Slashdot Mirror
Automated Office Delivery with Helium Blimps
Blimp Dude writes "Anyone who likes blimps might want to check out this automated blimp delivery service built by some guy at HP Labs. I personally think this is the future... Now I want WebBlimp to deliver groceries directly to my 29th floor apartment window."
a beowulf cluster of...nevermind.
now we can go looking in trees for our paycheck
...I'm sure the blimps will run Squeak, and move a lot slower.
Best Buy can have you arrested
I've seen footage and photos of the Hindenburg explosion and I'd hate to have one of these right outside my open window! How safe is this really going to be?
If you, like me, are tired of having to manually deliver documents or other items within your office building, and if your building has high ceilings, good lighting, and minimal air currents, then you will inevitably reach the same conclusion I have: An automatic helium blimp delivery service.
Okay Helium Jim Jones, whatever you say. Just don't send any Kool-Aid my way.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
For God's sake! The disasters this could cause! Remember the Hindenberg!!!!
sig not found
Wake me when they come up with a 'Lawn Dart' delivery system.
Now THAT would be useful.
All kidding aside, though, cute, but how useful would this be?
The opposite of progress is congress
A large round object an no goatse link? Heresy!
Get the story straight, it was hydrogen, dickhead.
the baloon should be filled with hydrogen and painted with highly flammable red paint. -eek
-- sigs suck --
Unfortunately The Pentagon turned off the GPS as the coffee destined for a buddy across the room passed over the bosses lap...
First victim claimed.
The movie is cool, but if everyone grabs it from the web server, I doubt it will last long, so please grab it from Freenet rather than getting them from the website. I have mirrored it here (install and run Freenet before clicking on the link):
while i give kudos for having fun building something neat, this hardly seems that slashdot worthy. it can barely carry a postit note and the guy himself basically says its not usable.
again, i appreciate the try but the article itself wasnt any fun or insightful to read and the accomplishment wasnt too impressive. the most interesting part was using the red and blue to judge orientation and the size to judge distance. i thought that was neat, but not very practical of course.
i expected a somewhat usable system, maybe tweaks needed to the guidance systems. but it cant even carry a piece of paper...........
blimps for deliveries? Oh the humanity!
Blimps are quite possibly one of the greatest inventions of all time.
Its amazing the things we give up over time, and later decide we want.
I don't think I've ever been into a contemporary home with a dumb-waiter in it. And how about vacuum tube devlivery: totally relegated to banks (and Home Depot). Yeah, sure, email is taking everything over. But when you really need a signature on something, vacuum tubes rock. Installing vacuum tubes through my house, now that's the kinda large scale project that I want to wast my time on.
We set up a blimp with a webcam that trolled through the office on a set path (even had a little guide string across the ceiling). Nothing fancy or autonomous.
We scrapped it after the first week because of two major flaws:
1) It was annoying as hell. (*HUMMMMMMMMMM* *Feeling of eyes on the back of neck*)
2) Our customers started hitting our website to see if we were actually working. ("I don't know Bob, that sure looks like he's playing solitare to me...")
The second flaw eventually metamorphosed into a new plan involving a looped tape and 15 minutes of real work, which had to be scrapped as unbelievable.
Ahhhh, the glory days.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
can afford Helium. The big problem is that M$ patented helium blimp technology solutions. Using Hydrogen will avoid the patent disputes of course and therefore is the preferred solution.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
Don't these guys watch monster garage? wimps!
Just kidding it's pretty and I liked the music.
No wait, now i'm just kidding :)
Liberty.
Nice to know that HP's got the garage inventor thing still going on. Excellent progress. Especially considering the competition: ASIMO? Who wants a personal robot and not a blimp delivery service?
- This is supposed to be a poke at U.S. R&D.
So I'm guessing the worst that could happen is:
"Oh no! My coffee cu..NOOOOOO!!! OH THE HUMANITY! OH! THIS IS THE WORST OF THE WORST!"
-------
[this space to be filled with the usual complaints about the lameness filter in order to circumvent it's wrath, which is itself lame for blocking "too many caps" in my opinion.]
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
precursor to the IM (instant message)?
I guess now would be the time to mention that helium, unlike hydrogen, is not flammable?
(We) unfortunately found that one sheet of paper is too heavy for the blimp to lift reliably
Anything usefull that has to be transferred as paper is going to be much larger than a Post-It-Note, so how large must this thing be?
Would filling it with hydrogen instead help? I would love to see a Hindenburg go down at my office...
