Researchers eye optical flow for drone navigation

Alexander Hellemans of IEEE Spectrum recently reported that a number of drone designers are currently exploring a technique known as optical flow, which is based on the speed of objects passing a subject’s field of vision.

“[We] use optical flow to give us a sense of how fast we’re going when we’re driving,” Hellemans explained. “But unlike humans in cars, drones have a third dimension to worry about. They also have to keep track of their height in order to land successfully.”

NIST bolsters random number generators

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has published the second draft of a publication that details design principles for entropy sources, which measure the randomness of generated numbers.

CIOs mull IoT security concerns

Dinyar Dastoor, VP and GM at Wind River, recently penned an article for CIOs in Embedded Computing Design that explores the security risks associated with the management and deployment of IoT devices.

“For many [CIOs], this will be the first time they’ll have to actively manage such embedded devices across their networks. Indeed, for some it will be the first time the walls of their datacenter have extended beyond the web portals used for customer services and other customer-facing engagement,” Dastoor explained.

Is Mr. Robot the new WarGames?

WarGames – which hit theaters way back in 1983 – is an early hacker film starring Matthew Broderick (David Lightman) and Ally Sheedy (Jennifer Mack). For the uninitiated, WarGames depicts the fictional story of David Lightman, a high school hacker who unintentionally accesses WOPR, a military supercomputer operated by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD).

NIST looks to strengthen crypto backbone

The National Institute of Standards and Technology is looking to make the backbone of cryptography — random bit generators — less predictable.

Building silicon foundations for security

Paul Kocher, the chief scientist of Rambus’ Cryptography Research division, recently presented a DesignCon 2016 keynote session that explored the crowded intersection of hardware, Moore’s Law and cryptography. As Kocher notes, cryptographic limits have historically been constrained by a salient lack of computing power.