Technologyquarterly December 1St 2012

The many uses of Detecting oil spills The man behind eye tracking in the Arctic the Predator TechnologyQuarterly December 1st 2012

The dream of the medical tricorder How “Star Trek” is inspiring diagnostic add-ons for smartphones

TQCOV-DECEMBER.2012.indd 1 19/11/2012 15:22 The Economist Technology Quarterly December 1st 2012 Monitor 1

Contents

On the cover Along with teleportation and speech-controlled computers, the medical tricorder, a portable diagnostic tool, was one of many imaginary future technologies featured in Star Trek. It is now inspiring a host of real-life medical add-ons for An internet of airborne things smartphones, page 8 Monitor 1 An internet of airborne things, auxetic materials, agricultural robots, motion-capture systems in sport, cardboard bicycles, mobile-phone Networking: Enthusiasts dream of building a drone-powered internet to recycling, an unusual new type of lens, and who won our carry objects rather than data. Are they mad? Innovation awards HE spread of mobile phones in devel- charged one before proceeding to the next Dierence engine Toping countries in the past decade has station. The routing of drones and the delivered enormous social and economic allocation of specic packages to specic 7 The PC all over again? benets. By providing a substitute for drones would all be handled automatical- Fans of 3D printing should watch travel, phones can make up for bad roads ly, and deliveries would thus be possible out for a regulatory clampdown and poor transport infrastructure, helping over a wide area using a series of hops. It traders nd better prices and boosting is, in short, a physical implementation of Medical technology entrepreneurship. But although infor- the packet switching model that directs 8 A doctor in your pocket mation can be delivered by phoneand, data across the internet, which is why its Smartphones go to medical in a growing number of countries, money creators call their scheme the matternet. school, thanks to Star Trek transferred as wellthere are some things Over the matternet, so the vision goes, that must be delivered physically. For hospitals could send urgent medicines to small items that are needed urgently, such remote clinics more quickly than they Detecting oil spills as medicines, why not use drone heli- could via roads, and blood samples could 11 Trouble under the ice copters to deliver them, bypassing the be sent and returned within hours. A As oil companies move into the need for roads altogether? farmer could place an order for a new Arctic, new tools are needed That, at least, was the idea cooked up tractor part by text message and pay for it last year at Singularity University, a Silicon via mobile money-transfer. A supplier Valley summer school where eager en- many miles away would then take the Navigation technology trepreneurs gather in the hope of solving part to the local matternet station for 13 Finding the way inside humanity’s grandest challenges with new airborne dispatch via drone. Satellite navigation is great, but technologies. The plan is to build a net- doesn’t work indoors. What will? work of autonomously controlled, multi- Mind over matter rotor unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to Andreas Raptopoulos, the entrepreneur Computer interfaces carry small packages of a standardised who led the academic team, reckons that size. Rather than having a drone carry the scheme would be competitive with 15 The eyes have it each package directly from sender to building all-weather roads. A case study Eye-tracking technology is being recipient, which could involve a long of the Maseru district of Lesotho put the put to a wide range of uses journey beyond the drone’s ying range, cost of a network of 50 base-stations and the idea is to build a network of base 150 drones at $900,000, compared with Brain scan stations, each no more than 10km (6 miles) $1m for a 2km, one-lane road. The ad- 17 The dronefather from the next, with drones carrying pack- vantage of roads, however, is that they can A prole of Abe Karem, creator ages between them. carry heavy goods and people, whereas of the modern military drone After arrival at a station, a drone would matternet drones would be limited to swap its depleted battery pack for a fully payloads of 2kg in a standard 10-litre con- 1 2 Monitor The Economist Technology Quarterly December 1st 2012

2 tainer. But the scheme is potentially life- gee cords, obviously. But they are con- saving in remote areas, and might also structed in a similar way, using a tech- have commercial potential to deliver nique called weft insertion to wrap a thin small packages in the rich world. Hook’s law line of high-strength material such as Since the original proposal, however, Kevlar around a core made of specially an ideological disagreement has emerged processed elastic polyester. These threads over how best to implement this drone- are then woven into auxetic cloth that can powered internet for objects. Two separate be cut into particular shapes for use in groups are now taking rather dierent Materials: Auxetic substances, various applications. approaches. The rst, led by Mr Raptopou- which get fatter rather than thinner Auxetic materials have two useful los, has formed a company, called Mat- properties. One is the shape change per se. ternet, to develop the drone and base- when stretched, could be useful in a The other is that the shape change absorbs station hardware, and the software that wide range of applications and stores energy, and does so rapidly. If a will co-ordinate them. The company then OBERT HOOKE was a contemporary sheet of the material is hit in one place, the hopes to sell the technology to govern- Rof Isaac Newton and even more of a energy of the impact is thus spread over ment health departments and non-prot polymath. Sic transit gloria mundi. These the whole sheet. Then, when the material groups. Just as mobile phones have days Hooke is well known only for his law relaxes back into its original shape, that spurred development in poor countries, of elasticity: that the amount a material energy is dissipated from the entire sur- Mr Raptopoulos hopes drone delivery stretches is proportional to the force ap- face, rather than just the point of impact. will do something similar. plied. Such stretching, inter alia, causes the Auxetix has already tested a bomb- The second group is called Aria (au- material to get thinner, of course. Unless, resistant curtain made of such material. It tonomous roadless intelligent array). It that is, the substance in question is an can stop fragments of glass and similar believes the matternet should be free, auxetic material, in which case it gets shrapnel, but is thin enough to be translu- open and based on standardised proto- fatter. Robert Hooke’s near namesake, cent and thus let a useful amount of day- cols, just like the internet. It is developing Patrick Hook, the boss of Auxetix, a small light through a window. If hit by a blast, these protocols and building prototypes rm based in south-west England, hopes the curtain expands. That creates pores that adhere to them, and inviting others to to exploit this weirdness to make every- which allow the air of the blast to pass follow suit. Aria is not promoting any thing from body armour to dental oss. through, so that the cloth is not damaged particular use of the technology, and will To understand how an auxetic material but the pores are also small enough to stop not necessarily build or run networks works, imagine a rubber bungee cord with the passage of solid debris. The kinetic itself. We understand there will be hun- a piece of shing line wrapped around its energy of the debris is then absorbed by dreds of applications, but we are not length in an open spiral. If you pull the the material. interested in running such applications, line tight, it straightens, and the cord is The rm also hopes to use its unusual says Arturo Pelayo, Aria’s co-founder. We distorted into a spiral around it. And that material to make body armour. The Amer- won’t aim for understanding every single spiral is wider than the undistorted cord. If ican army’s current kit, known as In- geographical and cultural context where several such line-wrapped bungee cords terceptor Body Armour, weighs as much the system might be used. are laid alongside each other and the as 15kg including ceramic-plate inserts. Both groups have recently started shing lines pulled tight simultaneously, Soldiers are obviously keen to reduce this testing their rst prototypes. Matternet ran then they push each other aside, increas- weight. Dr Hook has tested prototype a series of successful eld tests of its proto- ing the area that they cover and the vol- auxetic armour that is 10% lighter than type UAVs in the Dominican Republic ume they occupy. In other words, they get Interceptor while, he hopes, being just as and Haiti in September, and met local bigger when stretched. eective at absorbing impacts. groups to sell the idea. Meanwhile, Aria The threads from which Auxetix’s If the new material works in these also spent the summer testing, and show- materials are made are thinner than bun- military applications, then Dr Hook hopes 1 cased its ideas, such as the use of retro- tted shipping containers for base stations, at the Burning Man festival held in the Nevada desert in August. Flying drones in high winds without crashing into anyone presented quite a challenge. For the delivery of drugs in developing countries, a rider on a motorbike may be a much simpler and more rugged solution. Maintaining a network of dronesa com- plex, immature technologyis unlikely to be easy, particularly in the remote areas that Matternet intends to target. It may be that congested city centres in rich countries will prove a more promising market. And whether in the rich or poor world, any widespread deployment of delivery- drone eets is bound to raise concerns about safety and regulation. It is undoubt- edly a clever idea. But moving packets of data around inside the predictable environment of a computer network is one thing; moving objects around in the real world is, you might say, a very dierent matter. 7 The Economist Technology Quarterly December 1st 2012 Monitor 3

