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Insect Robots For Mars Exploration
destructor writes "Thanks to these guys, I found this little robotic article. Aided by NASA's Institute for Advanced Concepts, flying insect robots are looking at a life on our "little red planet", Mars in order to procure some atmospheric information and samples. Since conventional aircraft are unable to precisely navigate the Mars surface due to very thin air qualities, the robots actually have the ability to "move only their wings rapidly - while the body flies slowly", to ease sample collections." Space.com is carrying a piece on this.
so once big brother gets his hands on it, the tool of choise for personal privacy protection is going to be a fly swatter?
:)
... So when they there are bugs in NASA's program, they aren't kidding!
Haven't they had enough problems controlling fairly large machines on that planet? Making a flying robot that flaps it's wings really fast to fly doesn't sound too reasonable. Maybe I have my planets wrong, but doesn't Mars experience some major storms every year. How much wind would it take to blow these things into a rock and smash them into tiny little pieces.
Okay, I know this is off-topic, but look at the headlines on the main page of space.com:
"NASA Report: Space Travel 'Inherently Hazardous' to Human Health"
Well, duh.
I don't know, but this just shows how advanced Linux has become.. I mean every OS has bugs, but how often can that be said the other way around?
air and light and time and space
Assumming these could be built cheaply enough you could send out hundreds of these to invade caves, scout out undergroud bunkers, etc. Design them so that it doesn't matter if someone manages to take out a few of them as long as some of the bots complete their mission.
Personally, I think that a good weapon/suveillance device is one that can't be defeated by mosquito netting.
Takahashi Rumiko made beats! DON, taku, DON, taku. . .
It is amazing the solutions nature comes up with to problems.
Imagine how dangerous the world would be if nature figured out projectiles. Or wheels. Or fission. That would be one mean shark.
I guess nature did come up with those things - it just used humans as an intermediary.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
GUARD #1: Listen, in order to maintain air-speed velocity, an entomoper needs to beat its wings 43 times every second, right?
ARTHUR: Please!
GUARD #1: Am I right?
ARTHUR: I'm not interested!
GUARD #2: It could be carried by an African entomoper!
GUARD #1: Oh, yeah, an African entomoper maybe, but not a European swallow, that's my point.
Now that we have these, we finally have a force capable of opposing his accursed dinobots.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
You can find an artists conception of what these robots might look like in action here.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
And, right now, there are no guns on Mars to force explorers away.
Oh I beg to differ!