How to Make an Invisible Drone - Computational design generates a spinning drone that’s nearly transparent

Amazing stuff! There was something buzzing over my head yesterday! Just kidding!

"By exploiting the quirks of human vision, Northwestern University engineers have designed a drone that nearly disappears right before the eyes.

For years, researchers have tried to design invisible drones and robots using camouflage, transparent materials or light-bending optical systems. But the Northwestern team instead used a concept called “motion blur” — the same effect that makes fast-spinning fans and propellers seem to disappear.

Called the “Phantom Twist,” the drone spins up to 25 times per second, which is too fast for the human eye to see clearly. While it isn’t completely invisible, it morphs into a ghostly smudge that seamlessly blends into the background. The work eventually could lead to drones that monitor wildlife, survey the environment and inspect infrastructure with less visual disruption. ..."

From the abstract:

"We introduce Phantom Twist, a type of single-propeller UAV designed to achieve low visibility through high-speed spinning and the exploitation of motion blur.

We develop a two-stage automated design pipeline that optimizes the placement of functional components including batteries, control PCB, motor-propeller assembly, and counterweights. The pipeline minimizes visibility as measured by a human-aligned perceptual metric (LPIPS) while strictly satisfying inertial and aerodynamic constraints required for stable flight.

We validate this approach through fabrication and flight testing of multiple prototypes. These tests confirm that our pipeline produces stable, controllable designs and that the optimized UAV exhibits significantly reduced visual perceptibility compared to conventional quadcopters."

AI Design Makes a Wild Invisible Spinning Drone - IEEE Spectrum "Computational design generates a spinning drone that’s nearly transparent"

New spinning drone hides in plain sight (original news release)

Computational Design of a Low-Visibility UAV Using a Human-Aligned Perceptual Metric (conference oral presentation paper)

Phantom Twist’s spinning flight makes it nearly transparent

Nokia’s 14 Years of Mobile-Phone Supremacy Ended in an Afternoon

Recommendable! A chronicle of fast moving technological change!

What about Motorola?

"In 2005, Nokia sold its billionth mobile phone, a budget-friendly device that went to a customer in Nigeria. By then, the company, based in Espoo, Finland, was making one of every three cellphones globally.

But just nine years later, the mobile-device maker offloaded its entire handset division to Microsoft for pennies on the dollar, compared to what it had been worth at its peak. ...

On 9 January 2007, at the Macworld conference in San Francisco, Steve Jobs made a characteristically bold claim. “Today, Apple is reinventing the phone,” he said, soon pulling one of the first iPhones out of his pocket. ...

multitouch [screen] technology ..

And yet it took Nokia years to develop a phone that used multitouch. “Remember, Nokia is based in Finland,” he says. “It’s very cold in Finland. They wear gloves for six months of the year, including the executives. They didn’t think a device like that would work.” ...

That similar product ended up being the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, known as the Tube, released in 2008. “The idea was to focus on streaming videos and television,” Partanen says. “So we made a phone with a similar form factor to the iPhone [that was] optimized for streaming content.” But the 5800 was “delayed, delayed, delayed, delayed,” he says. “It didn’t materialize in the way it was planned. It was released as a watered-down version.” ...

The 1200 kept the 1100’s dust-proofing, flashlight, and long-lasting battery, and added features aimed squarely at the developing world. ...

In September 2008, the first Android phone went on sale—the HTC Dream, which was also sold as the T-Mobile G1. ...

Released in 2009, the Nokia 5230 attempted to be a low-priced, touchscreen (though not multitouch) competitor to both the iPhone and Android. It sold an impressive 150 million units, doing especially well in developing countries.

But the 5230 didn’t have Wi-Fi—one of the biggest complaints at the time. In the developing world, Wi-Fi connections were still rare, so the lack of Wi-Fi made some sense. ..."

How Nokia’s Feature Phones Lost to the Smartphone Era - IEEE Spectrum "How the iPhone and then Android killed the feature phone"

Hoover Institution: Anticipating and Navigating Strategic Technological Surprise. Really!