2 civilian ones will follow. Auxetic seat belts as a pesticide, which is why farmers usual- would dissipate a driver’s kinetic energy ly sprinkle it at a safe distance of 10-15cm in a crash more eectively than existing from the plants to be nourished, so as to designs. Auxetic dental oss would ex- dilute its eect. So the robot not only kills pand into the gaps between teeth when it weeds and excess heads, but feeds the was pulled. And a less obvious applica- remaining crops at the same time. tion is in an easy-to-clean lter: stretch this The battery-powered system crunches lter and its pores grow, allowing stu the images fast enough to work at 98% stuck in them to be ushed away when accuracy while chugging along at a bit less the lter is washed. than 2kph. In September Blue River Tech- That line of thinking leads to the idea nology, a start-up founded by Mr Heraud of smart lters, which maintain a constant and Mr Redden, raised $3m from Khosla pore size by stretching as they get clogged Ventures, a venture-capital rm. The up, and also to bandages that dispense launch of a commercial version of the drugs in response to swelling. In fact, once robot is planned for next year. Mr Heraud you get used to the idea of something that is coy about Lettuce Bot’s cost, but says it stretches thick instead of being stretched will be competitive with manual labour. thin, the possibilities are enormous. Wel- Its creators are also working on a mach- come, then, to the world not of Hooke’s ine capable of excising weeds mechanical- law, but Hook’s. 7 ly using a rotating blade. Indeed, the robot was originally conceived as an automated lawnmower for parks and other public places but legal issuesthink spinning metal blades in areas frequented by chil- March of the drenprompted Mr Heraud and Mr Red- den to turn to agricultural users instead. Lettuce Bot That would make it a boon to California’s organic farmers, who eschew the potent, weed-killing fertiliser. Next in Mr Heraud’s Robotics: A machine that helps and Mr Redden’s sights is corn (maize), lettuce farmers is just one of several America’s biggest crop. Teaching the robot robots intended to automate aspects to deal with plants like tomatoes, where of agriculture and horticulture distinguishing weeds from the crop can be hard even for humans, will take longer. Bend it like ETTUCE is California’s main vegetable Lettuce Bot is just one of many robots Lcrop. The state grew $1.6 billion-worth intended to automate aspects of agricul- of the leafy plant in 2010 and accounts for ture and horticulture that are still highly Juninho more than 70% of all lettuce grown in labour-intensive, even in the rich world. Americaitself the world’s second-biggest The Vineland Research and Innovation Sports technology: A clever new exporter of the stu. It is a ddly business. Centre in Ontario is working on one robot As well as having to be fertilised and to plant tulip bulbs and replant seedlings, motion-capture system should help weeded, lettuce must also be thinned so another to harvest, trim and package footballers work out how to take that good plants do not grow too close to mushrooms and a third to package potted better free kicks each other, inhibiting growth. Much of plants. And the Harvest Vehicle HV-100, HAT separates the good from the this is still done by hand. Labourers, who otherwise known as Harvey, built by Wgreat? Charnwood Dynamics, a tend to be paid per acre, not per hour, have Harvest Automation, a rm based in British rm, hopes to nd out, at least in little incentive to pay close attention to Massachusetts, is designed to move potted the realm of football. Though the beautiful what they pull from the ground, often shrubs and trees around in plant nurser- game requires many skills, a particularly leading to unnecessary waste. ies. Where these machines lead, other useful one is to be able to score a goal from Enter Lettuce Bot, the brainchild of two green-ngered robots may follow. 7 a free kicka free shot awarded to one side Stanford-trained engineers, Jorge Heraud in the wake of a serious infringement of and Lee Redden. Their diligent robotic the rules by the other. If he is within range labourer, pulled behind a tractor, starts by of the goalmouth, the kicker can attempt taking pictures of passing plants. Comput- to score from it, but the opposing team will er-vision algorithms devised by Mr Red- usually try to stop this by lining up men in den compare these to a database of more a defensive wall between the kicker and than a million images, taken from dierent goal. If the kicker can apply topspin to the angles against dierent backdrops of soil ball, however, he can send it over the wall and other plants, that he and Mr Heraud on a curving path that then carries it down have amassed from their visits to lettuce into the goal. farms. A simple shield blocks out the The leading practitioners of the art of Californian sun to prevent odd shading topspin are Juninho Pernambucano and from confounding the software. Marco Assunção of Brazil. But players and When a plant is identied as a coaches everywhere would love to be weedor as a lettuce head that is growing able to turn that art into a science by cap- too close to another onea nozzle at the turing exactly what is going on and mim- back of the unit squirts out a concentrated icking it. With the aid of Charnwood’s dose of fertiliser. This sounds bonkers, but technology, they may be able to do so. it turns out that fertiliser can be as deadly Salad days for Lettuce Bot The technology in question is a mo- 1 4 Monitor The Economist Technology Quarterly December 1st 2012

2 tion-capture system, of the kind used to ments involved in putting topspin on a port the weight of a human being. The make lms in which the movements of an footballin particular, the horizontal trick is twofold. First, he folds the card- animated character are based on those of angle of the striking foot in relation to the boardcommercial-grade material, made a real actor. Because sport is all about ball, and its vertical angle relative to the from recycled paperto increase its controlled movement, it should be an ground. That done, he will apply extra strength. (He worked out the exact pattern ideal way of working out what makes a markers to the players to see how the of folding for each of the machine’s com- good sportsman. The trouble is that mo- position, velocity and acceleration of ponents using the principles of origami.) tion-capture technology does not work other parts of the body contribute. Then, once it is folded, he treats the result well outdoors. It relies on putting markers The result, he hopes, will be a set of with a proprietary resin that holds it in on crucial parts of a person’s bodyhis guidelines that allow the application of shape and stiens it, before cutting it into hands, feet, elbows and knees, for ex- topspin to be taught more accurately. Free the form of the component required. A ampleand using a camera to follow their kicks will then become more valuable. second application of resin renders the movements. Sometimes the markers emit The goalkeeper’s job will become a bit component waterproof, and a lick of light, and sometimes they reect light harder. And perhaps the game will be- lacquer makes it look good. The result, Mr from special lamps. Either method is come somewhat cleaner, as those who Gafni claims, is stronger than carbon bre. suitable for use in a studio, but outdoors, might infringe the rules think twice about The bike’s frame, wheels, handlebars where the ambient light is much brighter, the consequences of their actions. 7 and saddle are all made of cardboard in the cameras tracking the markers struggle this way, and then tted together. The to separate them from the background. tyresagain harking back to the early days Charnwood reckons it has solved that of cyclingare composed of solid rubber, problem with a device called Codasport. which is recycled from old car tyres. That This uses specially bright light-emitting Re-cycling makes the ride a little harder than if the diodes in the markers, though they emit tyres were pneumatic, but means they ashes of infra-red light which is invisible cannot be punctured. to the naked eye. The ashes are also very The chain, based on the timing belt of a short, to minimise battery consumption. car, is also made from car-tyre rubber. The Each lasts a mere ten millionths of a sec- Transport: A cardboard bicycle pedals are plastic recycled from bottles ond. And, crucially, the diodes ash in a sounds as plausible as a chocolate and the brakes are recycled too, though Mr regular sequence, so that the detector can teapot. But that has not stopped one Gafni is not yet ready to disclose the de- easily tell which marker is which, simply inventor from building one tails. The nished product weighs 9kg, a from the time of the ash. bit less than an ordinary bike, and can To process these brief ashes, Charn- HE rst bicycles were made of wood. carry a rider weighing 220kg. wood has built an unusual sort of camera. TCycle manufacturers then switched to Mr Gafni’s target market is the poorer It has three sensors, each of which consists steel tubes. These days, for high-end bikes countries of the world. Because manufac- of a row of 32 individual light detectors. where weight is at a premium, they use turing the cardboard bike will, he reckons, Unlike the detectors in a normal camera, aluminium alloys or even carbon bre. cost $9-12 a unit, his design is far more each of those in Codasport has its own But Izhar Gafni, an amateur cyclist who aordable than a steel-framed bike. But amplier, which enables the system to owns a number of such fancy bikes, won- people in rich countries may be interested cope with very short ashes. The three ders whether the original inventors had a too. In Tel Aviv, the commercial capital of sensors are mounted in a single unit, point. He proposes to go back to using Mr Gafni’s native land, 2,000 stolen bikes about a metre long, with one sensor at woodor, rather, a derivative of wood, were recently put on display by police, for each end and one in the middle. namely cardboard. their owners to claim. If bicycles cost less In front of every sensor is a lter with a Mr Gafni, who is based in Ahituv, than the locks that chained them to lamp- pattern of black lines on it. When each Israel, spent years trying to work out how posts, thieves might not think it worth- marker ashes, these lines cast shadows to make a cardboard bicycle able to sup- while to steal them. 7 on the detectors, and the movement of these shadows is used to determine the movement of the markers and thus of the person wearing the markers. The result is displayed as an animated model on a computer screen, where it can be replayed and analysed closely. Ashley Gray, a sports scientist at Lough- borough University in England, set up an experiment in June that used Codasport to study how players take free kicks. His experiment involved four experienced footballers, two of whom had received training from Bartek Sylwestrzak, a specialist kicking coach, in how to apply topspin to a free kick, and two of whom had not. Each participant wore 28 markers attached to his boots and legs. He was then asked to kick a ball repeatedly over a barrier representing a wall of opposing players and into a goal, at speeds that could beat a goalkeeper. Dr Gray is currently sifting through the data, in order to work out the crucial ele- All a board The Economist Technology Quarterly December 1st 2012 Monitor 5

