Robotica Exotica

Phoenix has landed!

The NASA Mars lander, Phoenix, has landed on the planet surface and is reportedly in good health and sending back data.

NASA's Phoenix spacecraft landed in the northern polar region of Mars today to begin three months of examining a site chosen for its likelihood of having frozen water within reach of the lander's robotic arm.

Radio signals received at 4:53:44 p.m. Pacific Time (7:53:44 p.m. Eastern Time) confirmed the Phoenix Mars Lander had survived its difficult final descent and touchdown 15 minutes earlier. The signals took that long to travel from Mars to Earth at the speed of light.

Mission team members at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.; Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver; and the University of Arizona, Tucson, cheered confirmation of the landing and eagerly awaited further information from Phoenix later tonight.

There is a ton of information on the NASA site, including pictures, press releases, and explanations of the science packages.

Hummingbird sets endurance record

I used to know a few people at Frontier, the builders of the hummingbird unmanned helicopter before it got acquired by Boeing. The project was always very cool, and several novel control techniques were being used on it.

I am happy to see that they have set an endurance record, and are proceeding well.

May 23, 2008 Gizmag first reported on Boeing’s A160T Hummingbird Unmanned Rotorcraft back in 2005 and again in 2007 when the craft made its first flight. Now the craft has come very close to achieving the original 20 hour flight times envisioned (and unofficially broken a world record for unmanned aerial vehicles along the way) by remaining in the air for 18.7 hours.

The unofficial endurance world record (the company has lodged an application to make it official) claimed by Boeing for the performance of its rotorcraft is for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) weighing between 1,102 and 5,511 pounds (500 to 2,500 kilograms). According to Boeing Advanced Systems’ A160T program manager, Jim Martin, the team didn’t set out to establish a world record, but it was a great accomplishment. “This 18-hour endurance flight is the culmination of thousands of hours of systems, ground and flight testing. The aircraft performed flawlessly, flying un-refueled longer than any other current unmanned rotorcraft,” he said. During the flight at the U.S. Army's Yuma Proving Ground in southwestern Arizona, the turbine-powered aircraft carried a 300-pound internal payload at altitudes up to 15,000 feet, landing with better than 90 minutes of fuel in reserve.

Largest Drawing in the World

UPDATE: This is a fake! Apparently this was a hoax. Too bad, neat idea.

Some people dream big, and other dream REALLY big. Artist Erik Nordenankar sent a GPS tracking device using DHL to create a self portrait that literally spans the globe. Using the ground track of the device as his pen, and DHL to move the pen from place to place, it took 55 days to create the image.

There are several videos at the site.

Maker Faire

Well, even though my booth--with the Mechatronics class robots--was quite popular with the under 8 crowd, we did not get mentioned in this NY Times article on the Maker Faire. Nonetheless, it is a good article and captures the flair of the faire quite well.

Personally, I am a little disappointed that the life-size scale replica of the mousetrap game did not get further mention--it was very cool to watch (and it used bowling balls instead of marbles).

At first blush, then, this festival, sponsored by Make magazine, is a gathering place of pyromaniacs and noise junkies, the multiply pierced and the extensively tattooed. But wander awhile, and the showy surface gives way to a wondrous thing: the gathering of folks from all walks of life who blend science, technology, craft and art to make things both goofy and grand.

[...]

The makers, as they call themselves, are a varied bunch. Cris Benton, the former chairman of the architecture department at the University of California, Berkeley, stood at the Faire, patiently explaining how he and his like-minded friends take aerial photographs by hoisting cameras on kites, a cunning combination of high tech and old crafts.

In the darkened building next door, Terry Schalk, a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, fires up an enormous, arc-throwing Tesla coil in hopes of getting youngsters more interested in science.

“This is a real geek fest,” says Professor Schalk, a high-energy physicist in both senses of the phrase.

“If I was a kid, I’d wet my pants here,” he joked.

Some 65,000 people came to see the sprawling display of inventiveness and potentially hazardous fun. Many of them read Make magazine and its sister publication, Craft, and go to Web sites like Instructables.com that encourage people to take on projects and share what they learn. (Recent online projects have shown people how to convert a novelty French-fry telephone into a carrying case for an iPod; how to make a computer-powered coffee warmer from an old Intel Pentium chip plugged into a P.C.’s U.S.B. port; and how parents and children can build a small vibrating robot together.)

