Robotica Exotica

Neat Helicopter UAV

Here is an interesting little UAV based on a model helicopter. It appears that they have a very nice sensor suite on it, and are using that for some vision processing.

Autonomous helicopter flight is characterised by helicopters that can fly without a human pilot or guidance from a remote-controlled device. Although many teams worldwide have been working on so-called vertical take-off, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), the CSIRO helicopter is the first to fly completely independent of expensive global positioning systems (GPS) guidance. Instead it uses its brain to control its balance and orientation.

"While GPS may seem like an ideal technique to use, it has many drawbacks in practice, particularly in built environments near large structures which can obscure or reflect signals from the GPS satellites," team leader, Dr Peter Corke told ABC Science Online.

I take exception to the statement that GPS is expensive. You can now get a full up GPS sensor for $80. It does go higher for differential, but these guys are spending a boat-load on their other sensors and vision processing. Still, a neat project.

Great Insight into Incremental Testing

The Rocket Man has a nice article up on the incremental testing of some of the new X-plane rockets, as well as the Japanese RVT, and a few others. The insights are well worth reading, and it serves as a good explanation as to the high costs of going to orbit.

Incremental flight testing is either the process of gradually testing a complete vehicle in every region of the flight envelope prior to performing its eventual mission, which is the method Scaled Composites is using, and/or the process of building and testing successfully more complex vehicles to determine optimum vehicle design, which is the process the Japanese are using in their RVT project.

The first method is the one currently used in the development of airplanes. A basic design is decided upon and a number of essentially identical test aircraft are built. These aircraft are then subjected to a series of tests, starting out with simple taxi tests and gradually working towards full flight testing at maximum speed/altitude/g’s. The goal of every test is to collect data about how the vehicle is performing and then to analyze that data to see if any part of the vehicle needs to be modified. Any alterations to the vehicle are followed by additional flight tests to verify the modification work as planned.

Read the whole thing.

Nice article on a Lunar Base

I found this article proposing why we should go back to the moon. It is well reasoned, and has a nice ring to it. Will we go? I have no idea.

The moon is a natural laboratory, where we can prepare for space journeys farther afield. It is a goal reachable with modest resources, yet challenging enough for the next generation of planetary explorers. It is a goal worthy of the spirit embodied in Columbia's brave crew, who gave their lives in the relentless human desire to understand the unknown. It is the right goal in space and the right space goal for America.

Beauty in the Stars

NASA released images from the Spitzer Space Telescope, and they are simply amazing. Everytime they do this, it just reminds me of the beauty in the stars.

A new window to the universe has opened with today's release of the first dazzling images from NASA's newly named Spitzer Space Telescope, formerly known as the Space Infrared Telescope Facility.

The first observations, of a glowing stellar nursery; a swirling, dusty galaxy; a disc of planet-forming debris; and organic material in the distant universe, demonstrate the power of the telescope's infrared detectors to capture cosmic features never before seen.

The Spitzer Space Telescope was also officially named today after the late Dr. Lyman Spitzer, Jr. He was one of the 20th century's most influential scientists, and in the mid-1940s, he first proposed placing telescopes in space.

"NASA's newest Great Observatory is open for business, and it is beginning to take its place at the forefront of science," said NASA's Associate Administrator for Space Science, Dr. Ed Weiler. "Like Hubble, Compton and Chandra, the new Spitzer Space Telescope will soon be making major discoveries, and, as these first images show, should excite the public with views of the cosmos like we've never had before."

Definitely check out the gallery of images here.

Navy deploys Autonomous Spartan Scout Vehicle

The US Navy has deployed an unmanned autonomous marine vehicle, the Spartan Scout in the Persian Gulf. I haven't followed this program very closely, but I see it as the way forward. Remember that traditionally, machines are sent in wherever the work is "Dull, Dirty, or Dangerous." Shore patrol may very well represent all three. To be fair, this is a remotely piloted vehicle, with autonomous backup in the case of communication loss, but still, it is neat.

December 16, 2003: The U.S. Navy's experimental Spartan Scout class USV (unmanned sea going vehicle) has been sent to the Persian Gulf aboard the cruiser USS Gettysburg. The 23 foot long Spartan has received nothing but praise so far. The USV was meant for use in restricted waters, like the Persian Gulf. The Spartan controllers on the Gettysburg send the USV off to patrol close to the coast. The Spartan is equipped with "electro-optical/infrared surveillance turret, surface search radar, digital imagery transmission suite, and an unmanned command and control suite."