According to the laws of quantum mechanics, a particle of light, called a photon, can take literally any possible Trading devices path between source A and point B. Those same laws also stipulate that the quickest for dollars path is the most likely. When a photon is travelling through a uniform medium, like a vacuum, that path is a straight line. But Recycling technology: A robot kiosk light travels at dierent speeds in dierent will assess the value of your media: more slowly in glass than in air, for unwanted electronic devices and example. So when passing through both air and glass, light’s most likely path from dispense hard cash A to B will depend on the thickness of HE mobile-phone industry thrives on glass it needs to traverse, as well as the Tnovelty. A new handset’s launch often total distance it needs to cover. Instead of resembles a religious ceremony and following a straight path, the light may breathless hype greets every announce- prefer to bend. This is the quantum-me- ment of this or that additional feature. chanical basis of refraction. Among phone addicts, sporting an out-of- to sell. If the owner of the equipment In order to maximise the probability date device is a serious faux pas. Accord- accepts the oer, the kiosk swallows the that photons from A will end up precisely ing to a recent study by Recon Analytics, a device and spits out the money. at B, those going in a straight line need to market-research rm, the average Ameri- What happens next depends on what be slowed down relative to those taking a can phone is replaced every 22 months. has been bought. Some phones will be more circuitous route, so that, in eect, all All of which is good for phonemakers, refurbished and sold to people in devel- hit B the same time. This can be done by who get to og more of their wares. But it oping countries, or used by insurance forcing the former to pass through more raises the question of what happens to the companies to replace lost or broken ver- glass than the latter. Hence the characteris- shunned phones of yesteryear, many of sions of the same model. Others will be tic shape of a lens: a round piece of glass which are still perfectly serviceable and broken up for scrap, to salvage their elec- that is thick in the middle, where the most of which contain goodies that could tronic components and precious metals. straight-line path crosses, and tapers o be recycled if there was a way of harvest- At the moment, ecoATM has more than towards the edge, where the less direct ing them eciently. 100 machines deployed around America. routes do. And that is what ecoATM, a rm based It plans to expand that to 300, and to move Dr Capasso’s lens, described in a recent in San Diego, thinks it has created. It has into other countries in 2013. Whether issue of the journal Nano Letters, also devised and deployed in several Ameri- convenience and the promise of instant slows photons down. But instead of using can cities a series of ATM-like devices that cash will be enough to persuade people to glass of varying thickness to do the job, he will automatically analyse your mobile sh their old mobile phones out of the and his team created an array of antennae phone, MP3 player or phone charger, and dusty drawers in which they currently which absorb photons, hold on to them then make you an oer for it. These ma- languish in remains to be seen. 7 for a short time and then release them. In chines will give you cash in hand or, if you order for this trick to work, though, the prefer, send the money as a donation to distance between the antennae has to be the charity of your choice. The hope is that smaller than the wavelength of the light this hassle-free approach will appeal to being focused. In Dr Capasso’s case that people who can’t be bothered to recycle Changing focus means less than 1,550 nanometres. their old phone when buying a new one. Creating the array involved coating a After taking ngerprints and driving- standard silicon wafer with a 60-nano- licence details (to discourage crooks from metre layer of gold. Most of this layer was using them to fence stolen goods), then stripped away using a technique ecoATM’s kiosks employ a mixture of Optics: A novel type of lens that called electron-beam lithography, leaving computer vision and electronic testing exploits quantum-mechanical behind a forest of V-shaped antennae (they will automatically present users eects is completely at, unlike arranged in concentric circles. By ddling with the correct cable and connector) to glass lenses that bulge in the middle with their precise shapes, antennae lying perform a trick that even the most com- on dierent circles could be coaxed into mitted gadget fan might struggle with HE understanding of optics has holding onto their photons for slightly telling apart each of the thousands of Tchanged enormously since the world’s dierent lengths of time, mimicking an models of mobile phones, chargers and oldest known lens was ground nearly ordinary glass lens. MP3 players that now exist. They can even 3,000 years ago in what is now Iraq. Yet its At present the new-fangled lens only make a reasonable guess about how Assyrian maker would instantly recognise works for monochromatic light, so it is well-used (or damaged) a device is, which today’s lenses, which continue to be made unlikely to replace the glass sort in smart- can aect its resale value. Any mistakes in much the same way: by fashioning a phone cameras anytime soon. But it could the machine does make are logged and piece of transparent material into a revolutionise instruments that rely on used to improve accuracy in future. smooth, solid shape with curved surfaces. single-colour lasers, by making further Once the device on oer has been Enter Federico Capasso, of Harvard miniaturisation possible and eliminating identied, the kiosk then enters it into an University. He and his colleagues have the optical aberrations inherent to glass electronic auction. Interested parties bid, created a lens that is completely at and lenses. Such devices include laser micro- and a price is struck in seconds. This auc- the width of two human hairs. It works scopes, which are used to capture high- tion is the key to ecoATM’s business mod- because its features, measured in nano- resolution images of cells, and optical el, because it means the rm is acting as a metres (billionths of a metre), make it a data-storage systems, where a more accu- broker, rather than carrying a stock of metamaterial, endowed with some rate and smaller lens could help squeeze second-hand equipment which it then has weird and useful properties. more information into less space. 7 6 Monitor The Economist Technology Quarterly December 1st 2012

hosted enterprise software under a software as a service model. Instead of installing software, users simply access it through a web browser.

Social and economic innovation: Greg Allgood and Philip Souter of Procter & Gamble for developing a simple purica- tion process to provide drinking water in developing countries.

Corporate use of innovation: Google. From its origins as a search engine, it has become an innovative leader in many other areas including online advertising, web-based e-mail, online maps and mobile-phone operating systems.

We extend our congratulations to our winners, and our thanks to the judges: Noha Adly, professor of computer science, Alexandria University and deputy head of ICT sector, Bibliotheca Alexandrina; Siavash Alamouti, group R&D director, Vodafone; Robin Bew, editorial director, And the winners were Economist Intelligence Unit; Hermes Chan, chief executive, MedMira; Jan Chipchase, executive creative director of global insights, Frog Design; Martin Coo- per, chairman and chief executive, Array- Innovation awards: Our annual prizes recognise successful innovators in Comm; George Craford, chief technology eight categories. Here are this year’s winners ocer, Philips Lumileds; Hernando de Soto, chairman, Institute for Liberty and HIS newspaper was established in 1843 (Esri) and John Hanke, vice-president of Democracy; Rodney Ferguson, managing Tto take part in a severe contest be- product management at Google, for pio- director, Panorama Capital; Mikkel Ves- tween intelligence, which presses for- neering and popularising the use of tergaard Frandsen, chief executive, Ves- ward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance geographical information systems, tergaard Frandsen; Janus Friis, co-founder, obstructing our progress. One of the otherwise known as computerised maps Atomico; François Grey, visiting professor chief ways in which intelligence presses such as Google Earth. of physics, Tsinghua University; Robert forward is through innovation, which is Guest, business editor, The Economist; Vic now recognised as one of the most impor- Consumer products: Gary Burrell, Hayes, senior research fellow, Delft Uni- tant contributors to economic growth. chairman emeritus and Min Kao, chair- versity of Technology; Mo Ibrahim, foun- Innovation, in turn, depends on the cre- man and chief executive of Garmin, for der, Mo Ibrahim Foundation; Salim Ismail, ative individuals who dream up new devices making the Global Positioning global ambassador, Singularity Universi- ideas and turn them into reality. System (GPS) available to consumers. ty; Raghunath Anant Mashelkar, presi- The Economist recognises these talent- The company was founded in 1989 to dent, Global Research Alliance, India; ed people through its annual Innovation extend GPS beyond military use. Yoichiro Matsumoto, professor and dean awards, presented in eight elds: biosci- of engineering, University of Tokyo; Julie ence, computing and telecommunica- Energy and the environment: Yet-Ming Meyer, chief executive, Ariadne Capital; tions, energy and the environment, social Chiang, professor of materials science Oliver Morton, senior briengs editor, The and economic innovation, business- and engineering at the Massachusetts Economist; Andrew Odlyzko, professor of process innovation, consumer products, a Institute of Technology, for his work to mathematics, University of Minnesota; exible no boundaries category, and the improve the performance of lithium- Andrea Pfeifer, chief executive, AC Im- corporate use of innovation. The awards ion batteries. Batteries based on his na- mune; Lesa Roe, director, Langley Research were presented by Tom Standage, digital nophosphate materials are used in power Center, NASA; Paul Sao, managing direc- editor of The Economist and editor of tools, hybrid buses and electric cars. tor of foresight, Discern Analytics; Syl Technology Quarterly, at a ceremony at Saller, global innovation director, Diageo; BAFTA in London on November 15th. And No boundaries: Elon Musk, chief exec- Jerry Simmons, deputy director for semi- the winners were: utive and chief designer, SpaceX, for conductor and optical sciences, Sandia achievements in private space transpor- National Laboratories; Tom Standage, Bioscience: Napoleone Ferrara of Ge- tation. SpaceX was the rst private com- digital editor, The Economist (chairman); nentech, for research into blood-vessel pany to send a spacecraft into low-earth Tuula Teeri, president, Aalto University; formation that led to new drugs to ght orbit and return it safely to earth, and it Vijay Vaitheeswaran, senior correspon- cancer (Avastin) and curb age-related now has a cargo-supply contract with dent, The Economist; Jerey Weedman, vision loss (Lucentis). NASA for the International Space Station. vice-president of global business development, Procter & Gamble; Huanming Computing and telecommunications: Process and service innovation: Marc Yuang, director, Beijing Genomics In- Jack Dangermond, president of the Envi- Benio, chairman and chief executive of stitute. The judging process was run by ronmental Systems Research Institute Salesforce.com, for pioneering web- John Eckhouse of Modern Media. 7 The Economist Technology Quarterly December 1st 2012 Dierence engine 7 The PC all over again?

3D printing: Just as computers make it easy to copy music, 3D printers will soon allow easy copying of certain kinds of objects. Proponents of the technology should be prepared for toymakers and other manufacturers to ght back INKERERS with machines that turn bi- ject is in the public domain, copyright law Tnary digits into physical objects are pio- could well apply. This has caught out a neering a whole new way of making number of users of 3D printers, who have thingsone that could rewrite the rules of blithely made reproductions of popular manufacturing in much the same way that merchandise. It is right to penalise the wil- the PC laid waste to traditional computing. ful infringement of others’ copyright, but The machines in question, 3D printers, as with music, the ability to copy and repli- have existed in industry for years. But at a cate other people’s works can be a form of cost of between $100,000 and $1m, few in- expression and a source of innovation. The dividuals could aord one. Like everything question is where to draw the line. digital, however, their price has fallen. In- The danger is that America’s Digital dustrial 3D printers can now be had for Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) will be $15,000, and home versions for little more used to stie free expression, jeopardise than $1,000or half that in kit form. fair use and impede competitionby, for A development to be cheered, surely? example, blocking the distribution of blue- Perhaps not by everyone. Michael Wein- prints for aftermarket replacement parts berg of Public Knowledge, an advocacy such as brake pads or toner cartridges. Dra- group in Washington, DC, fears that the conian enforcement would reduce con- edgling technology could have its wings sumer choice and hamper the huge poten- clipped by traditional manufacturers who tial of 3D printing to spur innovation. see it as a threat to their livelihoods. Be- As with any disruptive technology cause a 3D printer can make perfect replicas of many kinds of ob- from the printing press to the photocopier and the personal com- ject, manufacturers may seek to brand it a piracy machine and puter3D printing is bound to upset existing ways of doing things. demand additional measures to protect their traditional way of And as 3D printing proliferates, incumbent manufacturers are doing business. Mr Weinberg worries that they may behave rath- likely to demand protection from low-cost upstarts entering their er like the record industry did when its own business model business. They may even lobby to have copyright protection ex- based on selling pricey CD albums that few music fans wanted, in- panded to cover functional objects that contain elements of de- stead of cheap single tracks they cravedcame under attack from sign. This would create a type of quasi-patent system, without Napster and other le-swapping networks. the requirement for novelty or the strictly limited period of pro- Established brands have had to contend with rip-os since the tection, worries Mr Weinberg. dawn of the industrial age. Whole neighbourhoods exist in Hong The lesson the record industry learned from its copyright bat- Kong, Bangkok and even Tokyo that turn out imitation designer tles with le-swappers was that going after individual infringers handbags, shoes and watches. But although imitators have invari- was prohibitively expensive and caused bad publicity. So instead ably used inferior materials and low-cost labour, they still needed the record companies lobbied to get copyright liability extended costly manufacturing equipment. To some extent, that has limited to cover not only individuals who infringe, but also those who fa- the spread of fake goods. But cheap 3D printers and laser scanners cilitate infringementnamely, the internet service providers (ISPs) may cause them to proliferate. and le-swapping services. Today, websites and ISPs have to block or remove infringing material whenever they receive a DMCA ta- Printer problems kedown notice from a copyright holder. The gures suggest that 3D printers are akin to inkjet printers, depositing successive layers this happens more often than is justied. Google reckons that of material from nozzles until a three-dimensional object is built more than a third of the DMCA notices it has received over the up. They can make things out of a thermoplastic such as acryloni- years have turned out to be bogus copyright claims. More than trile butadiene styrene (ABS), polylactic acid or polycarbonate, or half were from companies trying to restrict the activities of rival metallic powders, clays and even living cells. This is far more e- rms rather than lawbreakers. cient than starting with a lump of material and machining away Established manufacturers could likewise seek to get the doc- the unwanted parts. And unlike with injection moulding, there is trine of contributory infringement included in some expanded no need to set up an assembly line. object copyright law as a way of crippling the personal-manu- As far as intellectual property is concerned, the 3D printer itself facturing movement before it eats their lunch. Being able to sue is not the problem. But before it can start making anything, it websites that host 3D design les as havens of piracy would needs a digital blueprint of the item in question, in the form of a save them the expense of trying to prosecute thousands of indi- CAD (computer-aided design) le. The blueprint can be created viduals with 3D printers churning out copies at home. from scratch on a computer or downloaded from online reposi- All this suggests that today’s edgling 3D-printing communi- tories, such as Thingiverse or Fab@Home, and then modied as tytucked away in garages, basements, small workshops and uni- needed. Blueprints can also be generated from existing objects us- versity labsneeds to keep an eye on such policy debates as they ing a scanner that records three-dimensional measurements from emerge. There will be a time when legacy industries demand various angles and turns the resulting data into a CAD le. some sort of DMCA for 3D printing, says Mr Weinberg. But if the This is where concerns about infringement start. Unless the ob- tinkerers wait until that day, it will be too late. 7 8 Medical tricorders The Economist Technology Quarterly December 1st 2012