This subject has been frequently regurgitated at least since about 1945! It was a constant, recurring subject during the entire Cold War!

Deepseek's R1 model release in January 2025 is not a great example! Chinese AI research has been cutting edge for years! Just think of all the many preeminent Chinese machine learning & artificial intelligence scientists working in the US alone!

"Hoover Institution Research Fellow Herb Lin and researcher Maria Langan-Riekhof argue in this new essay that rapid technological advancement creates strategic surprises that governments and institutions struggle to anticipate. They define strategic technological surprises as disruptions that overturn prevailing assumptions, shift power dynamics, and demand significant and rapid societal responses.

China’s development of the DeepSeek AI R1 model exemplified this, shattering assumptions about China’s ability to produce competitive AI at scale. ..."

"DeepSeek's R1 release in January 2025 caught U.S. policymakers flat-footed. The AI research community had seen it coming for months in Chinese academic papers and patent filings. A new framework from Hoover's Tech Futures Lab asks why that gap, the one between what is knowable and what gets acted on, keeps opening, and how to close it before the next surprise arrives. ..."

The Next DeepSeek Moment Is Right Around the Corner

Anticipating And Navigating Strategic Technological Surprise

Solid-State Elastocaloric Cooling Hits Sub-Zero Mark

Good news!

"As the race to find alternative cooling tech heats up, researchers are exploring climate-friendly options such as elastocaloric cooling, a solid-state tech that moves heat through reversible phase transformations.

Now, researchers ... have announced the first elastocaloric device capable of reaching subzero Celsius temperatures, marking a milestone in the development of this promising refrigeration technology. The desktop prototype, described in a recent Nature paper, successfully froze 20 milliliters of water into ice within two hours, making it comparable to the performance of a domestic freezer. ..."

"... The features include:

(1)    Super-elastic alloy: employing a binary low-transition-temperature nickel-titanium (NiTi) alloy with a high nickel content (51.2 at %) and lowering its austenite finish temperature (Af) to -20.8℃. This alloy maintains excellent super-elasticity and a substantial latent heat even at -20℃, with a peak adiabatic temperature change of 16.3℃ at 0℃ and a functional temperature window of 48.5℃.

(2)    Freezing-resistant heat transfer fluid: using a 30wt% aqueous calcium chloride solution as the working fluid. Its low freezing point ensures that it remains fluid in sub-zero operation, while its good wettability on the NiTi surface enhances heat exchange efficiency.

(3)    Cascaded tubular architecture:  the regenerator operates on a compression-based active Brayton cycle and consists of eight cascaded units, each containing three thin-walled NiTi tubes. This design offers a high surface area-to-volume ratio (8.68 mm-1) and withstands a compressive stress of 900MPa without buckling, as verified by X-ray computed tomography.

..."

From the abstract:

"Elastocaloric cooling using shape-memory alloys (SMAs) is a promising greenhouse gas (GHG)-free alternative to conventional vapour-compression refrigeration that relies on high global warming potential (GWP) gas refrigerants. However, existing elastocaloric systems have not yet reached sub-zero Celsius temperatures, which restricts their application in various freezing scenarios. Here we constructed a compression-based, regenerative elastocaloric cooling device using low-transition-temperature tubular NiTi units in a cascaded configuration. The selected NiTi alloy exhibited superelasticity and substantial entropy changes down to −20 °C.

Moreover, low-freezing-point aqueous calcium chloride solution was used as the heat-transfer fluid, ensuring effective flow at low operational temperatures.

Our desktop device achieved a heat-source temperature of −12 °C from a room-temperature heat sink, paving the way for next-generation green elastocaloric freezing technologies."

