IEEE websites place cookies on your device to give you the best user experience. By using our websites, you agree to the placement of these cookies. To learn more, read our Privacy Policy.
There are entrepreneurs who set out wanting to be entrepreneurs, and they don’t really care how they do it. And then there are entrepreneurs driven by a vision so compelling that entrepreneurship becomes a means to an end. Nick Woodman was in that latter category.
After failing with two successive startups, he just wanted to take some time off and travel and surf. While bumming around and riding waves in Indonesia, it occurred to him that it might be cool to take some point-of-view pictures while surfing. Hardly any such photos existed, mainly because, news flash: It is virtually impossible to handle a camera while surfing. Wanting to rectify this situation, Woodman took a busted surfboard leash and a rubber band and jury-rigged a strap that would hold a disposable waterproof film camera from Kodak securely on his wrist.
Camera, Action: The original Hero had a hook mechanism that held the camera flat on the user’s wrist when the device wasn’t being used to take photos.Photo: GoPro
Woodman thought other surfers might be interested in documenting their exploits, and he figured he might make a little cash selling straps. He bought some blocks of plastic, found a Dremel tool, borrowed his mom’s sewing machine, and went to work. He combined some some O-rings, the Dremeled plastic mount, and a simple but clever clasp mechanism of his own design [see photo] that would hold the camera flat on the wrist. When you released the clasp, the camera would flip up. The surfer could take a picture, and then fold the camera back flat and hook the clasp back on. It worked swimmingly.
“I thought it would be enough to help people mount a single-use, waterproof camera to their wrists, and that alone would be a massive leap forward, enabling surfers and ultimately other athletes to wear a camera to capture their activities from their viewpoints, as opposed to relying on a third-person cameraman viewing from the beach with a long lens,” he told IEEE Spectrum.
Shooting From the Wrist: GoPro founder Nick Woodman (top) demonstrates an early prototype of his action camera around 2001. A drawing for U.S. Patent 6,955,484 B2 (bottom) for that device indicates its key components.Photos: Top:GoPro; Bottom: GoPro/U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
He was onto something, but getting there was going to be harder than he thought. It turned out that nominally waterproof cameras were really merely water resistant. “Waterproof cameras weren’t designed for the high forces of jetting water,” Woodman explains. “Before GoPro, there wasn’t a waterproof camera built that you could slap down into the water with excessive force and not have the jetting water leak in and destroy the camera. I wasn’t going to sell many straps if what I’d designed was a camera-killer. So I needed a camera, but I don’t know how to build a camera. I could barely build a strap.”
Woodman began searching online for someone who was already building a truly waterproof camera. He went to camera shows, and searched online some more. Eventually he found a manufacturer in China with a suitable film camera. Happily enough, the Hotax Manufacturing Co. was willing to do the work, but obviously, it would need the design for the camera mount and strap.
Compact, Rugged, Waterproof: GoPro cameras made almost everything photographable. A kayaker (above) takes his GoPro out for a wet, bumpy ride in 2014.Photo: Mic Smith/Alamy
“I had no CAD [computer-aided design] training,” Woodman says. “I still can’t do CAD. I did the best I could with blocks of plastic and a Dremel, and I hand-carved the attach points and fitment pieces and hot-glued them to their camera, then FedExed it to the company in China.”
“They emailed me an .IGS file, a simple CAD file, but I didn’t know what an .IGS file was. I googled it and downloaded a viewer, and I remember the thrill of seeing my ideal camera, the first GoPro camera, on my screen, in 3D, and being able to rotate it around, and thinking, ‘Wow, we might actually be able to build this thing.’”
Hotax told Woodman it needed a $5,000 fee to pay for the mold, and Woodman realized he still had no idea if the company he was working with was legitimate.
“I did the math, and it was going to be more expensive to take a trip to validate the company than it was to just pay the $5,000 and cross my fingers that they’d make the mold and make the product. But they built it, and the first Hero camera was born,” Woodman says. That first model, introduced in 2004, shot 35-mm film. The first digital model, known simply as the Digital Hero, came out in 2006.
Woodman and GoPro democratized sports photography. Their simple, rugged camera allowed anyone to share their experiences in a way that was just not possible before. If the videos on the Internet seem dominated by kitten and GoPro footage, at least the latter are absorbing: Gorgeous waves uncurl languidly, eagles glide majestically, stunts are performed insanely. Plus, the Best Dog Video Ever.
