Tag Archives: gtri

Flying Test Bed: New Aerial Platform Supports Development of Lightweight Sensors for UAVs

A research team at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) is developing an airborne testing capability for sensors, communications devices and other airborne payloads. This aerial test bed, called the GTRI Airborne Unmanned Sensor System (GAUSS), is based on an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) made by Griffon Aerospace and modified by GTRI.

“Developing new sensor technologies that can be effectively employed from the air is a priority today given the rapidly increasing use of unmanned aircraft,” said Michael Brinkmann, a GTRI principal research engineer who is leading the work. “Given suitable technology, small UAVs can perform complex, low-altitude missions effectively and at lower cost. The GAUSS system gives GTRI and its customers the ability to develop and test new airborne payloads in a rapid, cost effective way.” (more…)

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Spear Phishing: Researchers Work to Counter Email Attacks that Gain Recipients’ Trust

The email resembled the organization’s own employee e-newsletter and asked recipients to visit a website to confirm that they wanted to continue receiving the newsletter. Another email carried an attachment that said it contained the marketing plan the recipient had requested at a recent conference. A third email bearing a colleague’s name suggested a useful website to visit.

None of these emails were what they pretended to be. The first directed victims to a website that asked for personal information, including the user’s password. The second included a virus that launched when the “marketing plan” was opened. The third directed users to a website that attempted to install a malicious program. (more…)

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Monitoring Hurricanes: Georgia Tech Engineers Assist NASA with Instrument for Remotely Measuring Storm Intensity

A device designed by engineers at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) is part of the Hurricane Imaging Radiometer (HIRAD), an experimental airborne system developed by the Earth Science Office at the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama.

Known as an analog beam-former, the GTRI device is part of the radiometer, which is being tested by NASA on a Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle. The radiometer measures microwave radiation emitted by the sea foam that is produced when high winds blow across ocean waves. By measuring the electromagnetic radiation, scientists can remotely assess surface wind speeds at multiple locations within the hurricanes. (more…)

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Easy Guider: Intuitive Visual Control Provides Faster Remote Operation of Robots

Using a novel method of integrating video technology and familiar control devices, a research team from Georgia Tech and the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) is developing a technique to simplify remote control of robotic devices.

The researchers’ aim is to enhance a human operator’s ability to perform precise tasks using a multi-jointed robotic device such as an articulated mechanical arm. The new approach has been shown to be easier and faster than older methods, especially when the robot is controlled by an operator who is watching it in a video monitor. (more…)

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Safety in Numbers: Threat Intelligence System Enables Corporate and Government Organizations to Share Malware Information

As malware threats expand into new domains and increasingly focus on industrial espionage, Georgia Tech researchers are launching a new weapon to help battle the threats: a malware intelligence system that will help corporate and government security officials share information about the attacks they are fighting.

Known as Titan, the system will be at the center of a security community that will help create safety in numbers as companies large and small add their threat data to a knowledge base that will be shared with all participants. Operated by security specialists at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI), the system builds on a threat analysis foundation – including a malware repository that analyzes and classifies an average of 100,000 pieces of malicious code each day.

“As a university, Georgia Tech is uniquely positioned to take this white hat role in between industry and government,” said Andrew Howard, a GTRI research scientist who is part of the Titan project. “We want to bring communities together to break down the walls between industry and government to provide a trusted, sharing platform.” (more…)

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Preventing Problems: Georgia Tech Helps to Develop System That Will Detect Insider Threats from Massive Data Sets

When a soldier in good mental health becomes homicidal or a government employee abuses access privileges to share classified information, we often wonder why no one saw it coming. When looking through the evidence after the fact, a trail often exists that, had it been noticed, could have possibly provided enough time to intervene and prevent an incident.

With support from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the Army Research Office, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology are collaborating with scientists from four other organizations to develop new approaches for identifying these “insider threats” before an incident occurs. The two-year, $9 million project will create a suite of algorithms that can detect multiple types of insider threats by analyzing massive amounts of data — including email, text messages and file transfers — for unusual activity. (more…)

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Breaking Down Plastics: New Standard Specification May Facilitate Use of Additives that Trigger Biodegradation of Oil-Based Plastics in Landfills

Despite efforts to encourage the recycling of plastic water bottles, milk jugs and similar containers, a majority of the plastic packaging produced each year in the United States ends up in landfills, where it can take thousands of years to degrade.  To address that problem with traditional polyethylene, polypropylene, Styrofoam and PET products, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology are working with the Plastics Environmental Council (PEC) to expand the use of chemical additives that cause such items to biodegrade in landfills.

Added during production of the plastic packaging, the compounds encourage anaerobic landfill bacteria and fungi to break down the plastic materials and convert them to biogas methane, carbon dioxide and biogenic carbon – also known as humus.  These additives – simple organic substances that build on the known structures of materials that induce polymer biodegradation – don’t affect the performance of the plastics, introduce heavy metals or other toxic chemicals, or prevent the plastics from being recycled in current channels. (more…)

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