Group items tagged

nice article reflecting on how to best "protect" ideas ....

"we should not forget that the technical solution disclosed in this article is only 5% of illusion" Certainly... but I wonder how did they measure it?

Obviously, they subtracted the percentage amount of bullshit from the total :P

This collaborating swarm of drones acts as 3D pixels (voxels) to create giant, flying interactive displays.

I have never understood the flying part of these things. Isn't it really impracticle to have all those tiny quadrocopters zooming around. My money is on holography or still a google glass type of device, if only considering the energy requirements for doing anything kinetically.

Cyano bacteria to shield from radiation. An idea from italians flying to the Moon via Team Indus

Nice idea, but is it really new: resistance of cyanob. to UV radiation has been known but studies have been inconclusive as to under what resource limitations it works, but according to what we see from evolution: on Earth it works, since they survived pre-ozone atmosphere! some papers from a quick google search: 1999 http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/09670269910001736392 2014 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25463663

I Knew!!! I Knew!!! They are all around. I always though Marek was one :) "I believe in Father Frost. But not too deeply. But anyway, you know, I'm not one of those people who are able to tell the kids that Father Frost does not exist"

His rival putin on the other hand... He got into an ultra-light aircraft to guide birds during their migration - from the video it seems that only very few birds think he is credible (as a guide). --> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/vladimir-putin/9524900/Flying-Vladimir-Putin-leads-birds-on-first-ever-migration-in-latest-publicity-stunt.html

Yup. My structural perfection is matched only by my hostility.

Bacteria found at 8-15 km altitude could play a much bigger role in cloud formation and precipitation than previously thought... According to this study bacteria represent around 20 % of the total atmospheric aerosols in their size range! They say it could also have implications for the spread of diseases...

20% ????

Materials exposed to a high-radiation environment such as the inside of a nuclear reactor vessel can gradually degrade and weaken. A new approach to allow assessment of radiation damage in materials, on real time!

Trying the new rocket with humans right away (and 1.5 years to go). What can possibly go wrong? The Trump administration has directed NASA to study whether it is feasible to fly astronauts on the debut flight of the agency's heavy-lift rocket, a mission currently planned to be unmanned and targeted to launch in late 2018, officials said on Friday.

" This isn't Camilla's first adventure. The chicken has also flown on a NASA T-38 training jet, traveled onboard a helium balloon to the stratosphere over Louisiana, visited the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia, and visited hundreds of elementary students in classrooms around the country. " Pretty impressive Camilla ! Congratulations :)

Around since last July, the TacoCopter website suddenly grabbed the web's attention days ago with its claim that they will take your order via a smartphone and deliver tacos straight to your location with GPS-guided, unmanned quadcopters....

According to the picture of the quadrocopter, you end up being chased by four flying, GPS-guided rotating blades...

always impressive...

"On March 28, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency will kick of another one of its highly successful challenges this time looking for teams or individuals to develop unique algorithms to control small satellites on-board the International Space Station. " Will the ACT participate?

That would be wrong on so many levels...

Could not find out what the prize money is? Also does not seem clear to me how three cubes can catch an object "flying" in the opposite direction... But the approach is nice to see

some biomimicry used in energy systems... maybe it sparks some ideas

not much new that has not been shared here before ... BUT: we have done relativley little on any of them. for good reasons?? don't know - maybe time to look into some of these again more closely Energy Efficiency( Termite mounds inspired regulated airflow for temperature control of large structures, preventing wasteful air conditioning and saving 10% energy.[1] Whale fins shapes informed the design of new-age wind turbine blades, with bumps/tubercles reducing drag by 30% and boosting power by 20%.[2][3][4] Stingray motion has motivated studies on this type of low-effort flapping glide, which takes advantage of the leading edge vortex, for new-age underwater robots and submarines.[5][6] Studies of microstructures found on shark skin that decrease drag and prevent accumulation of algae, barnacles, and mussels attached to their body have led to "anti-biofouling" technologies meant to address the 15% of marine vessel fuel use due to drag.[7][8][9][10] Energy Generation( Passive heliotropism exhibited by sunflowers has inspired research on a liquid crystalline elastomer and carbon nanotube system that improves the efficiency of solar panels by 10%, without using GPS and active repositioning panels to track the sun.[11][12][13] Mimicking the fluid dynamics principles utilized by schools of fish could help to optimize the arrangement of individual wind turbines in wind farms.[14] The nanoscale anti-reflection structures found on certain butterfly wings has led to a model to effectively harness solar energy.[15][16][17] Energy Storage( Inspired by the sunlight-to-energy conversion in plants, researchers are utilizing a protein in spinach to create a sort of photovoltaic cell that generates hydrogen from water (i.e. hydrogen fuel cell).[18][19] Utilizing a property of genetically-engineered viruses, specifically their ability to recognize and bind to certain materials (carbon nanotubes in this case), researchers have developed virus-based "scaffolds" that

