We need better maps, actually less expensive ones

This ViaMichelin Espace PDA still requires one to have a PDA (400 $) and then you have to pay up to 200$ for a mapviewer. Still way too expensive.

Grand Challenge Details

Here is what really happened to each and every of the competitors of the first grand challenge race organized by DARPA. Interesting ....

7 miles is the boundary of our knowledge

According to the Status Board of the DARPA Grand Challenge, Both the Read Team and the SciAutonics II team made it as far as 7 miles into the race. Two hours before the start, the total course length was finally given: 142 miles. This is a far cry from the original 250-300 miles given to the competitors a year ago. So the state of the art of our knowledge is now known: 7 miles out 142 miles. Out of fifteen teams, only four made it as far as five miles The remaining eleven did not make it past the second mile.

Images of moving proportions

First there is this one, of driverless moving vehicle at the
Grand Challenge Qualification stage. They are moving because one witnesses the removal of the human element. Another moving picture is this one left by Charlie Duke during Apollo 16 on Descartes hills. This one is moving because one added the human element in a humanless world.

Grand Challenge Qualification Stage

So far only vehicle has made it. But it took a second trial. The first one ended up hurting, actually about 250 K$ of hurt according to Red, the head of the CMU Red team. More photos and tracks of the race can be found here.

Movie Game director II

Maybe my idea of having movie-game directors was nota bad idea after all. According to Sony, in the youngster generation, TV losing out to video games.

An Analog Fractional Fourier Transform

This article on electrically controlling the focal length of a lens makes it an ideal tool to provide an analog of the Fractional Fourier Transform. Interesting...

Linking Stellar interferometry and Harmonic Analysis

In Boone's thesis on dynamical configuration of interferometers for the study of galaxies, one can read two articles eventually published in "Astronomy and Astrophysics". For the first time, a software is written describing how pairs of telescopes should be located to obtain good images. The interesting point is that in interferometry, the positioning of the telescopes is directly related to a location in the fourier space or the u-v space as they call it. What I find fascinating is that Boone's program does not seem to take into account what he is looking at. If one does not have a preconceived idea of what one is looking for, this is fine. However, the recent use of new harmonic tools like curvelets to decompose astronomical images tells us that a large reduction of observations in the u-v plane could be achieved. The idea is as follows: each curvelet has a very specific and known shape in the u-v plane (or fourier space, see courses by Jean-luc Stark or papers by David Donoho). Astronomical images are decomposed nearly optimally in this curvelet basis, hence a small amount of evaluation in the u-v plane should enable one to recover the whole fourier transform of the astronomical image being sought.

Brainstorming

I just found a good summary of brainstorming application here. It looks like a lot of people are thinking about these things, yet I really began to be interested in these things by accident even though I badly needed them.

Interferometry and wavelets

When I read about this technique, I cannot but think that they are doing an analog of a decomposition of Haar functions in 2-D. It looks like some other peole are thinking along those lines with more sophisticated functions (fresnelets or curvelets). Food for thoughts...