In plain English, that means the USV has a day/night camera, a radar, radio gear that allows it to broadcast video and radar images back to the Gettysburg, and software that allows the USV to think for itself and stay out of trouble if the controllers on the Gettysburg lose contact with it. The USV can be equipped with Hellfire or Javelin missiles, and these would be used to attack hostile patrol boats (or boats packed with explosives for a suicide run at American ships) before they got too close to American ships.

It's not known if the USV will be equipped with missiles for tests while it is in the Persian Gulf. The navy is eager to work out any bugs in the Spartan and get it into general service as soon as possible. Al Qaeda is known to be interested in making more suicide boat attacks on American warships and the Spartan Scout USV is an excellent way to stop that sort of thing.

Hmmmm, seems like an ONR grant in there somewhere.

Sony's Dancing Machine

Sony has been doing some amazing things with their Qrio humanoid robot, including dancing and pitching a baseball. I have no idea about how many man-hours they are putting into this, but this is very very impressive.

In the latest demonstration, the bubble-headed, glowing-eyed robot jiggled and made mechanical jangling sounds as it moved forward on a table, bounced jerkily sideways and pivoted in a turn. It started with a slow walk, moved into an easy jog, stopped, then turned and begin jogging again.

While running robots are not altogether new, Sony engineers said their robot was a technical achievement because it smoothly simulated running. The breakthrough required sophisticated features in the robot's joints and a beefy central processing unit to keep Qrio's balance and manage delicate maneuvers.

Here is the amazing video of the performance.

Update: here is another video of the dancing via Cyrus Bazeghi of the UCSC Computer Engineering Department.

SpaceShip One Goes Supersonic

Burt Rutan's White Knight / Space Ship One did some history making of their own, yesterday, as Space Ship One lit its hybrid rocket motor for the first time in flight, and broke the sound barrier.

The fully reusable system uses two vehicles. The first, a turbojet-powered carrier plane called White Knight, carries the second, SS1, up to about 15,000 metres (48,000 feet). SS1 is then released by White Knight and ignites its innovative hybrid rocket motor.

Test pilot Brian Binnie, at the controls of SS1, began the flight at 0815 PST, after being released from the carrier plane by its pilot, Peter Siebold. The two were moving at Mach 0.55 at the time of release.

Binnie then pulled SS1's nose up to 60° and lit the rocket for 15 seconds. This blasted SS1 to 930 mph, or Mach 1.2, and an altitude of 68,000 feet (20,700 m).

20000 Feet in 15 seconds, now that's acceleration.

100 Years of Flight

100 years ago today, two bicycle mechanics, through a rather long and methodical investigation of the properties of flying machines, managed to fly.

From the diary of Orville Wright, Dec. 17, 2003:

"When we got up a wind of between 20 and 25 miles was blowing from the north. We got the machine out early and put out the signal for the men at the station. Before we were quite ready, John T. Daniels, W. S. Dough, A. D. Etheridge, W C. Brinkley of Manteo, and Johnny Moore of Nags Head arrived. After running the engine and propellers a few minutes to get them in working order, I got on the machine at 10:35 for the first trial. . . "

Here is a great article on the Wrights.

Widget rides again!!

John Cormak over at Armadillo Aerospace has used his copious graphics talent to make a spoofish movie about the 100 year anniversary of flight. It is worth looking at for entertainment value.

Heads up Helmet for Motorcycles

A company is offering a helmet mounted heads-up-display (HUD) for motorcycles and eventually bicycles. Back when I was looking into this in graduate school (for automobile applications), we were told by Ford Aerospace that if we bought the HUD, they'd give us the car for free.

Motion Research, a Seattle company founded in 1993 by a former racecar driver, Dominic Dobson, said that next spring it would begin selling an inexpensive information display system to be attached to a motorcycle helmet.

The Sportvue head-mounted display will allow riders to see speed, r.p.m. and gear position without taking their eyes off the road. The system gathers speed information from a global positioning satellite receiver attached to the rear of the helmet.

The design, based on a patent co-developed by Tom Furness, one of the pioneers of head-mounted display technology, uses a lens and mirror and backlit liquid crystal display to give the viewer the illusion that the information displayed in the periphery of one eye is projected in the distance.

Very stylish, and I want one.

Other Wordly Flyers

Here is a very nice article on some of the plans for exploring other planets with blimps, planes, helicopters, and other types of vehicles. It goes into some detail about the difficulties involved, mostly due to power and atmospheric denisty.