I was actually able to download the video using my full bandwidth. Does that mean no one cares?
nt
Feel free to contact me about this or anything else. I'm a friendly guy.
;-P
Not after being slashdotted, spam-listed, and trolled with a million "you're a dweeb!" or "could you send me detailed instructions and hold my hand while i try to duplicate this please?" messages he won't be. Slashdot fame chases the friendliness out of the friendliest nerd.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Lots of potential here for intelligent control of the blimp, but no evidence that he tried any of that.
Also, people will probably be shooting them out of the sky in order to steal the contents. Much easier than jacking a FedEx truck for example.
Oh, and nitpicking aside, this is way cool!
The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.
...useless innovation of the Dot Com era is dead. This is a REAL sign of a recovery.
We've had a blimp deliver items around the office for years now... His name's Robert, and he likes McDonalds a little bit too much.
Excellent way to earn your moniker.
everyone will have migrated to this blimp system from e-mail to avoid spam :)
I can just imagine someone running around the office, climbing over cubicles and filing cabinet's, trying to catch his paycheck. All the while, his boss is sitting at his computer laughing his ass off and sending the blimp, with paycheck, to the guy who designed this useful office tool.
By Email...
Mark my words...
Linux - Because Mommy taught me to Share.
nt, too
Yeah, but mine was first.
If you, like me, are tired of having to manually deliver documents or other items within your office building, and if your building has high ceilings, good lighting, and minimal air currents, then you will inevitably reach the same conclusion I have: An automatic helium blimp delivery service.
;-P
nope. rfc 1149, "A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers"
same dependability as the blimp though: not very dependable.
so has this guy written the rfc for the intraoffice blimp protocol yet? no!? what kind of nerd does he think he is!
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The disarmament of the Iraqi Regime has begun!!!!
March 19th, 2003, 9:45PM, Eastern Standard Time!!!!
So if you have, say, Window Media Player, you'll need to install an MPEG-2 codec to view the video. I found a shareware one with annoying overlay on playback here: http://www.etymonix.com/
There is a free decoder out there for Windows, but I don't remember where it was..
And no, this is not cause to put me in a sanitarium.
Think about it: The old blimps were hydrogen, bad idea. I'm not sure about the lift factor of helium compared, but I do know that we've achieved a hell of a lot in terms of lighter building materials, so it seems like a decent sized blimp could be made.
The problem with cruise liners is that they are, obviously, restricted to the ocean. Enter the blimp, bad ass overland cruise ship. They'd be good for solar power (large surface area) relatively quick if you could adapt some turbine engines for them. Could be relatively cheap to operate.
Of course, since everyone apparently associates "Blimp" with "Giant flaming ball of debris" some savvy marketing would have to be done in order to get people to fly in one. Still, it could be cool as hell.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
they're also imposing restrictions on the transportation of model rocket engines.
It just doesn't seem fair.
KFG
Several reasons why this isn't going to be a repeat of the Hindenburg:
1) the covering on the hindenburg was the source of the fire, not the hydrogen. The covering had material similar to ammonium nitrate and gunpowder, a disaster waiting to happen especially with the hydrogen on board.
2) these balloons use helium, not hydrogen. We banned He export to Germany so they used hydrogen to get off the ground.
3) the hindenburg was huge because of the sheer weight it had to compensate for. Kitchens, passengers, crew, cargo, etc. A 50-pound package doesn't need such a large balloon to lift it, so as long as it's within reason this could work out
4) our SchustenStaffel...er, department of homeland security wouldn't allow easily hijacked bags of explosive gas to run freely around. They'd be like a neon sign going "Untraceable Weapon Here! Fire and Forget! All evidence destroyed in the blast!!!"
5) finally, remember that the hindenburg was a target for sabotage, both because of the political ramifications of any positive relations between US and GER. If we'd remained neutral, France would be a German sycophant (ok, so not much changes there), Russia would be a slave country, and UK would be either a US fortress or a German satellite. Smaller helium-filled balloons like giant kiddie-party toys aren't so politically charged or easily destroyed, except my malicious little kids with BB guns and lax parents.
As long as there is a Second Amendment, there will always be a First Amendment.
.. now if they could find a way to deliver spam with hydrogen blimps, all would be good in the world.
Trolling is a art,
Check out this new electronic mail thing. we've started using around the office, and our blimp use is down like 80%, it's just a superior technology...
Cloud City Digital: DVD Production at its cheapest/finest
Massive tube systems, like the ones they use in the drive-thrus at banks, to send materials shooting through the building.
