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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?
:)
I always get a kick out of these stories about robots being used on other planets. Anyone have a NASA link of these things being tried in some of our (Earth) extreme environment? Also, why don't we do these robot things on the moon first before we spend a billion or so going a few miles down the road?
"If you are on fire you can just stop, drop, and roll. If you fall into Lava you are just dead." - my 5yr old daughter
... So when they there are bugs in NASA's program, they aren't kidding!
If nature did not come up with flapping wings as a method of flight, how long would it have taken humanity to come up with the idea?
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.
I liked thetumbleweed idea a lot more, though it's not so sexy. It seems like the odds of mechanical/electrical failures on a flyer are greater than the odds of our tumbleweed falling in a hole.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
With the present success of the robotic drones in Afghanistan, the idea of using some sort of similar robot to explore difficult environments is looking seriously promising.
There is of course the delay time in communication that makes it unlikely we'll be able to control the drones remotely from Earth - but that just makes it an interesting programing problem.
Seriously - cheap disposable robots that don't need the kinds of life support systems (or return flight ticket) that human exploration needs makes a ton more sense then sending up an expensive and non-expendable team.
Sure you don't get the kind of glamor exposure that a human explorer would get - but robots are clearly the best pragmatic and economical choice.
In illa quae ultra sunt
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
we had better work out who owns it, etc.
The U.S. and the Russians are arguing over the I.S.S. already. This is why the Russians would not send up their cargo module.
It's gotten beyond the point of treaties for international peace saying "we all own space." No nation will go into space, and neither will any company go there, without some way of deriving profit.
Before anyone sets a toe down anywhere in the name of anything, let's figure this out.
Goat sex free since 2001
Anyone interested in 'insect-like' robots will want to do some reading on "B.E.A.M. Robotics", B.E.A.M. stands for Biology, Electronics, Aesthetics, and Mechanics. Bascially, it is the idea, codified by Mark Tilden (linus to beam roboticists (sp?)) that says that roboticists (sp?) should start by building/adapting simple autonimous robots, capable of small tasks. Each successive robot (the next one you build) should be slightly better. If we continue this (un?)natural evolution we should come up with life-like machines. Simple. Elegant. Capable.
See this Google search to start: http://www.google.com/search?q=beam+robotics
To we the appetite, here is a small gallery of Tilden's bots.
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.
The same is not true for smaller craft.
If a 747 "prangs" on landing, there are likely to be people injured or killed. On the other hand, smaller aircraft take hard landings rather a lot better.
Taking it to a more significant extreme, I used to fly radio controlled planes. The five pound 5 foot wingspan planes could take a pretty hard landing without damage. Move to an 8 footer weighing 15 pounds, and the plane is much more fragile.
Taking it in the other direction, it's probably impossible to kill an ant by dropping it from high altitude; there's not enough density for the terminal velocity to be too terribly high, and there's not enough mass for there to be much of an impact.
A "flying robot" is liable to be a bit bigger than an ant, but it's certainly down there in the "small scale" category. If it's made of tough materials, it should be quite resilient.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
The X-Plane web site has a description of some of the problems of conventional (non-flapping) flight on Mars. They also have flight models to allow simulation of flight. (However, the propulsion is a little unrealistic; maybe "muscles" would work better.)
If it isn't true, don't say it. If it isn't helpful, don't say it. If it's true and helpful, wait for the right time.
This sounds more like a "Lets build an unorthodox. unusual and attention-getting device so we can attract supporters for the idea!" concept rather than a truly practical and realistic one. Sounds like a varitable CueCat of Mars exploration.
Being able to navigate in a particular direction isn't the issue. There are solutions to the navigation problem that are far cheaper, and yeild far better results than "insect robots". For example:
Balloons. Whats wrong with having a computer-controlled balloon with a cannister of hydrogen or helium beneath it? As local temperature and air pressure change, the computer could inflate or deflate accordingly. Toss in a good altimeter, and you can drift across the surface within a few feet for months on end. A small armada of these could cover a very wide area in a relatively short amount of time. It requires no propulsion, it will never run out of fuel, its a simple device that by its very design lessens the risk of mechanical failure, and its extremely cheap to produce and deploy.
If not balloons, why not use spring-loaded "grasshoppers" ? Essentially big wind-up toys, you can deploy thousands of these on the surface. They dont require intelligence, they dont consume fuel, and they dont require supervision of any sort. They simply pop around the surface taking photographs both on the ground and in the air, and when their spring begins to run low, they use the remainder of the spring's potential energy to broadcast the pictures and atmospheric data they recorded during their lifespan of hopping around Mars for a few weeks. Both of these ideas make sense, because when used in large groups, you can map enormous areas of terrain fairly well, like sending out guys in every direction at the beginning of a game of Command & Conquer. Once all the balloons (or grasshoppers) collect all their data, you can decide an interesting path for any subsequent rover to take.
I think this guy fails to realize that the more complicated his device becomes, the more risks of failure you encounter, the higher the pricetag becomes, and the more problems you'll have no way of addressing. As the old saying goes, "Keep it simple, stupid!". Sure, brainless observers & reporters arent nearly as glamorous as FLYING ROBOT INSECTS, but Mars exploration isnt about being able to license the design to Matchbox to sell miniatures of your invention to kids. Its about getting the job done as cheaply and reliably as possible.
Cheers,
Bowie J. Poag