Solar powered aircraft are a good example of utilizing environment and a renewable power source to provide a vehicle capable of long duration flight, Colozza noted. "Solar power obviously won't work everywhere. Beyond Mars the solar intensity is too low to power an aircraft. So solar flight on the outer planets and moons will not be feasible. That leaves Venus and Mars," he said.

Colozza said Venus provides a unique possibility. Due to the planet's proximity to the Sun there is abundant solar energy. Venus, however, is veiled in thick clouds. Add to that high wind speeds. This environmental twosome makes solar powered flight tough to do on that planet.

Very cool stuff.

Carnegie Mellon DARPA Grand Challenge

This is an article on Carnegie Mellon's entrant into the DARPA Grand challenge, a 250 mile overland autonomous race with a one million dollar grand prize (and nothing for the runners-up).

Whittaker's students on the Red Team have joined volunteers and experts from more than a dozen sponsors. The students bring expertise in engineering, computing, art and robotics. Sponsors, including Applanix Corp., The Boeing Co., Carnegie Mellon, Caterpillar, Inc., CM Labs, HD Systems, Inc., Intel Corp., The Lord Corp., Mechron Power Systems, Omnistar, Robotics Foundry, Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC), Seagate Technologies, Inc. and TerraSim, Inc. are contributing technologies, components, software and assistance. Chip Ganassi Racing, Rod Millen Motorsports and Team Rod Hall Hummer are counseling on the art and science of off-road racing.

All are working to pull together the mechanics, electronics and software that will give their diesel-powered Hummer, named "Sandstorm," the guts and smarts to win the race.

Nice to have those kind of resources.

Nice RLV Article

Here is a very nice article by the RocketMan about why we don't see any RLV's (Reusable Launch Vehicles) today. It goes into the history, and is quite good and readable.

Why have expendable launch vehicles essentially reigned supreme for the entire history of human spaceflight? It is a question that seemingly does not have an easy answer, because building a complex, expensive vehicle that is discarded after each launch seems like it would be more expensive than operating a vehicle that could be reused for every flight. To understand some of the reasons why reusable vehicles have not yet replaced expendable vehicles we first need to examine a little history.

There will be more on this later.

Great Article on the Japanese RVT

This is a great article on the Japanese RVT (which is their version of the DC-X). There is so much great stuff in the article that I strongly recommend you read it all.

The experiments were very preliminary efforts to build the kind of system that is required for reusable rocket vehicles. They were conducted as part of our basic research to facilitate frequent travel between the Earth and space. The purpose of the experiments was to accumulate design and operational lessons related to such things as takeoff and landing, and for safe and easy repeated flights.

Read the whole thing.

Art and Robotics

Here is a nice intro article on Robots in art installations. Reminds me a of a startup venture I wanted to do in the boom years before the dot.bomb occured.

Robotic additions and creations can be simple control mechanisms or elaborate constructions. Parts and supplies can be obtained from objects which are no longer useful. Remote controls, old computer parts, erector sets, toys, etc., which you might have lying around in closets, garages, and basements, can become perfectly usable parts for a robotic work of art. A little ingenuity can go a long way...

There are some good links with the article.

Another X-prize Vehicle

I am a big fan of the X-prize, which requires a reusable launch vehicle that can go suborbital to be launched twice within a certain time frame. So far, no winners but plenty of interesting developments. Winner gets $10 million, which I don't think is enough, but it has attracted a lot of players anyway. Here is the latest entry into the X-prize, Space Transport Corporation. They have recently flown a three-stage solid rocket booster to 75 Km.

SM Rocketry successfully launched a 3-stage rocket to 72-km altitude on 11/6/03. This rocket was designed to prove out the launch rail system, stage separation, and flight stability. The GPS based Flight Safety System kept the rocket on a direct path out to sea, where the upper stage landed 75-km off the Washington State coastline.

Future launches to 100-km altitude are imminent and include digital high resolution photography from the rocket, and other telemetry devices such as thermocouple vacuum pressure transmitter readings at altitude.

The attached picture shows the first stage smoke trail on the right, the 2nd stage trail has been swirled around by winds and is seen in the middle of the picture, and the 3rd stage trail is on the lower left seen as a streak heading in a westerly direction out to the Pacific.

I like the GPS guided feature. I'd like to know more about exactly what they did there.