The dream of the medical tricorder

with their own medical data and are reluctant to give them access to it, explains Eric Medical technology: The hand-held diagnostic devices seen on Star Trek are Topol, a cardiologist and the author of inspiring a host of medical add-ons for smartphones The Creative Destruction of Medicine. He believes the push to adopt new digital HEN aliens seize and torture Dr Mc- cash prizes. Earlier this year it announced technologies in health care will have to WCoy in The Empath, an episode of the Qualcomm Tricorder X Prize, nanced come not from doctors but from the public. the science-ction series Star Trek, Cap- by the Qualcomm Foundation, the charita- Making self-service diagnostic technol- tain Kirk and Mr Spock rush to his aid. ble arm of Qualcomm, a maker of wireless ogy cheaper and more widely available They are able to assess his condition in sec- communications technologies. It has put would, however, have enormous benets onds with the help of a medical tricor- up $10m in prize money and another $10m in both rich and poor parts of the world. dera hand-held computer with a detach- to pay for the administration of the compe- The Association of American Medical Col- able sensor that is normally used by Dr tition. So far more than 230 teams from leges projects that America could have McCoy himself to diagnose others. A over 30 countries have applied to enter the 90,000 doctors fewer than it needs by quick scan with the tricorder indicates that contest, the guidelines for which will be - 2020, as doctors retire, the population ages he suers from severe heart damage; nalised this month. The goal is to create a and chronic illnesses become more preva- signs of congestion in both lungs; evidence mobile platform that will enable people to lent. All this will place huge demands on of massive circulatory collapse. diagnose a set of 15 conditions, including America’s sprawling health-care system, Along with teleportation, speech-dri- diseases as varied as pneumonia, diabetes and threatens to increase health-related ven computers and hand-held wireless and sleep apnoea, without having to rely spending still further. Other rich countries communicators that ip open, the medical on a doctor or nurse. Ultimately this is are also looking for ways to keep a lid on tricorder was one of many imaginary fu- about democratising access to health care rising health-care expenditure. ture technologies featured in Star Trek. around the world, says Peter Diamandis, Ever since, researchers have dreamed of the head of the X Prize Foundation. Paging the real McCoy developing a hand-held medical scanner But the obstacles to building a medical In developing countries, meanwhile, large that can take readings from a patient and tricorder are not merely technological. numbers of people live in rural areas far then diagnose various conditions. Now, Regulatory agencies such as America’s away from hospitals and medical centres, nearly ve decades after Star Trek made Food and Drug Administration (FDA) may reducing access to diagnosis and treat- its debut in 1966, the dream is nally edging delay or restrict consumers from getting ment. There are also far fewer doctors per closer to reality. their hands on such devices, and the medi- capita: around two doctors per 10,000 peo- Among the organisations pushing for cal establishment, infamous for its inertia, ple in Africa as a whole in 2010, compared the development of a medical tricorder is may be wary of granting patients a more with 33 in Europe. No country in the the X Prize Foundation, an organisation active role in diagnosis. Many doctors do world is producing enough doctors and that aims to spur innovation by oering not believe that patients can be trusted nurses to satisfy their current or future 1 The Economist Technology Quarterly December 1st 2012 Medical tricorders 9

ing to want to review it. into several promising start-ups in the area, At the moment there is only draft including San Francisco-based AliveCor, guidance from the FDA on which which has developed an iPhone case with medical apps require review. A re- two electrodes that can perform an electro- view is deemed necessary only for cardiogram (ECG). Dr Topol recently used a mobile-health apps that are used in con- prototype to assess a fellow passenger on Medical add-ons, from top: AliveCor’s junction with already regulated medical an aircraft who was suering from chest iPhone ECG; iBGStar’s glucose monitor; devices, or that would trans- pain. He concluded the passenger was Scanadu’s Scout; MobiSante’s form a mobile device, such as having a heart attack, and the smartphone-based ultrasound a smartphone or tablet, into a plane was diverted. regulated medical device, Other rms are also devel- 2 demands for health care, says Christo- typically in conjunction with oping medical add-ons for pher Wasden, an expert in health-care sensors or attachments that smartphones. MobiSante, strategy and innovation at Pricewaterhou- help with diagnosis or treat- based in Redmond, Washing- seCoopers (PwC), a consultancy. Unless ment. The FDA says its nal ton, has devised a smart- we have consumers doing more of this guidelines will be available phone-based ultrasound sys- themselves, it’s impossible to deliver care by the end of the year. In addi- tem that was granted FDA to those people who need it. tion, it intends to regulate clin- clearance in early 2011. A The prospects for creating a medical tri- ical decision-support soft- hand-held ultrasonic probe corder have been boosted enormously by ware, which helps make plugs into a smartphone, the spread of mobile phones. There are diagnoses or recommends which generates and displays now more than 6 billion in use around the treatments. This will be tack- an image. It costs $7,500, a world, of which around 1billion are smart- led separately from mobile fraction of the price of a con- phonesin eect, powerful, internet-capa- medical apps, says Bakul Pa- ventional ultrasound. ble pocket computers. tel, a policy adviser at the Another smartphone at- Even without any additional hardware FDA. Draft guidance should tachment is the iBGStar, a or software, a phone can be a useful medi- be available in the coming sleek glucose-monitoring de- cal device. Some health-care organisations months, he says. vice for diabetics that plugs already send out text messages to patients’ Mr Patel says the FDA into an iPhone. Sold by Sano, a mobile phones, for example, reminding wants to encourage innovation while en- French drugs giant, it measures them to take their medicine, renew their suring patient safety. But not everyone glucose levels in blood using a prescriptions or visit a doctor. Add some thinks the FDA can keep up with this bur- technology called WaveSense, de- extra software in the form of download- geoning new eld. The technology is veloped by AgaMatrix, a rm based in Sa- able apps, and the cameras and video re- evolving much faster than the regulations lem, New Hampshire. A test strip is put corders built into more advanced handsets are, says Dr Diamandis. into the device and a drop of blood is ap- can be used as sensors to measure or track The amount of money owing into dig- plied from a tiny pinprick. The glucose lev- vital signs, such as heart and res- ital-health start-ups is rising fast. el appears on a small display and is stored piration rates. Add hardware in Rock Health, a non-prot incu- by an app on the iPhone, allowing for long- the form of sensors that plug into bator in San Francisco that term monitoring. It was cleared by the FDA the phone or connect to it wire- tracks deals in this eld, says 128 in December 2011. lessly, and a phone can become venture-capital rms invested a These devices do specic things rather an even more powerful tool for total of $1.1 billion in more than than being general-purpose devices. But monitoring and diagnosis. 100 digital-health rms in the rst Don Jones, head of business development According to research2guid- nine months of 2012, an increase at Qualcomm Life, argues that they could ance, a consultancy, global sales of 70% over the $626m invested in be regarded as specialised forms of a medi- of mobile-health apps will in- the same period in 2011. The num- cal tricorder. Depending on need and loca- crease from $718m in 2011 to $1.3 ber of deals rose by 84%. tion, he suggests, a tricorder’s design could 1 billion this year. Many of these Handset-makers and wireless might be more accurately de- companies are also investing in scribed as tness or self-track- mobile health and the developing apps that allow people to ment of mobile diagnostic devices. monitor their exercise regimes, en- Nokia, a large handset-maker, has ergy consumption and sleep patterns, agreed to sponsor the $2.25m Sens- often in conjunction with external sensors. ing X Challenge, another competition But PwC’s research suggests that consum- being run by the X Prize Founda- ers want more. They want apps that really tion that is intended to speed guide their behaviour and can replace a up the development of medi- nurse or a doctor by using intelligent algo- cal sensors for tricorders. rithms to guide patients toward healthier And as well as nancing the habits, says Mr Wasden. But, he adds, as Tricorder X Prize competi- you add intelligence to an app, you’ve in- tion, Qualcomm’s venture- creased the likelihood that the FDA is go- capital arm has put money 10 Medical tricorders The Economist Technology Quarterly December 1st 2012 As medicine becomes more of an information science, some tasks could be taken on by patients.

