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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...

an open-source real time kinematic GPS receiver, allowing way better accuracy

At a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco in December, he reported an average figure that was between 0.005 and 0.008 per cent greater than the value for Earth's mass established by the International Astronomical Union. A disc of dark matter around the equator 191 kilometres thick and 70,000 km across can explain this, he says. Harris has yet to account for perturbations to the satellites' orbits due to relativity, and the gravitational pull of the sun and moon. Maybe relativistic GPS could improve this even further? As a side note however, the Juno spacecraft flyby showed an gravity acceleration which matched the calculations, casting doubts on the earlier calculations.

for Franco - nothing revolutionary to me but OK ...

now I have seen them all...

:-)

Well, it's not yet confirmed... That error would be worse than the magnetic moment of the muon about 10 years ago. There, it was "at least" a conflict of conventions used in the computer codes!

In a statement based on an earlier press release from the OPERA collaboration, CERN said two possible "effects" may have influenced the anomalous measurements. One of them, due to a possible faulty connection between the fiber-optic cable bringing the GPS signals to OPERA and the detector's master clock, would have caused the experiment to underestimate the neutrinos' flight time, as described in the original story. The other effect concerns an oscillator, part of OPERA's particle detector that gives its readings time stamps synchronized to GPS signals. Researchers think correcting for an error in this device would actually increase the anomaly in neutrino velocity, making the particles even speedier than the earlier measurements seemed to show. CERN's statement says OPERA scientists are studying the "potential extent of these two effects" but doesn't indicate which source of error (if either) is likely to outweigh the other. However, Lucia Votano, director of the Gran Sasso laboratory, says the "main suspicion" focuses on the optical-fiber connection. She adds that OPERA researchers deserve credit for "having tenaciously followed this particular evidence via checks completed in the last few days." The two effects will get a new round of tests in May, when the two labs are scheduled to make velocity measurements with short-pulsed beams designed to give readings much more precise than scientists have achieved so far.

With extreme precision, the possibility of getting information from the perturbations gives nice side effects

They say it will not replace current wind speed dropsondes which have a ten times better wind speed accuracy, but they could definitely provide a much more extensive view of cyclone wind speeds - at a very low cost!

It could be interesting to compare the accuracy and spatial resolution of the GPS method compared to what can be achieved using L-Band SAR data (e.g. SMOS mission)...

monitoring sea level rise using GPS data

Positioning via accumulated accelerometer data used to stabilize cold trapped atoms. Current systems are not very reliable for submarines, which cannot use GPS underwater. To create the supersensitive quantum accelerometers, Stansfield's team was inspired by the Nobel-prizewinning discovery that lasers can trap and cool a cloud of atoms placed in a vacuum to a fraction of a degree above absolute zero. Once chilled, the atoms achieve a quantum state that is easily perturbed by an outside force - and another laser beam can then be used to track them. This looks out for any changes caused by a perturbation, which are then used to calculate the size of the outside force.

Their accuracy is orders of magnitude better than what is currently being used, however at the moment, it sounds like quite a large setup -> they're working on getting it down to 1m^3 :o, still any gravity mapping instruments could benefit from these in the future.

Actually GPS is much more accurate, but as it doesnt work under water, the only alternative (without building an underwater GPS equivalent using probes) is to use cumulative accelerometer data. But as this is prone to drifting over time, quantum systems like this can help improving the accuracy significantly.

Very true :). I was thinking though when you want to remove 'noise' from any gravity mapping experiment, highly accurate accelerometers are required, like those used in GOCE.

How much this also would be valid for Galileo?

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 most tiny autopilot in the world was introduced yesterday by the Technical University of Delft, The Netherlands. Named Lisa/s, she comes in at the scales with just a mere 1.9 grams, the 2*2 cm board has everything that a multirotor needs. Among the sensors are a 3 axle gyroscope, compass, barometer and a gps module.

Also hardware and software are open source!

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.

Lots of Earth Observation data has become available at no charge in Europe and the US recently and there is a strong push for more open EO data. With precision farming, advanced agriculture using GPS, satellite observations and tractors with on-board computers, the farming process is performed as accurately and efficiently as possible. This is achieved by combining data from earth observations with other geospatial sources such as cadastral data, data on the quality of the soil, vegetation and protected areas. This enables the farmer to find the optimal trade-off in maximizing his yield with minimal use of fertilizers and pesticides while respecting environmental protection.

6 years later ...

seems optimistic