Analysis of the DC-X

Here is an interesting article on the policy choices that lead to the DC-X, my personal favorite rocket of all time. While it doesn't get too technical, it does make for a nice read.

In those days, SDIO was still full of imaginative thinkers who were ready to pursue radical new ideas and were also merciless about dropping projects that failed to meet their initial promise. After a nasty political and bureaucratic struggle in which the Vice President played a critical part, money for a precursor SSTO project was included in the defense budget. When McDonnell Douglas won the contract, the vehicle became known as the DC-X. While it would never reach orbit, it would demonstrate a “build a little, test a little” approach to launch vehicle development. It would also show what could be done if all the usual expensive rules for large aerospace programs are thrown out the window. The management of the program was assumed by Pete Conrad, the former astronaut, Air Force Col. (now General) Pete Worden and Maj. Jess Sponable.

The DC-X rolled out of the hangar where it had been built, in Huntington Beach, California, in April 1993. To the small segment of the American public that followed such things, it was a momentous event. In spite of all the many bureaucratic efforts to kill it, and the utter indifference of the new Clinton administration, a new space age was conceived.

On August 18, 1993, the vehicle flew for the first time, at White Sands, New Mexico. This was the first time in history that a rocket had landed vertically with the engine still running, just like in the old science fiction movies. Proving vertical landing was an important part of that program. More important was proving that a launch system could be run by a couple of technicians out of a trailer. As long as each launch is regarded as a “campaign” needing thousands of highly-paid experts to check and recheck every element of the vehicle, any serious reduction in the cost of getting into space is impossible. The DC-X and its successors have proven that, given current materials and propulsion, the SSTO dream is impossible, but a two stage to orbit (TSTO) system is within the state of the art.

Still I wish they had not abandoned the DC-X for the VentureStar. We'd be closer to single-stage-to-orbit today.

AI vs. Humans in 2D crawlers

There is a website called sodarace where people and AI algorithms compete at designing virtual 2-D robots that crawl over a 2-D landscape. Aparantly, the last match went to the humans:

Computer Science students at the university fed a basic wheel design into an AI program to breed the best racer over a hilly course while a team in Austria gave AI a free hand in developing a flat-ground racer, which resulted in weird computer-generated stick-insect type creatures.

But it was a machine developed using trial and error in Canada that struck the decisive blow for humans. Round one of the competition was watched by 150,000 online spectators. Round two will be launched in December.

This is a fairly interesting site to play with.

Cheap CNC Router

I'm starting to look for either inexpensive laser cutters or CNC routers. These guys over at Cheap CNC seem to have a fairly decent kit for under $2500. There are a bunch of people building their own. This site has a long discussion of the ins and outs of building your very own CNC router.

A nice stepper motor tutorial

I just stumbled upon a very nice website that has a great tutorial on driving stepper motors. As this is something you might actually be doing if you do any sort of robot, I thought a link was in order.

Stepping motors can be viewed as electric motors without commutators. Typically, all windings in the motor are part of the stator, and the rotor is either a permanent magnet or, in the case of variable reluctance motors, a toothed block of some magnetically soft material. All of the commutation must be handled externally by the motor controller, and typically, the motors and controllers are designed so that the motor may be held in any fixed position as well as being rotated one way or the other. Most steppers, as they are also known, can be stepped at audio frequencies, allowing them to spin quite quickly, and with an appropriate controller, they may be started and stopped "on a dime" at controlled orientations.

Pretty neat animated GIF, too.

Graphical view of the Internet

Someone is out there tracing the routing of the Internet, and turning it into art.

"It started as a bet, but after I warmed up to the idea I found a lot of value in the project itself," Lyon writes on the project's homepage. He says his maps could provide a useful overview of the internet's structure and even reveal the effects of disruptions caused by real-world disasters. But more importantly, he says: "The project is art."

[...]The project uses a networking program called "traceroute". This records the network addresses that a data packet hops between as it travels towards a particular network host.

Some of the images are truly stunning and beautiful.

Motorized Unicycle

So far, it appears to be a design sketch as opposed to a working prototype, but this motorized unicycle from Bombardier is just too cool for words:

Vaguely resembling a sporty motorcycle, the uni-wheeled Embrio uses electronic and hydrogen-fuel-cell technology to help its driver zip around obstacles. A system of gyroscopes keeps it upright. In standby mode, a pair of extra wheels deploy jet-plane-like landing gear to increase longitudinal stability.

And, I might add, a control system engineer's dream!