Engineers develop Novel Techniques to Trick Object Detection Systems

Many of today’s vehicles use object detection systems to help avoid collisions. SwRI engineers developed unique patterns that can trick these systems into seeing something else, seeing the objects in another location or not seeing the objects at all. In this photo, the object detection system sees a person rather than a vehicle. This research will allow engineers to thoroughly test object detection systems and improve the security of the deep-learning algorithms they use.
Credit: Southwest Research Institute

Project to test and improve deep-learning algorithms for enhanced security. New adversarial techniques developed by engineers at Southwest Research Institute can make objects “invisible” to image detection systems that use deep-learning algorithms...

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Heavy Metal Planet Fragment Survives Destruction from Dead Star

A planetary fragment orbits the star SDSS J122859.93+104032.9, leaving a tail of gas in its wake.
Credit: University of Warwick/Mark Garlick

A fragment of a planet that has survived the death of its star has been discovered by University of Warwick astronomers in a disc of debris formed from destroyed planets, which the star ultimately consumes. The iron and nickel rich planetesimal survived a system-wide cataclysm that followed the death of its host star, SDSS J122859.93+104032.9. Believed to have once been part of a larger planet, its survival is all the more astonishing as it orbits closer to its star than previously thought possible, going around it once every two hours.

The discovery, reported in the journal Science, is the first time that scientists have used spectroscopy to disc...

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Improving 3D-printed Prosthetics and integrating Electronic Sensors

The mold of local teen Josie Fraticelli’s hand that was scanned during the development of a personalized prosthetic.
Credit: Photo by Logan Wallace. Virginia Tech

Scientists have made inroads in integrating electronic sensors with personalized 3D-printed prosthetics. With the growth of 3D printing, it’s entirely possible to 3D print your own prosthetic from models found in open-source databases. But those models lack personalized electronic user interfaces like those found in costly, state-of-the-art prosthetics.

Now, a Virginia Tech professor and his interdisciplinary team of undergraduate student researchers have made inroads in integrating electronic sensors with personalized 3D-printed prosthetics – a development that could one day lead to more affordable electric-powered prost...

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Solar Wind: And the essay 2 Blobs just keep on coming

Engineers inspect the Helios 2 spacecraft.
Credit: NASA

Scientists re-inspected 45-year-old Helios data, finding long trains of massive blobs – like lava lamp’s otherworldly bubbles, but 50 to 500 times the size of Earth – that ooze from the sun every 90 minutes or so. When Simone Di Matteo first saw the patterns in his data, it seemed too good to be true. “It’s too perfect!” Di Matteo, a space physics Ph.D. student at the University of L’Aquila in Italy, recalled thinking. “It can’t be real.” And it wasn’t, he’d soon find out.

Di Matteo was looking for long trains of massive blobs – like a lava lamp’s otherworldly bubbles, but anywhere from 50 to 500 times the size of Earth — in the solar wind...

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