I've seen this implemented in some hospitals to move papers and stuff around, it would be cool to see on a larger office building size scale.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
fag... i can see what's going on in your mind right now:
"everyone who supports the war is republican; and everyone who is republican wants iraqi's to die"
get a life and stop thinking you can read minds.
Remember, that RFC1149 compliant protocols generally include an audit trail of droppings!
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
...that guy earns money with that idea.. I'll shoot myself...
If a blimp could be created to either carry beer to me from my fridge to my couch, I would easily buy it.
On an almost serious note, it might be neet to combine slashdot stories here. What if the "Beer and Bluetooth" idea could be combined with the blimp from this story. A bluetooth camera mounted on a blimp that traveled around the bar and took a picture every 10-15 seconds and then posted the picture on a big screen and archived in the gallery.
Can I copyright these ideas? Nah, nevermind. But they're GPL'd!
rejected (19) accepted (0)
Is there a psychological term related to getting your stories rejected on slashdot?
There have actually been real instances when non-conventional techniques have been used for office delivery. For instance, the Mayo clinic in Rochester, MN uses a sophisticated network of pneumatic tubes for instant office delivery. Remember Winston from Orwell's 1984? He used something like that too. For more info on this technology: a Wired article
ME: "Leetle Buzzy Robot, give this to Ted in Accounting."
Leetle Buzzy Robot: "BEEE WWHOOP Bee BOOO"
ME: "Koo Koo Katchoo!"
Leetle Buzzy Robot: "ZZZZZzzzzzzzz......"
MOMENTS LATER...
TED, On Phone: "Uh, Dude? Why is there a Radio Shack monster truck banging into my wastebasket with a post-it-note that says 'Impotent' on it?"
ME: "I know nothing."
It's actually a very old idea. Several cities had very large systems of this type in the 19th century, mainly because of the huge volume of telegraph messages being sent. They were made obsolete by the invention of the teleprinter.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Forget SUVs man. The next thing is going to be recreational dirigibles - RDs, and also Sport RDs.
Think about the parking options!
Think of the ability to impede the flow of traffic.
On really mean days, the road rage, err sky rage, filled drivers would fill up their SRDs with H2. Then they could put big warning stickers on their vechicles to just tempt others.
Such awesome potential. All we need is venture capital or one really stupid Detroit car manufacturer to make this fly.
..so we can become more like blimps. if e-mail and IM wasn't bad enough, now the blimp can go get McDonalds down the road, and bring it back to us in out fat asses sitting in a chair and NEVER getting up. Feels like the old x-men enemy MoJo.
Your lawn dart delivery system reminds me of a similar system that *has* seen a decent amount of use -- the "wrap document around brick and hurl through plate glass window" delivery method...
Anyway, he didn't really build this thing because it's the best way to deliver a document... haven't you ever built anything just for fun, because you could?
I wrote a little text-to-speech converter once entirely in HTML and JavaScript, using the word pronunciations at Merriam-Webster Online. Naturally it was horrible, but very funny to listen to.
When we first got Cisco IP phones at my previous office I wrote a program that used the call manager web interface to initiate an outgoing call from any phone in the building to an external number of your choice (you'd just type in the target extension, destination number, and hit "make the call!").
You make rules -- like "work on this is only allowed between 12 and 1pm" -- because of course there's no real point. Maybe just "because it was there". And possibly to proudly show your little mutant creation to your friends and laugh about how interesting but useless an achievement it is.
There are only 10 types of people: those who understand decimal, those who don't, and, uh, 8 other types I forget.
OK, so delivering a PostIt note is no biggy.
He's really solving a much more important problem - visual tracking and control of dumb vehicles. I like the red and blue idea, it is economical and fits the available technology. The advantage is that the vehicle does not know, or even need to know, where it is. What other contactless 3D positioning system could be built for a hundred bucks? This is great for expendable vehicles, or those with very limited payloads.
Neat, fun, slightly daft, project, in my opinion.
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Now I know wher all the money I spent on HP servers that I bought went to. At least I know that it is being put to good use.
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. --Edmund Burke
There has to be some way to combine this with pneumatic tubes. Like, use the pneumatic tubes as a LAN, and the blimps as a WAN. Do something like that, and then this will be cool enough.
Just don't call it a "Blimp"...(call it a dirgible or.......something else)
Here's a helpful business model:
1. Build a big blimp to serve as an overland cruiseliner
2. Use savvy marketing to avoid "blimp" stigma
3. ???
4. Profit!
the only country that had access to large enough quantities of helium was the US who fractionated it from natural gas
History of helium production
I'm afraid I'd have to decline to use any sort of blimp delivery system. Sorry.
