Sramana Majumdar

"Violence, Identity and Self-determination: Narratives of conflict from the Kashmir Valley" 4:15 PM, Monday 18 Nov Room 239, BYC Bryn Mawr College

Exposure Index

Tired of paper and pencil questionnaires about integration and intergroup contact? Try the new and improved EXPOSURE INDEX (click tab above on this page).

Smile! A Drone Is About to Take Your Picture

In this article, the New York Times considers possible cultural niches for drones. While the standard fears of safety and privacy are mentioned, it is noteworthy that the focus is on how drones will be used in day-to-day life, instead of just if such integration is possible or even desirable.

Drones in Culture: Dilbert

This cartoon neatly combines fears on safety and corporate spying with a reference to an earlier era’s air technology fad.

The Drones of the Future Won’t Kill, They’ll Take Selfies

Constantly recording personal drones maybe be more privacy invading than innocuous to some. Nevertheless, they are probably more acceptable to the public than the military and government drones. The Paparazzi drone in particular is interesting as it abandons the common (and perhaps somewhat menacing) quadrotor for a highly stylized design looks like a cartoon helicopter.

Balfour Beatty considers improving staff safety with drones and gamification

This large construction company is showing interest in using drones, both for monitoring large, chaotic work sites, and also for directly adding to a structure. It is perhaps not a surprise that this initiative was announced in Japan, a place that has long been willing to integrate robotics into society.

AgriRover brings Mars rover technology to the farm

This prototype is designed for constant, high-resolution surveying and adjustment of soil properties – a farmer’s Roomba. This design came from a team in New Zealand, providing another indication of the increasingly international character to the unmanned vehicles industry.

SenseFly and Drone Adventures Toss UAVs Off the Summit of Matterhorn

Not only did these drones get good aerial photographs of very rough terrain, they used teamwork to do so. In labs, roboticists are developing the methods for dozens or robots to work together, but for now six UAVs coordinating flight patterns and dividing a job between them are an impressive sample of things to come.