2 be customised to perform dierent tasks. A boss, Walter de Brouwer. His aim is for the Moreover, doctors may be reluctant to good example is the CellScope, a project Scout, which is small enough to be taken use data collected by patients. Instead of that originated in 2006 in Daniel Fletcher’s anywhere, to achieve similar ubiquity. measuring vital signs at an annual laboratory at the University of California, The idea is to make the tricorder for the check-up, they could nd themselves be- Berkeley, and has since spawned a start-up consumer, he explains. He hopes to have ing asked to examine huge data sets with the same name based in San Francis- the rst version on sale by the end of 2013 created by patientsraising the question of co. The CellScope is an attachment that for around $150. legal liability if something is missed. The turns a smartphone into a microscope. At the same time, the company is devel- irony is that a doctor is more comfortable Several versions with dierent resolutions oping disposable molecular tests for con- with the liability in a system that does not have been developed that allow the tech- sumers, including the ScanaFlu, which have rich data than in a system that does nology to be used for dierent things. will indicate the presence of strep throat, have rich data, says Mr Wasden. Another The academic group is developing ver- u or other types of upper-respiratory in- diculty is that electronic health records sions of the CellScope that can be used for fections. Patients gargle a special liquid are not designed to allow for the inclusion retinal scans or to detect pathogens, such and then spit into a cartridge containing of patient-generated data, says Dr Chow. as malaria and tuberculosis, by analysing test strips. A pattern of lines will appear to Some of the new diagnostic tools may images of slides smeared with samples of show which infections, if any, are present. be nancially threatening to doctors, espe- blood or sputum. Fifteen prototypes are The long-term aim is to bridge the gap be- cially in disciplines such as optometry, der- currently being tested at clinics in Vietnam tween the Scout, which measures vital matology and paediatrics, says Dr Topol. in collaboration with TB Reach, an initia- signs electronically, and the molecular Why would you visit a specialist, he asks, tive of the STOP TB Partnership, which is tests which analyse samples. We want to when a mobile device lets you test your funding the project. Together with other give patients more power to diagnose their eyes, diagnose skin lesions or determine academic partners, the group has devel- own illnesses and keep track of their own whether your child has an ear infection? oped software to automate the diagnosis health, says Aaron Rowe, Scanadu’s re- But as medicine becomes more of an infor- of TB when no doctor is available. search director. mation science, some mundane and sim- Meanwhile CellScope, the start-up, is ple tasks could be taken over by patients, designing optical attachments for the The doctor’s diagnosis which could free up doctors for more de- American market that turn smartphones Not everyone is excited about patients tak- manding problems, argues Mr Jones. into digital rst-aid kits. The rst is an ing matters into their own hands. Health Whether for reasons of cost-saving, otoscope (a device for looking inside the care is a very paternalistic industry, and convenience, a love of gadgets or simple ear) that clips onto an iPhone. It could be physicians don’t want patients to become hypochondria, there will be demand for used by doctors for diagnosis and visual re- independent and too empowered, says any device that turns a smartphoneal- cord-keeping, or by parents to transmit im- Mr Wasden of PwC. The medical commu- ready a portable library, communicator, ages to paediatricians for the remote diag- nity has always been very conservative, map and entertainment deviceinto a nosis of children’s ear infections, which says Yan Chow, director of innovation and health-monitoring and diagnostic tool as cause millions of visits to the doctor each advanced technology at Kaiser Perma- well. If it’s not prevented by regulations, year. CellScope’s boss, Erik Douglas, says nente, a non-prot health-care provider. asks Dr Diamandis, who would not want the rm is conducting a study with doctors It’s very hard to change things. to have a tricorder in their pocket? 7 from the Atlanta Pediatric Device Consor- tium to see how its device compares with standard digital otoscopes. He hopes it will go on sale next year for less than $200. The rm that is making the most tricorder-like gizmo is arguably Scanadu, based in Mountain View, California, which was among the rst companies to enter the Tri- corder X Prize competition. Its device, like Dr McCoy’s, consists of a small hand-held sensor unit that communicates wirelessly with a display unit (in this case, a smartphone). The sensor unit, called Scout, is placed in contact with the patient’s temple and detects a range of vital signs, including heart and respiration rate, blood oxygena- tion, pulse transit time and temperature. The current prototype includes electrodes to measure the electrical signals of the heart and an infra-red temperature sensor, among other things. A smartphone app displays and stores the data. So far the only blockbuster medical device to have become commonplace in the home is the thermometer, says Scanadu’s CellScope’s smartphone otoscope in action The Economist Technology Quarterly December 1st 2012 Detecting oil spills 11

Trouble beneath the ice

Norge, a subsidiary of Eni, an Italian oil giant, equipped its eet of emergency ves- Energy technology: As oil exploration moves into the Arctic, new methods are sels in the Barents Sea in the Norwegian being developed to detect and handle spills Arctic with cameras made by Aptomar, a Norwegian company. N OIL WELL suers a blowout, causing through clouds and in the dark, involves Such systems can spot oil on the surface Aa fatal explosion on an oshore plat- bouncing radio waves from orbiting satel- of the water or on top of ice, but they need form. Oil spews into the water at an esti- lites o the surface of the sea. Any oil oat- a clear line of sight to the oil in order to mated rate of 53,000 barrels a day. Com- ing on the surface has the eect of smooth- work. A spill in the Arctic is likely to result pany executives and government ocials ing the waves made by the wind on the in oil under rather than on top of the ice. blame each other as they try to nd a way water. Admittedly, it is almost impossible Even oil on the surface may quickly be cov- to stop the ow of oil. The Deepwater Hori- to tell the dierence between an oil slick ered by snow. For such scenarios, the most zon disaster of 2010 was a tragedy in many and a patch of calm water. But at least promising detection technology is ground- respects, but in one detail, BPthe operator clean-up teams have some idea of where penetrating radar (GPR), which uses high- of the well, which is now facing a bill of as to start more detailed searches. frequency radar signals, emitted either much as $50 billionwas lucky. At least it In the Arctic, however, SAR is less use- from a sled on the surface of the ice or from could nd the oil. ful. One problem is that oating ice looks a low-ying aircraft, to provide an image of As more and more companies venture just like oil or calm water to a SAR- the subsurface. Snow, ice and oil reect ra- into the oil- and gas-rich waters north of equipped satellite. According to Rune Stor- dio waves in dierent ways, allowing oil the Arctic Circle, they are being forced to vold of the Northern Research Institute, a spills to be seen beneath the surface. imagine another oil-spill scenario, one in Norwegian research outt, SAR-based oil which the response eort is impeded by detection is only eective in conditions Oil and water storms, fog, high winds and massive drift- with less than 30% ice coverage. GPR has been shown to be particularly ef- ing ice oes; in which visibility is minimal, Oil on the surface of the water, or sitting fective in detecting oil under snow. In 2010 where the nearest coast guard station is on top of snow or ice, can be detected from SINTEF, a Norwegian research organisa- over 1,000 miles away and where spilled boats or planes using infra-red (IR) and tion, carried out a controlled spill on Sval- oil accumulates on, in and under the ice. ultraviolet (UV) scanners which can indi- bard. A helicopter-mounted GPR system Such considerations have led to the devel- cate both where, and how thick, the layer successfully dierentiated between ice opment of new technologies to detect and of oil is. Because oil and ice have dierent sheets that concealed oil and those that did deal with spilled oil in remote, icy seas. temperatures, heat signatures and reec- not. As with other imaging technologies, In open water conditions such as tive properties, combined IR-UV scanners the real improvements in GPR in recent those in the Gulf of Mexico during the can be used to dierentiate between years have been in the software for making Deepwater Horizon spill, the primary smooth water, ice and slicks. They can also sense of the collected data, rather than in method for oil-spill detection involves sat- dierentiate between thicker oil deposits, hardware, says David Dickins, project ellite-mounted synthetic-aperture radar which reect more sunlight and emit less manager of the SINTEF experiment. (SAR). This technology, which can see heat, and thinner ones. This year Eni Even so, GPR has its limitations. Sea ice 1 12 Detecting oil spills The Economist Technology Quarterly December 1st 2012 The ability to detect oil in icy water is improving, but the options for cleaning it up remain limited.