Armchair MacGyvers visit Web sites like BoingBoing.net that lovingly chronicle the more audacious projects here and at events like the anarchic Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert. These overlapping, even incestuous, communities form the “maker movement” of do-it-yourself enlightenment. In an age where just about every human activity, from shopping to sex, can be performed in the virtual world, they choose to get their hands dirty.

This is part of the Bay Area’s high-tech, adamantly nonconformist culture, steeped in engineering and art and innovation in garages that incubate billionaires and crowded with guys who make late-night runs to the pharmacy for bandages and burn cream. But it is not just a California thing. Make has fans around the world, with a paid circulation of 100,000; its Web site gets 2.5 million visitors each month. The publisher has started a second Faire in Austin, Tex., with hopes of further expansion.

Robotic Sailboat Racing

So, everyone and their brother has sent me a link to articles on the upcoming autonomous sailboat races across the Atlantic, and asked me why our boat is not participating. See this article on one of the entries, the Pinta.

Unfortunately, while I would love to participate in such a thing, our budget does not allow us the freedom to do so. I will definitely be watching this quite closely, however.

The Times of London reports that seven robotic craft will compete in a race across the Atlantic Ocean in October 2008. One of them, ‘Pinta the robot sailing boat,’ has been designed at Aberystwyth University, Wales, UK. Pinta is expected to sail for three months at a maximum speed of four knots (about 4.6 mph or 7.4 kilometers per hour). Its designers hope the Pinta will become the first robot to cross an ocean using only wind power. This 150-kilogram sailing robot costs only £2,500 (US $4,900 or €3,200). The transatlantic race will start between September 29 and October 5, 2008 from Viana do Castelo, Portugal. The winner will be the first boat to reach a finishing line between the Northern tip of St. Lucia and the Southern tip of Martinique in the Caribbean.

[...]

These sailing robots have been designed at Aberystwyth University, Wales, UK, by Mark Neal, Lecturer in the Department of Computer Science and member of the Intelligent Robotics Group. For more information about what he does, you can read two pages about Biologically Inspired Robotics and
a previous autonomous sailing robot.

Here is a quote from Mark Neal about these sailing robots. “This is the first time anybody has attempted to sail across any ocean with an automated boat. The big issue in robotics at the moment is longevity and flexibility in a complicated environment. Something that can survive for two to three months completely unassisted while doing something interesting is a major challenge. If it does get there I will be seriously cheerful. It will open up all the oceans to environmental monitoring by robots.”

PRT in Abu Dhabi

With all of the money flowing into the middle east due to high oil prices, they have the luxury of trying some far flung ideas to see how well they will work. Case in point, Abu Dhabi is building a zero-emissions city.

The part that excites me is the PRT, or personal rapid transportation. Done correctly, this is the people moving equivalent of a packet switched network (ie: the Internet). I have a small grant to do some simulations of this type of system, and would love to be able to ride it one day.

The new zero-emissions city, which is being built near the city of Abu Dhabi in the center of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), is part of the Masdar Initiative, a $15 billion government-funded investment program designed in part to ensure that the UAE's prosperity won't be linked exclusively to its oil. Its leaders say that the project will give the country a leadership position in renewable energy. If it's successful, says Sultan al Jaber, Masdar's CEO, "we'll be sitting on top of the world."

Designing the city from the ground up will bring a number of advantages. About half of the cost of solar energy comes from installation materials and labor. In Masdar, thin-film solar cells can be incorporated directly into the facades of buildings in place of conventional construction materials, reducing the costs of the solar power. Energy needed for cooling will be reduced by controlling the orientation and design of the city's buildings, streets, and green spaces to find a balance between shade and sun, and to promote natural-air circulation. Air conditioners will use absorption chillers that run on heat from the sun in place of conventional compressors.

Energy for transportation will also be reduced. Efficient electric transports will provide door-to-door service: just type in your destination, and the transport will come to your door and take you automatically to your destination. The power will be generated by renewable energy and stored onboard in batteries. On Monday, Masdar received the first bids on the system, which will likely use battery-powered vehicles running on tracks or powered by magnetic levitation.