Solid-State Elastocaloric Cooling Hits Sub-Zero Mark - IEEE Spectrum

HKUST Develops World’s First Sub-Zero Celsius Elastocaloric Green Freezer, Reshaping Freezing Industry with its Zero Emissions (original news release)

Sub-zero Celsius elastocaloric cooling via low-transition-temperature alloys (no public access, but article above has a link to paper)

Starlink Is Riding Down the Wright’s Law unit Cost Curve, more download bandwidth at lower costs

Good news!

I just blogged here about China's attempt to compete with Starlink.

The Wright's law unit cost curve does not seem to be very famous. E.g. no separate entry in Wikipedia nor other online encyclopedias.

"In contrast to Moore’s Law, which is based on time, Wright’s Law predicts that with every doubling of cumulative product output, costs per unit will decrease 20 to 30 percent. SpaceX continues to ride down the Wright’s Law cost curve for satellite bandwidth capacity. ARK Invest estimates a 45 percent decline for every cumulative doubling in gigabits per second in orbit. ..."

"SpaceX disclosed striking data about Starlink V3 in its 2024 Progress Report.1 Each V3 satellite, for example, delivers 1 Terabit per second (Tbps) of downlink speed, ten times that of V2 Minis. In other words, given the improved satellites and the larger launch vehicle, a Starship V3 launch should add 60 Tbps to the network, over twenty times a V2 Mini launch.  ..."

Starlink Is Riding Down the Wright’s Law Cost Curve "Elon Musk is using his billions to relentlessly discover new knowledge."

#445: Starlink Is Riding Down Wright’s Law’s Cost Curve, & More

PM Modi - Bill Gates Interview: The Key Takeaways with Palki Sharma

Recommendable! It is an unusual interview! Modi comes across as very humble, but he uses ChatGPT!

That's a good one!

Writers Guild of America on strike for the past three weeks against e.g. AI

Does this not strongly remind of Luddites? Certainly so!

"... ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Regulate use of artificial intelligence on MBA-covered projects: AI can’t write or rewrite literary material; can’t be used as source material; and MBA-covered material can’t be used to train AI. ..."

WGA Negotiations Status as of May 1, 2023

Why Is Putin's Army Inept? Short answer: Lack of or inability to harness computer chips

The author repeats the old hypotheses that the former Soviet Union and its successor Russia could not keep up with the relentless technological advances in the West. Stealing technology from the West has remained insufficient!

When it comes to China, it is making tremendous efforts e.g. to develop domestic chip technology. The author of the article below did not speculate on China.

Why Is Putin's Army Inept? | Frontpage Mag

British actors union: Stop AI stealing the show

There is a famous quote by Victor Hugo: "One resists the invasion of armies; one does not resist the invasion of ideas." Often shortened to: "No army can stop an idea whose time has come."

AI has the power to make a lot of actors jobless! Labor unions better try to accommodate and cooperate instead of oppose the inevitable!

British actors union Equity - Stop AI stealing the show "Join our campaign to strengthen performers' rights in response to the rise of artificial intelligence across the entertainment industry."

"... Actors Act Against AI

Performing artists are taking action to protect their earning power against scene-stealing avatars.

What’s new: Equity, a union of UK performing artists, launched a campaign to pressure the government to prohibit unauthorized use of a performer’s AI-generated likeness. The union published tips to help artists who work on AI projects exercise control over their performances and likenesses. ..."

The Batch by Andrew Ng

Schumpeter's Gale of Creative Destruction Again

Every the so often in human history major technological and economic changes transform our every day lives. The Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter poetically described it as the recurrent "Gale of Creative Destruction".

With AI, robotics, advances in medicine and so forth it will be no different.

We still do not have a crystal ball! Most computer models of complex systems are still quite unreliable as far as forecasts are concerned!
However, a few things come immediately to mind:

1. Will we have finally more leisure time, if we desire? What will we do with more leisure time?
2. Will human to human services become more relevant as robots etc. free us more from our daily chores etc.
3. Managing and maintenance of advanced technology will probably be more in demand
4. Which jobs will be the hardest to be replaced by robots?
5. Perhaps the most important question could AI overtake humans one day? I think a symbiosis is more likely.