The goal is to better understand how memory works to help for example against dementia, depression, stress.. but as we all know it would be great to learn how to fly a helicopter in 5 seconds as well.

... or to make a first real inception ;)

In a jaw-dropping feat of engineering, electronics turn a person's thoughts into commands for a drone. Using a brain-computer interface technology pioneered by University of Minnesota biomedical engineering professor Bin He, several young people have learned to use their thoughts to steer a flying robot around a gym, making it turn, rise, dip, and even sail through a ring.

Pretty cool, so when is this going to be available for our quadrocopter?

Always check your units! Your units are wrong! cried the teacher. Your church weighs six joules - what a feature! And the people inside Are four hours wide, And eight gauss away from the preacher! How Fermi could estimate things! Like the well-known Olympic ten rings, And the one-hundred states, And weeks with ten dates, And birds that all fly with one... wings. For things moving free or at rest, Observe what the first law does best. It defines a key frame, Inertial by name, Where the second law then is expressed.

This sort of reminds me of that Festo robot thing. Except this one was more of a baloon type model: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxVf9QY_TFs

What is the best (wisest) size for a group of individuals? Couzin and Kao put together a series of mathematical models that included correlation and several cues. In one model, for example, a group of animals had to choose between two options-think of two places to find food. But the cues for each choice were not equally reliable, nor were they equally correlated. The scientists found that in these models, a group was more likely to choose the superior option than an individual. Common experience will make us expect that the bigger the group got, the wiser it would become. But they found something very different. Small groups did better than individuals. But bigger groups did not do better than small groups. In fact, they did worse. A group of 5 to 20 individuals made better decisions than an infinitely large crowd. The problem with big groups is this: a faction of the group will follow correlated cues-in other words, the cues that look the same to many individuals. If a correlated cue is misleading, it may cause the whole faction to cast the wrong vote. Couzin and Kao found that this faction can drown out the diversity of information coming from the uncorrelated cue. And this problem only gets worse as the group gets bigger.

Couzin research was the starting point that co-inspired PaGMO from the very beginning. We invited him (and he came) at a formation flying conference for a plenary here in ESTEC. You can see PaGMO as a collective problem solving simulation. In that respect, we learned already that the size of the group and its internal structure (topology) counts and cannot be too large or too random. One of the project the ACT is running (and currently seeking for new ideas/actors) is briefly described here (http://esa.github.io/pygmo/examples/example2.html) and attempts answering the question :"How is collective decision making influenced by the information flow through the group?" by looking at complex simulations of large 'archipelagos'.

Nice video featuring the technology. Plus it comes with a good soundtrack! Google's project wing uses a lifting wing concept (more fuel efficient than normal airplane layouts and MUCH more efficient than quadrocopters) but it equips the plane with engines strong enough to hover in a nose up position, allowing vertical landing and takeoff. For the delivery of packages the drone does not even need to land - it can lower them on a wire - much like the skycrane concept used to deliver the Curiosity rover on Mars. Not sure if the skycrane is really necessary but it is certainly cool. Anyways, the video is great for its soundtrack alone! ;-P

Fair enough, but even if you consider advanced/robust/efficient AI, why would you use a drone? Do we envision hundreds of drones above our heads in the street instead of UPS vans, or postmen, considering delivers letters might be more easily achievable. I am not so sure if personal delivery will take this route. On the other hand, if the system would work smoothly, I can image that I'm send a mail with the question whether I'm home (or they might know already from my personal GPS tracker) and then notify me that they are launching my DVD and it will come crashing into my door in 5min.

I'm more curios how they're planning to keep people from stealing the drones. I could do with a drone army myself and having cheap amazon or google drones flying about sounds like a decent source.