It’s a point of pride for Woodman that GoPro’s cameras, which progressed from film to digital video, now include four different models, along with gimbals and a drone, and are increasingly capable, with continuously improving video resolution and wireless connectivity options. He’s also proud of their indestructibility. Toward the end of a discussion with a reporter, he makes a sincere request: “Try to kill a GoPro. I challenge you.”
An earlier version of this story indicated that there were “six different” GoPro models. The actual number is four; the other two models were older ones no longer manufactured by GoPro and which were being sold by third parties.
Other focus areas include biology and cybersecurity
Kathy Pretz is editor in chief for The Institute, which covers all aspects of IEEE, its members, and the technology they're involved in. She has a bachelor's degree in applied communication from Rider University, in Lawrenceville, N.J., and holds a master's degree in corporate and public communication from Monmouth University, in West Long Branch, N.J.
Since its launch in April 2021, the Engineering Research Visioning Alliance has convened a diverse set of experts to explore three areas in which fundamental research could have the most impact: climate change; the nexus of biology and engineering; and securing critical infrastructure against hackers.
To identify priorities for each theme, ERVA—an initiative funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation—holds what are termed visioning events, wherein IEEE members and hundreds of other experts from academia, industry, and nonprofits can conceptualize bold ideas. The results are distilled into reports that identify actionable priorities for engineering research pursuit. Reports from recent visioning events are slated to be released to the public in the next few months.
IEEE is one of more than 20 professional engineering societies that have joined ERVA as affiliate partners.
Identifying technologies to address the climate crisis was ERVA’s first theme. The theme was based on results of a survey ERVA conducted last year of the engineering community about what the research priorities should be.
“The resounding answer from the 500 respondents was climate change,” says Dorota Grejner-Brzezinska, EVRA’s principal investigator. She is a vice president for knowledge enterprise at Ohio State University, in Columbus.
During the virtual visioning event in December, experts explored solar and renewable energy, carbon sequestration, water management, and geoengineering. The climate change task force released its report last month.
These are some of the research areas ERVA said should be pursued:
“The groundwork ERVA has laid out in this report creates a blueprint for funders to invest in,” Grejner-Brzezinska says, “and catalyzes engineering research for a more secure and sustainable world. As agencies and research organizations enact legislation to reduce carbon emissions and bolster clean-energy technologies, engineering is poised to lead with research and development.”
IEEE is developing a strategy to guide the organization’s response to the global threat.
A virtual visioning event on Leveraging Biology to Power Engineering Impact was held in March. The hope, as explained on the event’s website, is to transform research where biology and engineering intersect: health care and medicine, agriculture, and high tech.
“As agencies and research organizations enact legislation to reduce carbon emissions and bolster clean-energy technologies, engineering is poised to lead with research and development.”
The experts considered research directions in three areas: Use biology to inspire engineers to develop new components, adapt and adopt biological constructs beyond their original function, and create engineering systems and components that improve on biology. An example would be to interrupt the transfer of viruses from one species to another so as to reduce the spread of diseases.
The task force’s report on which research areas to pursue is scheduled to be released next month, according to Grejner-Brzezinska.
One of today’s main engineering challenges, according to ERVA, is the protection of infrastructure against hackers and other threats. At the in-person visioning event held last month at MIT on the Engineering R&D Solutions for Unhackable Infrastructure theme, researchers discussed gaps in security technologies and looked at how to design trustworthy systems and how to build resilience into interdependent infrastructures.
ERVA describes unhackable as the ability to ensure safety, security, and trust in essential systems and services that society relies on.
The task force examined research themes related to physical infrastructure such as assets and hardware; software and algorithms; and data and communication networks. It also considered new security methods for users, operators, and security administrators to thwart cyberattacks.
Grejner-Brzezinska says the task force’s report will be released in mid-December.
Planning has begun for the next visioning event, Sustainable Transportation Networks, to be held virtually on 2 and 3 November. The session is to explore innovative and sustainable transportation modes and the infrastructure networks needed to support them. Some of the areas to be discussed are green construction; longitudinal impact studies; interconnected transportation modes such as rail, marine, and air transport; and transportation equity.
ERVA will convene four visioning events each year on broad engineering research themes that have the potential to solve societal challenges, Grejner-Brzezinska says. IEEE members who are experts in the fields can get involved by joining the ERVA Champions, now more than 900 strong. They are among the first to learn about upcoming visioning sessions and about openings to serve on volunteer groups such as thematic task forces, advisory boards, and standing councils. Members can sign up on the ERVA website.
“Becoming a champion is an opportunity to break out of your silos of disciplines and really come together with others in the engineering research community,” Grejner-Brzezinska says. “You can do what engineers do best: solve problems.”