2 is very inhomogeneousit’s not like a at still a bit of a holy grail issue. spilled oil. The rst is to hem it in with slab, says Dr Storvold. Ridges, hollows, The newest approach to detecting oil booms and then either skim it o the sur- and variation in thickness can all deform under ice approaches the problem from face or burn it. The second is to apply or scatter the GPR signal, making the pic- another angle: underwater. It relies on a chemical dispersants to break the oil down ture less clear and oil spills harder to spot. combination of two existing oceano- into droplets that can be more easily di- The situation is further complicated by the graphic technologies: robot submarines, gested by naturally occurring bacteria. presence of salt, which absorbs the radar known as autonomous underwater vehi- For oil spilled in the Arctic, ice can act as signals, weakening the reection. cles (AUVs), and sonar. Unlike remotely a natural boom that prevents the oil from Earlier this year America’s Bureau of operated underwater vehicles, which spreading out over vast distances, as hap- Safety and Environmental Enforcement, must be tethered to a control system on a pens in open-water spills. And at colder with support from ExxonMobil, Shell, Sta- boat and are therefore limited to a range of temperatures, oil is more viscous and dif- toil and other oil giants, conducted an ex- several hundred metres, AUVs can be pro- fuses less quickly. Lower temperatures also periment with high-power radar to try to grammed to rove beneath the ice over dis- expand the window of time during which improve the range of conditions in which tances of several kilometres. the surface oil can be burned o. In warm- GPR would be eective. The high-power water spills the lighter, ammable frac- system showed some improvements com- Submarine dream tions of the oil evaporate within hours. pared with previous tests: it was, for exam- In tests carried out earlier this year at the But whatever advantages the Arctic of- ple, able to prole the shape of the under- Cold Regions Research Engineering Lab- fers for oil-spill response, they are over- side of the ice. But the test also highlighted oratory in New Hampshire, researchers whelmingly outweighed by the diculty the limitations of GPR, particularly in con- from the Scottish Association for Marine of access. Even in the Deepwater Horizon ditions when the ice is close to melting. Science equipped AUVs with a suite of spill, only 3% of the oil was skimmed, ac- To get a more accurate picture of oil un- sensors, including multi-beam sonar. cording to America’s National Oceanic der the ice layer, several companies are Once under the ice, the AUV red pulses of and Atmospheric Administration. Burning working on detection systems based on sound upwards. Ice and oil reect the is not an option for oil trapped under ice. nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). This sound waves back again in dierent ways, That leaves only dispersants. technique, widely used in medical scan- allowing the presence of oil to be mapped. Kenneth Lee, the director of Canada’s ners, relies on variations in the magnetic The thickness of the oil layer could be mea- Centre for Oshore Gas and Energy Re- properties of the nuclei of dierent ele- sured to within millimetres, says Jeremy search, says genomic research suggests ments. A carefully tuned electromagnetic Wilkinson, who led the project. Combin- that naturally occurring bacteria may be pulse causes the nuclei to ip over, and as ing multiple detection systems, including able to break down a lot more oil in cold they right themselves, they emit radio sig- cameras, sonar and lasers, could improve water than was previously thought. His nalsa phenomenon called nuclear mag- accuracy and reliability. It may not be the team is working on special cold-water dis- netic resonance. The strength of these sig- silver bullet, but at least we have a package persants to accelerate this natural process. nals can be used to dierentiate dierent that can work in conditions where other But given the diculty of mounting a materials. Crucially, ice is transparent to technologies struggle, he says. clean-up operation in Arctic conditions, NMR, which means it cannot be misled, as Although the technologies for detecting the industry’s focus is likely to remain on GPR can be, by odd-shaped ice formations. and mapping spilled oil in icy waters are developing detection technologies that Last year America’s patent oce pub- rapidly improving, the options for cleaning spot problems quicklyand doing every- lished details of an application from sever- it up remain limited. In open water, there thing possible to prevent spills from hap- al scientists from Upstream Research Com- are two main methods for dealing with pening in the rst place. 7 pany, a division of ExxonMobil, in which they claimed that NMR techniques provide a solution to a need for oil-spill response in ice-prone environments that has existed for over 30 years. Shell, which has spent billions of dollars preparing to look for oil o the coast of Alaska, also says it is working on NMR to detect oil spills. NMR has its drawbacks, however. As with some GPR systems, NMR systems are carried by helicopter. But the large, ring- shaped antenna required is much larger than that required for GPR. According to Steve Potter at SL Ross, a consultancy, the diameter of the ring must be roughly equal to the distance of the antenna from the oil. To detect oil trapped beneath two metres of ice, the helicopter must hold the ring just three metres above the surface. That is no easy feat in calm conditions, let alone a blizzard. And NMR cannot determine the thickness of oilwhich, says Mr Potter, is An AUV heads beneath the ice The Economist Technology Quarterly December 1st 2012 Indoor positioning 13

based on light-emitting diodes (LEDs) that provide illumination but also icker, in- Finding the way inside visibly fast, in a unique pattern. Smart- phones with cameras can detect that pattern and look it up in an online database to determine their position. ByteLight, a start-up based near Boston, claims its technology can x locations to within a metre Navigation technology: Using satellites to determine your position only in as little as a second. But ByteLights cost a works outside. A new approach is needed indoors little more than normal LED lights, and a lot more than uorescent lights (though IGITAL navigation surely ranks as one its receivers are currently too bulky to nd their lower energy consumption means Dof life’s high-tech bargains. Thanks to their way into mobile phones. running costs are much lower). And pro- free Global Positioning System (GPS) sig- For the mass market, Nokia, a leading viding coverage using Bluetooth beacons nals broadcast by American satellites, and handset-maker, has been developing bea- or ByteLights means installing hundreds of free online maps from companies like cons using the latest version of Bluetooth devices in a large building, and then creat- Google, Nokia and Apple, all you need is a wireless technology, which is a standard ing a map so that positioning signals can smartphone with an internet connection feature on the latest smartphones. Each be turned into an accurate location. Bat- to pinpoint your location on the Earth’s self-contained transmitter is powered by a tery-powered Bluetooth beacons can be surface and call up maps, directions and lo- small battery and can cover a modest in- installed quickly, but need to have their cal information. Unless, that is, you are indoor area of a few hundred square metres. batteries replaced eventually. doors. And even if you are outdoors in a Using directional radio sensing, phones Yet another proposal is to make use of built-up area, the lack of a clear view of the can calculate their position, often to within the motion-sensitive accelerometers and sky can prevent GPS working properly, be- a metre, from a single beacon. gyroscopes found in virtually all modern cause its satellite signals are easily blocked A dierent approach that also works smartphones. These are normally used to by roofs, nearby buildings or even trees. with existing phones is to install lighting detect which way up users are holding a 1 For positioning to work indoors, where people spend most of their time, new technologies are needed. GPS satellites work by broadcasting ultra-accurate time and position data using on-board atomic clocks, allowing a receiver to calculate its location by comparing signals from four or more satellites. (This involves calculating the point of intersec- tion between four spheres, each of which is centred on a satellite.) Some terrestrial positioning systems work in a similar way, but replace the orbiting metronomes used by GPS with xed transmitter beacons installed at precisely known locations. By picking up and analysing the signals from these beacons, the receiver can determine its position. And because the beacons are much closer, their signals are strong enough to penetrate inside buildings. Locata, an Australian company, recently unveiled a system of powerful transmitters whose signals can penetrate walls or cover large outdoor areas such as airelds. The beacons within the network are syn- chronised to within a billionth of a second, and can allow a receiver to determine its position to within less than a metre. One of its rst customers is America’s Depart- ment of Defence, which is increasingly worried about the ease with which its fee- ble GPS signals might be jammed by ene- mies. The US Air Force has installed Locata as a local backup to GPS at its White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. Locata’s transmitters are expensive, however, and 14 Indoor positioning The Economist Technology Quarterly December 1st 2012 Indoor inghting means technology companies are duplicating their eorts at great expense.

2 device or for gaming, but they can also ve or ten metres. This is the approach ping malls and other venues are worried track the distinctive motions of walking. used by many companies including Sky- that Google might sell location-based ad- Software can then guess the distance and hook, based in Boston, and by Wifarer, vertising without sharing revenue with direction travelled. In practice, however, based in San Jose. them, or point shoppers towards cheaper the accuracy is poor, and someone stand- In many ways, Wi-Fi is a terrible loca- products online. ing still for a minute will appear to move tion technology, says Cedric Dupont, a If Google is providing a solution for slowly out of the building due to drift in product manager in the Geo team at Goo- your venue, they are collecting an awful the sensor. But research into this idea is gle, an internet giant. The trick is making it lot of information about your customers, continuing, because emergency-service work in most places, most of the time, for says Liam Quirke, a location-services ana- and military users would like indoor-posi- most people. That will probably mean lyst with IHS, a market-research rm. It tioning systems that work even in build- combining positioning information from could, for example, provide information ings where power has been cut o. multiple sensors in a smartphone: Wi-Fi about what people are buying. The result and mobile-phone signals, GPS readings, of all this indoor inghting is that technol- No added ingredients data from accelerometers and gyroscopes, ogy companies are duplicating their eorts The ideal indoor-location technology, and images of the surroundings from the at great expense, venues are suspicious of then, would be one that required no addi- phone’s camera. CSR, a British chipmaker, multiple incompatible systems and con- tional hardware to be installed in buildings has developed a chip called SiRFstarV that sumers are denied a choice of services. or added to mobile phones. Fortunately, combines multiple signals from a smart- Without some convergence, you’re not the modern world is suused with electro- phone’s various radios with its own move- going to see a platform where nine out of magnetic radiation that can be exploited ment and pressure sensors, using clever ten buildings you walk into are well for positioning purposes. Modern steel- software to take into account the strengths mapped, says Mr Morgan of Skyhook. and-concrete buildings, for instance, have and weaknesses of each. It can achieve an There is some light at the end of the internal magnetic elds that vary subtly accuracy of about three metres. shopping mall, however. A draft now throughout their structure. Mobile phones Improving indoor positioning will working its way through the Internet Engi- may be able to determine their positions mean navigating commercial obstacles as neering Task Force, a body that develops indoors using their internal digital com- well as technological ones, as large tech- online standards, proposes a standard set passes. IndoorAtlas, a start-up based in nology rms try to maintain their grip on of location-related measurements and Finland, claims it can provide indoor accu- the potentially lucrative consumer insights data-rights disclosures. This would pro- racy of less than two metres using this that the technology will provide. Apple vide a common format for wireless-signal method, once a venue has been surveyed. prevents apps on its iPhones and iPads surveys and give venue owners a voice in Most ambient radiation, however, is de- from accessing raw Wi-Fi data, forcing how their indoor maps could be used. liberately generated. TruePosition, a rm them to use its own location services in- There has also been headway in cutting based in Berwyn, Pennsylvania, wants to stead. The same is true of BlackBerry hand- through the tangle of competing standards use digital television signals as the basis of helds and Windows phones. Skyhook that has discouraged investment in infra- its positioning technology. It plans to in- claims that when two handset-makers, structure. In August a group of 22 technol- stall monitoring devices on TV broadcast- Samsung and Motorola, tried to build ogy companies including Nokia, Samsung ing towers to measure tiny deviations in smartphones using Google’s Android op- and CSR formed the In-Location Alliance. their specied frequencies and frame rates. erating system, but replacing Google’s po- This trade organisation is The receiver picks up these distinctive sig- sitioning services with its own, Google dedicated to building nals from multiple towers and communi- withdrew the Android licences for the indoor-location systems cates with TruePosition’s servers to deter- handsets in question. Google says it did so around two technologies, mine its position to within around 50 for compatibility reasons. The matter will Bluetooth beacons and metres. The rm hopes to reduce that to 10 come to court in February. This is all-out Wi-Fi signal mapping. It metres with an additional beacon or two war, says Ted Morgan, Skyhook’s boss. may nally give the in- per city block, or with mobile beacons that Google has already surveyed over door positioning indus- can be deployed quickly in an emergency. 10,000 venues, mostly in America, while try something it cur- A more promising approach may be to Nokia, which supplies indoor maps to Mi- rently lacks: a sense use signals from mobile-phone networks crosoft, has visited more than 5,100 venues of direction. 7 and Wi-Fi hotspots. Smartphones already in 40 countries. Apple is almost certainly have the necessary radio receivers to pick carrying out similar inspections, as are a up these signals, which have the added dozen or so smaller companies. It is no benet of being most common precisely in small undertaking, because regular return places where pedestrians get lost: in air- visits are needed to check for changes. No- ports, malls and city centres. Unlike GPS, kia’s eld team alone is over 1,000 though, these signals do not contain posi- strong. Google is also experiment- tional information. As a result, a labour-in- ing with crowdsourcing intensive survey is required to take a digital door maps. It allows business ngerprint of the relative strengths of the owners to upload a oor plan of wireless signals present at multiple points their property then map local within each venue. Software on a smart- Wi-Fi signals themselves using an phone then consults this online database app for Android smartphones. But to calculate the phone’s location to within few have yet done so. Owners of shop- The Economist Technology Quarterly December 1st 2012 Eye tracking 15

