Gadgets

This autonomous spray-painting drone is a 21st-century tagger’s dream – TechCrunch

Published

5 years ago

October 5, 2018

Whenever I see an overpass or billboard that’s been tagged, I worry about the tagger and the danger they exposed themselves to in order to get that cherry spot. Perhaps this spray paint-toting drone developed by ETH Zurich and Disney Research will take some of the danger out of the hobby. It also could be used for murals and stuff, I guess.

Although it seems an obvious application in retrospect, there just isn’t a lot of drone-based painting being done out there. Consider: A company could shorten or skip the whole scaffolding phase of painting a building or advertisement, leaving the bulk of painting to a drone. Why not?

There just isn’t a lot of research into it yet, and like so many domain-specific applications, the problem is deceptively complex. This paper only establishes the rudiments of a system, but the potential is clearly there.

The drone used by the researchers is a DJI Matrice 100², customized to have a sensing rig mounted on one side and a spraying assembly on the other, counterbalancing each other. The sprayer, notably, is not just a nozzle but a pan-and-tilt mechanism that allows details to be painted that the drone can’t be relied on to make itself. To be clear, we’re still talking broad strokes here, but accurate to an inch rather than three or four.

It’s also been modified to use wired power and a constant supply of paint, which simplifies the physics and also reduces limits on the size of the surface to be painted. A drone lugging its own paint can wouldn’t be able to fly far, and its thrust would have to be constantly adjusted to account for the lost weight of sprayed paint. See? Complex.

The first step is to 3D scan the surface to be painted; this can be done manually or via drone. The mesh is then compared to the design to be painted and a system creates a proposed path for the drone.

Lastly the drone is set free to do its thing. It doesn’t go super fast in this prototype form, nor should it, since even the best drones can’t stop on a dime, and tend to swing about when they reduce speed or change direction. Slow and steady is the word, following a general path to put the nozzle in range of where it needs to shoot. All the while it is checking its location against the known 3D map of the surface so it doesn’t get off track.

In case you’re struggling to see the “bear,” it’s standing up with its paws on a tree. That took me a long time to see, so I thought I’d spare you the trouble.

Let’s be honest: This thing isn’t going to do anything much more complicated than some line work or a fill. But for a lot of jobs that’s exactly what’s needed — and it’s often the type of work that’s the least suited to skilled humans, who would rather be doing stuff only they can do. A drone could fill in all the easy parts on a building and then the workers can do the painstaking work around the windows or add embellishments and details.

For now this is strictly foundational work — no one is going to hire this drone to draw a Matterhorn on their house — but there’s a lot of potential here if the engineering and control methods can be set down with confidence.

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Gadgets

macOS Sonoma drops support for another wide swath of Intel Macs

Published

22 mins ago

June 5, 2023

Francisco Peguero

Enlarge / macOS Sonoma runs on Intel Macs, but the list is getting awfully short.

Apple

With the introduction of the Apple Silicon Mac Pro, Apple has finally completed the Apple Silicon transition and booted all Intel Macs from its current lineup. But software support for Intel Macs isn’t quite done, at least not yet. The macOS Sonoma update will still run on a couple generations of Intel Macs, but in general, if you’re using anything made before 2018 or anything without an Apple T2 chip in it, you won’t be able to run the new OS.

Sonoma drops support for all versions of the 12-inch MacBook, the 2017 MacBook Pro and MacBook Air updates, and the 2017 iMac. Macs made after 2017 all generally integrated Apple’s T2 chip, which handled some Touch Bar functionality on some MacBook Pro models, but provided additional security and video encoding features to all Macs that included it. It’s essentially an A10 coprocessor included along with the main Intel CPU, a bridge between the Intel era and the M1 and M2 Macs that would follow.

There is one 2017 Mac that’s still supported: the one and only iMac Pro, released in December of 2017, which was the first Mac to include the T2. There’s also one exception—the 2019 iMac, which doesn’t have a T2 on board but does run the same firmware as the other T2 Macs.

The full macOS Sonoma support list.

Apple

According to two decades’ worth of Mac support data that we have compiled and analyzed, Apple has been dropping support for Intel Macs a bit more quickly in the Apple Silicon era than it was during the height of the Intel Mac era in the early- to mid-2010s. A Mac released between 2009 and 2015 could typically expect between seven and eight years of new macOS releases, but for Macs released in 2016 or 2017, that number is closer to six years.

