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Barcodes help to camouflage vehicles(Electronics Weekly (UK) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) They're more commonly seen on the side of drinks cans or on adverts to direct you to company websites, writes Niall Firth from New Scientist. But now QR codes - the fuzzy squares of data that can be scanned with a smartphone - could be projected into the sides of tanks to send covert information, using only heat. Defence firm BAE Systems has developed a technology called Adaptiv, which uses hexagonal tiles that can change temperature to hide or even disguise a tank's infra-red signature. At last week's defence industry exhibition (DSEI) in London, BAE demonstrated how input from a tank's on-board software can heat or cool the individual tiles to hide the vehicle from enemy infrared sensors. Because each tile can be individually heated or cooled, the system can also project the infrared image of other objects onto the side of the tank - a car for example, or even a pile of rocks. Within seconds of the flick of a switch, some of the tiles felt noticeably warmer to the touch and an infrared camera showed that the word "Adaptiv" was now visible across the vehicle's flank, each letter glowing white against the grey background on the camera, indicating that it was hotter than its surroundings. The tank's own on-board thermal camera can take a picture of the background heat signature of a particular location, match its background, and effectively disappear from view. Radar system has 180° of e-scan Plextek demonstrated its latest Blighter B303 radar system at DSEi last week. A feature of this version of the radar is 180° of electronic scanning (e-scan) in a 20kg pole or mast mounting unit with a detection range out to 8km. Plextek has designed a patented low-cost printed antenna technology to electronically scan a full 180°, equivalent to 100km² of land, in just 1.5s. "This version extends the capability and cost effectiveness of the Blighter electronic-scanning radar family for short-to-medium range ground surveillance applications," said Mark Radford, director of security products at Plextek. A feature of the Blighter radar is its ability to achieve exceptionally slow speed target detection whilst scanning at high speeds. www.plextek.com Open platform for secure UAS design Green Hills Software has introduced an autonomous vehicle (AV) open platform for the development of secure software for autonomous vehicle developers to host their unmanned autonomous systems (UAS) applications. The heart of the development system is the firm's Integrity-178B real-time operating system (RTOS) which meets the software safety requirements of RTCA/DO-178B Level A for safety and total reliability, and the information assurance requirements of the US Government's EAL6+ Separation Kernel Protection Profile (SKPP) for absolute security. Green Hills says the platform is agnostic to the hardware, allowing platform providers to utilise the best architecture for their environment. www.ghs.com (c) 2011 Reed Business Information - UK. All Rights Reserved. |