The eyes have it

Computer interfaces: The ability to determine the location of a person’s gaze is opening up an enormous range of new applications

LIMINATING zombies on product Epackaging is good for salesbut rst they must be discovered. In French marketing lingo, zombies are logos, images or phrases on packaging that shoppers dislike, without even realising it, says Eric Sin- gler of In Vivo BVA, a marketing consultancy based in Paris. His rm does brisk business determining exactly which ele- nd use in desktop computers, video- screens cost less than $5,000. Tobii Tech- ments on packaging attract or repel shop- games consoles and e-readers. nology, a Swedish company that manufac- pers using a small device called an eye Eye trackers combine a camera with an tures eye-tracking gear, reckons that the tracker. Resembling a chunky pair of glass- infra-red light source that illuminates the price of these high-end devices will soon es, it records the wearer’s eye movements. eye with bursts of invisible infra-red light. fall to below $3,000. Mapping them out reveals the places Some of this infra-red light disappears into For the time being, the main use of eye where the wearer’s gaze lingers with plea- the pupil (the dark opening in the centre of tracking is in design and marketing. Trials sure, jerks back and forth in confusion, or the iris), and some of it bounces back o involving just a few dozen viewers of an fails to look at all. the iris (the coloured part of the eye), the advertisement, website or product design In Vivo BVA runs 19 mock supermar- cornea (the back of the eye), the eyelid or can reveal exactly what looks good and kets, known as shopper labs, in America, the surrounding skin. All these dierent ar- what does not. Software sold by iMotions, Britain, China, France, Germany and Italy. eas reect dierent amounts of infra-red a Danish rm, creates colour-coded maps As test shoppers wander between the light, which is picked up by the camera. By that show where gazes glide, linger, or shelves, their eye movements are recorded analysing the reections using a lot of twitch back and forth in frustration. Such to see which products catch the eye. A de- very fancy matrix math it is then possible heat maps can reveal more about how cade ago test shoppers were tethered to to work out where the eye is pointing, says well an advertisement will work than ask- bulky computer equipment pushed along Bryan Reimer of the Massachusetts Insti- ing people to express themselves in words, behind them in a trolley. Today, wireless tute of Technology. Because eyes move in says Peter Hartzbech, the rm’s boss. goggles do the job. As the cost of eye-track- tandem, this only needs to be done for one ing gear has fallen in recent years and its ac- eye. The technique is able to cope with Wandering eyes curacy has risen, the technology has found blinking, head movements, dim light, But as eye-tracking gear gets cheaper, new a range of new uses. glasses and contact lenses. applications are emerging. Lenovo, a Chi- Eye tracking can do more than just help There are two main types of eye tracker. nese PC-maker, has made 20 prototype designers by revealing visual shortcom- Charting someone’s gaze as they use a laptops with Tobii eye trackers built into a ings in websites, advertisements and pro- computer screen or watch television can bulge in the top of the lid. The Eye Tribe, a duct prototypes. More than 9,000 para- be done using an eye tracker aimed at the start-up based in Copenhagen, has modi- lysed people operate computers and user from as far as two metres away. Track- ed a tablet computer so that it can be con- wheelchairs using eye trackers (most survi- ing someone’s gaze as they move around is trolled using eye movements. (Its demo vors of spinal injuries and neuromuscular more dicult. A special headset is needed, video shows the game Fruit Ninja being diseases retain control of their eyes). The with an eye tracker pointing towards the played using eyes alone.) technology is also being used to alert wearer’s eyes, and an extra video camera The Gaze Group, a research centre at the drowsy drivers, diagnose brain trauma, facing forward to record what he is seeing. IT University of Copenhagen from which train machine operators and provide sur- The output from the eye tracker is then The Eye Tribe is a spin-o, is developing geons with a third hand to control ro- used to superimpose crosshairs or a col- eye-tracking software for Android, the botic equipment. Costs are falling so quick- oured dot on the video from this camera, to leading smartphone operating system. ly that mainstream consumer use of the show what the wearer was looking at. More than 30,000 people have down- technology may not be far o. Haier, a Chi- The cost of headset eye trackers has fall- loaded the Gaze Group’s software, which nese maker of household appliances, re- en from around $30,000 a decade ago to a supports eye-tracking using relatively in- cently unveiled a prototype TV controlled bit less than $15,000 today. Fixed eye track- expensive night-vision cameras. The by a viewer’s gaze. Eye tracking may also ers used in conjunction with computer group’s leader, John Paulin Hansen, says 1 16 Eye tracking The Economist Technology Quarterly December 1st 2012

2 the software has been used by nerds who Eye tracking can also keep an eye on about $57,000 in lost production. like to play with stu to create eye-track- drivers. In America each year more than Eye-Com Corporation, based in Reno, ing controls for home appliances and a 750 people are killed in road accidents in- Nevada, has designed an eye-tracking scu- modied version of World of Warcraft volving drivers who fall sleep, notes Tim ba mask for Navy SEALs that detects fa- that quadriplegics can play. Johnson, head of crash-avoidance technol- tigue, levels of blood oxygen and nitrogen The ability to use eye tracking to control ogies at the National Highway Trac Safe- narcosis, a form of inebriation often expe- a computer has obvious advantages for ty Administration. One way to detect and rienced on deep dives. Eyes can tell you so disabled people, but fans of the technol- alert a dozing driver is to use an ear clip muchit’s pretty amazing, says the rm’s ogy believe it could become a widely used that beeps when it detects the driver’s founder, William Torch. EyeTracking, input technology for the able-bodied, too. head nodding forward. But an attention based in San Diego, has developed soft- Moving an on-screen cursor with a glance monitoring system based on eye tracking ware that determines whether circular or is much faster than using a mouse, for ex- is more eective. Pioneered by Toyota, the radial muscles in the iris are opening or ample. Tobii is also working with console- world’s largest carmaker, it sounds a warn- closing the pupil. Radial muscles take over makers and video-game publishers to de- ing if an eyelid sags, blinking speed slows, as stress and brain eort increase. Because velop new markets for its technology. the shifting of the driver’s gaze becomes a novice’s brain has to work harder than an Another use is in e-readers. Researchers sluggish or his head tips forward. expert’s to perform a given task, this oers at the German Research Centre for Arti- In early 2013 a Canadian rm called Six a way to measure a person’s level of exper- cial Intelligence and the University of Kai- Safety Systems will begin installing similar tise. EyeTracking’s technology is being serslautern have created a program called drowsiness-detection technology in vehi- used by two American university hospi- Text 2.0 that uses eye tracking to analyse cles operated by three big mining and drill- tals to determine when urology surgeons how a displayed text is being read. If the ing companies. The system, called LUCI, are ready to leave training programmes. reader lingers on a foreign word, Text 2.0 calculates the driver’s alertness score and can display its translation. Lingering on a sounds an alarm if it slips to a dangerous The death stare word and then sweeping one’s gaze to the level. At more than $15,000 per vehicle, Inevitably, eye tracking has military appli- right margin calls up a denition. If the LUCI is not cheap. But Richard Robillard of cations too. American ight instructors are reader starts to skim, the software dims Six Safety Systems notes that for one of his using eye-tracking gear provided by Polhe- common words. The program could be customers, driver fatigue causes about half mus, a rm based in Vermont, to monitor used by authors to see which passages of all vehicle accidentsand an hour of the eye movements of pilots in ight simu- caused readers to stumble or skip ahead. downtime for a single mining vehicle costs lators. The equipment can reveal whether trainees are scanning gauges in the right sequence, or skipping one altogether. Pilots What are you looking at? dislike the technology because it exposes How eye trackers work their mistakes, says John Farr of Polhemus. There are two main types of eye tracker, both of which use a combination of a camera and an infra-red light source Eye tracking may also have uses in real that illuminates the eye with bursts of invisible infra-red light. Some of this infra-red light disappears into the pupil, aircraft. In particular, it could be used to and some of it bounces back off the iris, the cornea, the eyelid or the surrounding skin. All these different parts of the eye reflect different amounts of infra-red light, which is picked up by the camera. By analysing the reflections it aim weapons just by looking at a target. At is then possible to work out where the eye is looking. the moment a pilot aims by turning and 1 2 tilting his head, the orientation of which is Point of focus determined using helmet-mounted sensors. But pilots cannot always control their head movements during high-G manoeu- vres, during which a helmet can feel like a tonne of bricks, says Jonathan Waldern of INFRA-RED A SBG B Labs, a Silicon Valley defence contrac- A. Infra-red light source tor. It is developing a gaze-controlled target- B. Eye-tracking camera ing system for the US Air Force. C C. Forward-facing camera ISCAN, a rm based in Woburn, Massa- To track someone’s gaze as he moves around, a special headset is needed, with an extra forward-facing video chusetts, has built a weapon system in Infra-red camera (C) that records what the wearer is seeing. Light which a small drone is wirelessly con- tracker & from an infra-red source (A) bounces off the lenses of the trolled by an eye-tracking headset. Fitted camera glasses into the eye, and the eye-tracking camera (B) picks up the eye’s reflection in the lenses, rather than with explosives, the eye-slaved drone Charting someone’s gaze as they use a computer screen imaging the eye directly. The output from the eye tracker can then act as a smart missile that can be or watch television can be done using an eye-tracking is then used to superimpose crosshairs or a coloured dot sent to blow up whatever the wearer is device aimed at the user from as far as two metres away. on the video from the forward-facing camera. looking at. It gives a whole new meaning The Economist Source: , Tobii Technology to the idea that looks can kill. 7 The Economist Technology Quarterly December 1st 2012 Brain scan 17 The dronefather