AB 2273 could be a sea change for online privacy
Today, for better or worse, the Internet is a rather free range for children. Websites ask their users’ ages, sure. But virtually anyone who came of age around the rise of the Internet can probably relate a time or 20 when they gave a false birthdate.
A California law now in the works might bring that world to a crashing halt.
AB 2273, or the California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act, promises to make the Internet safer for children—in part by tightening age verification. Its opponents instead believe that, in the process, AB 2273 could completely decimate the existing Internet as we know it.
AB 2273 isn’t final just yet. To become California law, a bill has to pass both houses of the state legislature—the Assembly and the Senate—and then attain the signature of the governor. AB 2273 passed the Assembly on 29 August, and the Senate the next day, posting it to Governor Gavin Newsom’s desk. As of this writing, Newsom has yet to sign the bill. There’s little indication whether he will.
Suppose he does sign. Then, beginning on 1 July 2024, any website or app that “conducts business in California” and “provides an online service, product, or feature likely to be accessed by children” would need to follow yet-to-be-crafted code.
California wouldn’t be the first jurisdiction to tighten age-related design standards for websites. AB 2273 explicitly cites an existing law in the United Kingdom, which expects websites to comply with a bespoke age-appropriate design code. (In fact, both bills share a backer, one Baroness Beeban Kidron, a campaigner for children’s rights online.)
That U.K. law has already made ripples. YouTube disabled its autoplay feature for users under 18. Instagram started preventing adults from messaging under-18s who don’t follow them. TikTok stopped sending under-18s push notifications after a certain point each evening.
But according to Eric Goldman, a law professor at Santa Clara University and one of the bill’s harshest critics, in a U.S. regulatory environment that’s generally even less friendly to businesses, California’s code is likely to be stricter. “Any ‘lessons learned’ in the U.K. do not extend to the U.S. because the law literally cannot be implemented in the same way,” he says.
Though California’s code doesn’t yet exist, AB 2273 lays out a few requirements. For one, websites must report their data-management practices to a California government agency. Also, websites can’t collect or sell data on children (including geolocation) that isn’t absolutely necessary for children to use the website. And websites must tell a child when a parent or guardian is tracking their activity on that site.
Where AB 2273 becomes more than a little controversial is the requirement that, to determine which users ought to experience what, websites must “estimate the age of child users with a reasonable level of certainty.”
“Assuming businesses do not want to intentionally degrade their value proposition to adults, then they have no alternative other than to authenticate the age of all of their customers and then segregate adults from children, with different offerings for each,” says Goldman.
How a website will “estimate the age of child users” isn’t clear, and according to Techdirt, it might vary by website. A child entering a “high-risk” website, then, might need to submit an ID document for age verification. That failing, a child might literally have to scan their face. Not only is face recognition a technology whose reliability is questionable, mandating it could make websites inaccessible to people without a functioning camera.
And although the law champions privacy, it’s not clear that authentication along those lines could even be done in a privacy-conscious manner. Goldman says that websites might rely on insecure third-party services.
If AB 2273 passes, then its effects could spread well beyond the state’s borders. Websites will be left with two options: geolocating users in California (perhaps blocking them completely, potentially risking revenue), or applying the rules to all their users. Many websites will just find it easier to do the latter.
Then around the world, users might have to face the same age-authentication gauntlet that Californians would. And, according to Goldman, other jurisdictions might take after California in drafting their own laws.
Some of AB 2273’s sponsors and defenders see the bill as a necessary measure in a world where children are vulnerable to dangers like manipulative websites, invasive apps, and social-media addiction.
But from many corners, the reaction has been less than positive. AB 2273 has garnered a wide range of opponents, including privacy advocates and big tech. Santa Clara’s Goldman likens the law to a neutron bomb. “It will depopulate the Internet and turn many services into ghost towns,” he says.
Learn how to measure and reduce common mode electromagnetic interference (EMI) in electric drive installations
Nowadays, electric machines are often driven by power electronic converters. Even though the use of converters brings with it a variety of advantages, common mode (CM) signals are a frequent problem in many installations. Common mode voltages induced by the converter drive common mode currents damage the motor bearings over time and significantly reduce the lifetime of the drive.
Download this free whitepaper now!
Hence, it is essential to measure these common mode quantities in order to take suitable countermeasures. Handheld oscilloscopes in combination with Rogowski probes offer a simple and reliable way to accurately determine the required quantities and the effectiveness of different countermeasures.