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Joanna Stern (Twitter)  |  sourceLos Angeles Times, Joanna Stern (Tumblr)  | Email this | Comments

Exploit uses firewalls to hijack smartphones, turns friends into foes

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Normally, firewalls at cellular carriers are your best friends, screening out malware before it ever touches your phone. University of Michigan computer science researchers have found that those first lines of defense could be your enemy through a new exploit. As long as a small piece of malware sits on a device, that handset can infer TCP data packet sequence numbers coming from the firewall and hijack a phone's internet traffic with phishing sites, fake messages or other rogue code. The trick works on at least 48 carriers that use firewalls from Check Point, Cisco, Juniper and other networking heavy hitters -- AT&T being one of those providers. Carriers can turn the sequences off, although there are consequences to that as well. The only surefire solution is to either run antivirus apps if you're on a mobile OS like Android or else to run a platform that doesn't allow running unsigned apps at all, like iOS or Windows Phone. Whether or not the exploit is a serious threat is still far from certain, but we'll get a better sense of the risk on May 22nd, when Z. Morley Mao and Zhiyun Qian step up to the podium at an IEEE security symposium and deliver their findings.

Exploit uses firewalls to hijack smartphones, turns friends into foes originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 22 May 2012 03:18:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Ars Technica  |  sourceUniversity of Michigan (PDF)  | Email this | Comments

New 802.1aq standard promises to improve Ethernet efficiency

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New 802.1aq standard promises to improve Ethernet efficiency

Yesterday the IEEE announced an update to the 802.11 WiFi standard, and today it's promptly moving on to the Ethernet side of things. The association just approved the 802.1aq Shortest Path Bridging standard, which will streamline the management and build-out of networks by using the latest-gen VLAN with a higher service capacity. Basically, a larger scale for more efficiency and less errors. Head past the break for the full presser.

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New 802.1aq standard promises to improve Ethernet efficiency originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 08 May 2012 14:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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802.11-2012 WiFi freshens up spec with 3.7GHz bands, mesh networking

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It's hard to believe that 802.11 WiFi has only had three major revisions since it was started up 15 years ago. The IEEE must be equally surprised, as it's introducing a new 802.11-2012 standard that unites 10 technologies from various amended WiFi versions under one big tent. Among the picks are new support for 3.65 and 3.7GHz bands, to avoid clashing with 2.4GHz or 5GHz networks, as well as better support for direct linking, faster cellular hand-offs, in-car networks, roaming and mesh networking. You can pay $5 to have a peek at the 2012 WiFi spec today, although we'd brace for a significant wait before smartphones and routers ship with the new 802.11 format -- we know how long it can take for a WiFi standard to become a practical reality.

Continue reading 802.11-2012 WiFi freshens up spec with 3.7GHz bands, mesh networking

802.11-2012 WiFi freshens up spec with 3.7GHz bands, mesh networking originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 07 May 2012 17:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  source802.11-2012 (IEEE Standards Store)  | Email this | Comments