Force. Within 13 years of graduating, Mr Karem had completed and deployed 16 Abe Karem created the robotic plane projects, mostly conversions of jet ghters that transformed the way modern to add new weapons or capabilities. In warfare is wagedand continues to Israel at that time, we averaged six months pioneer other airborne innovations from an idea to completion of ight testing, he says. Military programmes in the WAS not the guy who put missiles on United States now typically take over 20 Ithe Predator, says Abe Karem, the years to achieve rst operation. aerospace engineer behind America’s Mr Karem also built his rst drone. most successful and most feared military During the Yom Kippur war of 1973, Israeli drone. I just wanted UAVs (unmanned ghter-bombers attacking Egypt and Syria aerial vehicles) to perform to the same were being stopped by Russian-made air standards of safety, reliability and perfor- defences. Israel needed a fast decoy drone mance as manned aircraft. to activate the defensive radar systems, so When Mr Karem arrived in America they could then be hit using anti-radiation from Israel in 1977, the Pentagon had al- missiles. Mr Karem’s team designed, built most given up on robotic planes. At the and ew such a drone in just one month. time its most promising UAV, the Aquila, needed 30 people to launch it, ew for just Home-grown drones minutes at a time and crashed on average Amber, the drone he built for DARPA, was every 20 ight hours. It was insanity intended for a very dierent role. In the itself, says Mr Karem. It was obvious to event of a war between NATO and the me they were going to crash because they Warsaw Pact countries, Amber drones had 30 people doing something that could would be used to carry out surveillance be done better by three. and electronic warfare over the battle- Mr Karem founded a company, Leading elds of Europe. A special ultra-high alti- Systems, in the garage of his Los Angeles tude version of Amber was even planned home and began work on a drone that to restore temporary communications would ultimately transform the way over America after a nuclear war. America wages war. It was built in an Despite its ambitious aims, Amber, like intentionally low-tech manner, using Albatross, was largely home-made by Mr plywood, home-made breglass and a Karem’s small team. It was powered by a two-stroke engine of the kind normally four-stroke petrol engine developed se- found in go-karts. I wanted to prove that cretly in the garage of Hans Hermann, a performance is largely a result of inspired Formula 1racing legend of the 1950s. Its design and highly optimised and integrat- cutting-edge electronics and remote- ed subsystems, not the application of the control ground station were assembled in most advanced technology, he says. the living room of another employee. Critically the drone, code-named When I started, people asked why I was Albatross, was developed by a handful of making a UAV with four times the compu- engineers, and operated by a team of just tational power of the F-16, the rst y-by- three. Doing things with the absolute wire jet ghter, says Mr Karem. The rea- smallest team increases the chance that son was that, as any computer buyer you’re not going to screw up, says Mr knows, a more powerful machine takes Karem. Nothing replaces highly talented longer to become obsolete. Almost all of peoplewhite-hot passionate thinkers in our subsystems from 1985-89 are still ying love with doing challenging things. After in some Predators today, says Mr Karem, a ight test during which Albatross re- including its 27-year-old computer and, mained aloft for 56 hours, DARPA, the with minor changes, the ground station. research arm of America’s armed forces, By 1986 Amber drones were ying for funded Mr Karem to scale it up into a more more than a day without landing, reach- capable drone called Amber. It, in turn, ing altitudes of nearly 30,000 feet and evolved into the modern Predator. operating safely even in bad weather. And It was almost inevitable that Mr Karem unlike Aquila, the Amber rarely crashed, would become an aerospace engineer. He suering just one accident in 650 hours of built model aircraft at school, inspired by a tests. To ensure his engineers focused on teacher who had own in a British Lancas- ight safety, Mr Karem refused to allow ter bomber during the second world war. parachute-recovery systems in any of his Mr Karem went on to study aeronautics at UAVs. Crashing when you can’t aord to Technion, Israel’s prestigious Institute of is the best way to learn, he says. Technology, and then joined the Israeli Air Amber’s accelerated design process, 1 18 Brain scan The Economist Technology Quarterly December 1st 2012

You need inventors who are dreaming and tinkering to make new things happen.

2 lean stang and high reliability also billion on UAVs in the next decade, in- hundreds of mobile-phone cameras. meant that the entire cost of each experi- creasing their number to more than 8,000. Mr Karem makes no eort to hide his mental drone, $350,000, was less than the By the time the Predator went into low opinion of the world’s largest aircraft cost of running an Aquila UAV for a single production, however, Mr Karem had left manufacturers, and implies that the pro- hour. Understandably, both the US Army General Atomics. While emphasising the blem is managerial, not technological. and Navy were interested in funding work done by others to develop the Preda- Incumbents have a problem creating Amber to production, with the aim of tor and its successor, the Reaper, he takes anything that would compete with what buying as many as 200 aircraft a year. credit for America’s rapid adoption of they’re already doing, he says. You need But Amber fell victim to political in- drones. The UAVs that happened with- inventors who are dreaming and tinkering ghting. In 1987 Congress combined all out my input, like Aquila, were a disaster, to make new things happen. UAV research into a single programme. Its he says. If the best aircraft available Now that drones are being built by aims reected the limited capabilities of when the need for UAVs emerged had hobbyists and spreading into non-military the Pioneer drone, the successor to the been Pioneer, what we have today would use, Mr Karem has moved on again. His Aquila: short range, short endurance and not have happened. And although Mr latest aerospace start-up, Karem Aircraft, low-altitude missions. Amber was can- Karem was not involved in the decision to aims to bring the A160’s variable-speed celled, something Mr Karem blames on arm the Predator, he has no objection to rotor technology to xed-wing passenger established aerospace players. Amber the use of drones as weapons platforms. planes. AeroTrain is an aircraft capable of was conscated and locked up to protect At least people are now working on how vertical take-o and landing. It is intended the incumbents, he says. to kill the minimum number of people on to compete with the Boeing 737 and Air- the other side, he says. The missiles on bus A320, the workhorse narrow-bodied Game of drones the Predator are way too capable. Weap- aircraft that dominate commercial avia- Shortly afterwards, nancial pressure ons for UAVs are going to get smaller and tion. Its twin turboprop rotors lift it o the forced Mr Karem to sell Leading Systems smaller to avoid collateral damage. ground like a helicopter before tilting to Hughes Aircraft, who in turn sold it to Mr Karem’s next venture was Frontier forward for fuel-ecient horizontal ight. another defence contractor, General Systems, another aerospace company, Its ability to operate from tiny airports Atomics. Resigned to the fact that America where he began to develop the A160, a makes the AeroTrain a cost-eective al- did not want Amber, Mr Karem made a robotic helicopter drone that used new, ternative to existing aircraft, Mr Karem cut-down, runway-launched version of it variable-speed blades. I always look for a insists, particularly for developing nations for export, called the Gnat 750. General gap between what we can do and what is that lack road and rail infrastructure. Atomics had just sold six Gnat 750s to being done, he says. When it came to Boeing and Airbus would not want to Turkey in 1993 when escalating conict in rotary UAVs, I saw a vacuum I could ll. see AeroTrain happen, he says. But the former Yugoslavia meant that America Most helicopter rotors operate at a smaller guys like Embraer and Bombar- suddenly needed a high-endurance drone constant rotational speed, which avoids dier may be motivated to do something for covert reconnaissance. The director of the danger of disintegration at particular that is not only very dierent, but has the CIA at that time was Jim Woolsey. He resonant frequencies. The A160 instead patents that could keep the incumbents asked his UAV programme ocer to do had a rotor that could change its speed out for 30 years. With his drones, Mr the job, and they said it would cost $100m depending on the drone’s altitude, pay- Karem has already revolutionised avia- and take ve years, says Mr Karem. He load and velocity. This allowed it to be tion once. As unlikely as AeroTrain sounds asked us, and we said it would be $5m and much more fuel-ecient and far quieter today, it would be foolish to discount the take three months. The rest is history. than existing helicopters. It was a very possibility that this ever-dreaming, ever- As promised, the Gnat 750 was ying high-risk, high pay-o programme, ad- tinkering engineer might do so again. 7 over Bosnia within months, relaying live mits Mr Karem. One DARPA adviser video feeds to the Pentagon via a manned believed that the rotor would disintegrate Oer to readers aircraft and a satellite ground station. By on its rst ground run. In the event the A Reprints of Technology Quarterly are available July 1994 General Atomics had incorporat- 160’s rotor blades, constructed from sti, from the Rights and Syndication Department. ed satellite links into the Gnat itself, giving lightweight composite materials, worked A minimum order of ve copies is required. the drone a gently rounded nose that well. Once again DARPA funded a proto- belied its pugnacious new name: Predator. type and Mr Karem again sold his com- Corporate oer America now had a platform that could pany, this time to Boeing, in 2004. Customisation options on corporate orders of loiter over a target area for days, provide Boeing’s version of the drone, devel- 100 or more are available. Please contact us to discuss your requirements. infra-red and optical surveillance in all oped without any further involvement For more information on how to order special weathersand, with the addition of Hell- from Mr Karem, can navigate and reports, reprints or any queries you may have re anti-tank missiles in 2001, launch a manoeuvre autonomously and holds a please contact: devastating attack without warning. world record for rotorcraft endurance. It Today the Department of Defence has seems unlikely to enter service, however, The Rights and Syndication Department over 6,000 UAVs, including hundreds after a number of embarrassing crashes. The Economist based on the Predator. Predators have Particularly awkward were recent acci- 26 Red Lion Square London WC1R 4HQ been used by America in every conict dents that destroyed not one but two of Tel +44 (0)20 7576 8148 since the Balkans, including Afghanistan, DARPA’s next-generation eyes in the sky: a Fax +44 (0)20 7576 8492 Iraq, Yemen, Somalia and Libya, and have foliage-penetrating radar called Forester, e-mail: [email protected] collectively logged millions of ight hours. and a system called Argus that snaps www.economist.com.rights America’s armed forces plan to spend $37 massive 1,800 megapixel images using