P.S. There are some older blog posts of mine related to this subject like here and here.

Humans To Transcend Nature

Posted: 3/2/2013

Will Humans Be Ready?

Given the exponential progress of science and technology since the inception of the computer, our world has the potential to be a very different place over the coming 50-300 years or so.

Many of the previous milestones or acmes of human civilization will pale compared to the potential, imminent transformations. Of course, lest we forget we are only standing on the shoulders of giants and other humans that came before us.

The Crystal Ball Is So Outdated

May I offer a few guesses about the future of humans:

1.       Human intelligence and memory will be genetically altered to be much higher and better (what if the average human had an IQ of Einstein and a photographic memory? But ability to read human minds vs. will our minds be encrypted?)

2.       Human health and longevity will be much better and longer (e.g. effective cures for most diseases, genetic and mental disorders; organ replacement/regrowth etc.)

3.       Human education is already undergoing dramatic changes (e.g. venerated universities will become but a chapter in history)

4.       Crime and punishment. Humans have not really gone far beyond than giving suspects and perpetrators more legal protections and defenses since ancient times. Conventional crimes at least have become much more detectable and more accurately solvable in less time. (This is a difficult one to make guesses about)

5.       Food and beverages will not be a product of agriculture anymore, but will be designed and engineered for taste and optimal nutrients etc. (this process has been ongoing at least since humans brewed their first beer)

6.       The human body will be modified to be much stronger, faster, less vulnerable to injuries etc. like no other creature of nature (e.g. how about eagle eyes and a dog’s nose?; will we still need clothing?; anti-doping is so obsolete, hail pro-doping)

7.       Women will not have to give birth anymore. Intercourse will become a thing of the past. The sexes will disappear.

8.       There will be a better substitute for euphoria, orgasm, adrenalin rushes through dangerous activities, drug induced highs etc., if we still need it. Negative addictions will be extinct or will be cured in an instant.

9.       Computers will be part of our body or there will be some kind of close symbiosis between computer and human (I readily admit this is a difficult guess)

10.   Robots will be everywhere in our lives assisting us in every imaginable way (e.g. no more chores or errands)

11.   Better energy sources will be harnessed (e.g. nuclear fusion, or hydrogen, or photosynthesis, or solar power etc.)

12.   I am sure, I am missing something J

If we are hit by a huge asteroid or engage in another world war these guesses are toast.

What About Individual Liberty?

The ever wider expansion and meddling of big government in every aspect of our lives for the past 150 years or so is a huge problem in particular in the Western world. Constitutions and democracy have not effectively prevented nor restrained nor even slowed down the growth of Leviathan. The beacon of freedom, i.e. the United States and the United Kingdom, has also embarked on this dangerous path for quite some time.

Big government with all its inherent contradictions and irrespective of ideology tends to turn human society into something like an ant colony if left unchecked. In the past it was superstition, dogmas, lack of knowledge, and illiteracy that prevented human liberty and progress, since the 19th century it is big government, which coincided with the emergence of nation states.

Given the current state of affairs, I am not very optimistic. Big government is toxic to and it suffocates individual liberty. Big government has the power to significantly impede human progress as it has amply demonstrated in the past.

In my estimation, more individual liberty and responsibility instead of bigger government will make these tremendous transformations we are potentially facing much more peaceful, beneficial, and acceptable to everyone.

Will the coming generations of human leaders reverse this trend of ever bigger government? We better hope so.

Last, But Not Least

I firmly believe, God will not mind and God is with us.

As King Solomon in Ecclesiastes is reported to have said about 900 BC, “what has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun” and “fear God, and keep His Commandments; for that is the whole duty of everyone”! I don’t think these observations by Solomon express exclusively Judaic-Christian values, but they certainly emphasize individual liberty and responsibility as we are all children of God.

Maybe one day we living humans will truly discover the benevolence of God!