Apple does provide older macOS releases with around two years of additional security-only updates after replacing them, so people with Macs stuck on macOS 12 Monterey or macOS 13 Ventura should still get Safari updates and patches for the most severe security vulnerabilities after Sonoma is released. For anyone still running macOS 11 Big Sur, the time has come to either upgrade your operating system, upgrade your hardware, or take your chances running without patches.

Gadgets

iOS and iPadOS 17 drop support for iPhone X, first iPad Pros, and other old devices

Published

1 hour ago

June 5, 2023

Francisco Peguero

Enlarge / StandBy and other iOS 17 features won’t be coming to some older iPhones.

Apple

Apple sometimes releases new operating systems without changing the system requirements—but this year isn’t one of those years. The iOS 17 update will drop support for several older phones that can currently run iOS 16: 2017’s iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus, and the original iPhone X.

Apple’s system requirements list the “iPhone XS and newer,” which should encompass the iPhone XR and all subsequent iPhone X-style notched iPhones, plus the 2nd- and 3rd-generation iPhone SE.

The iPadOS 17 update also drops support for most of the pre-2018 devices that iPadOS 16 still supported, including the 5th-gen $329 iPad and the very first 12.9- and 9.7-inch iPad Pros from 2015 and 2016. All other iPad Pros, the third-generation iPad Air and later, and the 5th-generation iPad mini and later will all run iPadOS 17, though the older a device is, the more likely it is to miss out on a handful of newer features (like Stage Manager).

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Most of the iPhones and iPads supported include an Apple A12 Bionic chip or newer (or, for newer iPad Pros, M1 or M2 processors). The 6th-generation iPad and its A10 chip is the sole exception—these cheaper iPads usually use hardware that’s a few generations old to keep the price down.

As for Apple’s other iOS-related platforms, watchOS 10’s system requirements don’t change much. It will still run on any Series 4 or newer Apple Watch, but it does require an attached iPhone running iOS 17. If you have an older phone that can’t upgrade, you won’t be able to run watchOS 10 even if your watch hardware meets the requirements.

Gadgets

Apple reveals Vision Pro, a AR/VR headset unlike any other

Published

2 hours ago

June 5, 2023

Francisco Peguero

Enlarge / Apple’s Vision Pro headset

CUPERTINO, Calif.—After years of speculation, leaks, rumors, setbacks, and rumblings of amazing behind-the-scenes demos, Apple has made its plans for a mixed reality platform and headset public. Vision Pro is “the first Apple Product you look through, not at,” Apple’s Tim Cook said, a “new AR platform with a new product” that “augments reality by seamlessly blending the real world with the digital world.”

“I believe augmented reality is a profound technology. Blending digital content with the real world can unlock new experiences,” Cook said.

The headset, which looks like a pair of shiny ski goggles, can be controlled in a “fully 3D interface” without a handheld controller. It solely uses your eyes, hands, and voice as an interface, and the unit lets you “control the system simply by looking.” Icons and other UI elements react to your gaze, and you use natural gestures like tapping your fingers or a gentle flick to select them—no need to hold your hands awkwardly in front of you constantly.

In video demonstrations, Apple showed users walking around and grabbing things from a fridge without taking the headset off. And to further keep you from feeling isolated while wearing the headset, a system called EyeSight will display your eyes when someone is nearby, conveying “a critical indicator of connection and emotion.”

Floating 2D apps can be placed to float around your “real world” space, which remains visible through the semi-transparent display. Elements in this interface will cast shadows in the real room around them and respond to light, Apple said. These apps can also “expand fully into your space,” like a pulsating 3D animation in a mindfulness app.

Apple CEO Bob Iger came out to demonstrate a number of customized Vision Pro experiences, from Disney+ support to ESPN sports broadcasts with a wide array of stats filling your room to a virtual Mickey Mouse that walks around your space.

A floating 4K Mac display will appear when users glance at their MacBook display while in the Vision Pro. From there, users can interact with use a virtual keyboard or their voice to type, or make use of a physical Magic Trackpad and/or Magic Keyboard.

While watching movies (including 3D movies) on a virtual floating screen, the device will automatically dim your surroundings to be less distracting. The headset can take spatial photos or videos with the click of a button, which you can re-experience as panoramas that you feel like you’re actually inhabiting, Apple said.

Over 100 Apple Arcade titles will be available to play via a floating screen and a handheld controller via Vision Pro “on Day One.”

This is a developing story and will be updated.