If this gets popular it might turn into another reality TV show.
This explains perfectly why my HP stock is in the toilet. Their engineers suck.
The Horror of Blimps "I always knew this was going to happen. I always knew that skepticism and science were mere psychological decorations and vanities. Deep in our alligator brains we all know that the world is just chock full of evil and monsters and sinister forces aligned against us, and it is only a matter of time until they show up. Evolution know this, too. It knows what to do when the silent terror comes at you from out of the dark."
(seen on JWZ's LiveJournal)
No shit. I had my popcorn all ready for 8PM. Nothing. What a boring war. Now I have to go back to hanging out with you losers on /.
Stuff the entire blimp AND the message into a pneumatic tube. In use over 100 years ago and STILL a great idea.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Sell your Hewlett-Compaqard stock folks, this really is the best of HP Labs!
You have not mirrored it on 127.0.0.1, I checked the link and nothing... I am so annoyed that I am going to set the slapper worm on the http server on that IP, yes 127.0.0.1 is going to die!
Why the heck is my system going mental? Why is my net slowing down? What's happening, is 127.0.0.1 counter attacking me? That does it I am going to DOS that server and see what it does to me! Right N.........
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
DUH!!!
he works in the same floor. am i supposed to
cover my head and code at the same time.
what if he doesnt like a person , does he
just drop the blimp on them
my workplace has just become a chemical hazard. where is ashcroft when you need him!
vv
Flashes of 'the fifth element' come to mind :)
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
Back in the 1980s, the MIT Media Lab tried something like this. Mostly because their building has a really big atrium.
I will imagine it would need quite big engines on that balloon to hold against the wind on 29th floor!
With an "empty" of equal weight.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
So that you can vary the density of the helium and thereby the lift generated. Starts getting complicated though.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
They did a delivery in the WTC, but not with helium, they used jets!!! now that is fast service!!!
How is this better than pneumatic tubes? ... a fine piece of Victorian technology which is still in limited use today e.g. at the local Costco and at my local bank's drive-in teller operation.
Why couldn't you have a viable system of pneumatic tubes providing anywhere-to-anywhere delivery via hub-and-spoke (all tubes are routed from e.g. desks to a single central "hub" location. To send it from point A to point B, you put it in a tube at point A where it gets sent to the hub, where a robot transfers it to the tube that goes to point B...)
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Don't we see a blimp hovering in the offices of Mad magazine whenever they have to depict their offices????
All we need is commodity blimp technology. If you park a radio-opaque blimp between a satellite dish and its satellites (feasibility based on size of dish and closeness of blimp to dish), you could block a hell of a lot of communications, couldn't you?
I mean, all I need is to get static on all my DirecTV channels and walk outside to find a Comcast blimp hovering evilly by my dish. Then I'd have to get one and park it above the local Comcast downlink dish.
And you know who'd ultimately win? The blimp makers, that's right.
-- Fratz, human
We've had a blimp deliver items around the office for years now... His name's Robert, and he likes McDonalds a little bit too much.
And, like the Hindenburg, he's full of flamible gas.
Ed Wedig
Graphic design services
docbrown.net
Think about it guys, in his spare time this guy managed to use a single camera, some color filters, and an SDK to navigate a childs toy anywhere in a room up to 40m wide. Is it reliable, no. But I would'nt call the Wright flyer A reliable either.
I'm personally working on an entry for the Darpa Grand Challenge, and I really have to respect anyone who can get machine vision to work.
Either that or I need to stop reinventing the wheel, and somebody needs to direct me to a robust set of tools that I've been overlooking.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
Before you decide you need one of these, you must read The Horror of Blimps. It seems that not all blimps are as innocent as they're like you to think...
-Mark
NT
DUDE! You have GOT to warn people before posting that!
I read it while at work, and my roomies in this hell we call Cubeville thought that I was having a stroke or something! I was making bizarre noises while attempting to stifle my urge to roll on the floor laughing out loud!!! I finally lost the battle and out came this croaking-laugh kinda sound.... The secretary was calling 911 while everyone else crowded into my cube to see what in hell was happening to me!
Holy cow what a story!!! Moderators.... Kick that post up to 5+ Funny!!!
The number 1 problem of working in a cubicle - 23 power cords, 1 outlet...
The Horror of Blimps http://www.teemings.com/extras/truelife/scylla6.ht ml
Helium is quickly becoming a preciouos element. Once Helium is released into our atmosphere, the majority of it escapes up into space. Harvesting Helium from the atmosphere in the extrenely low conentrations its actually present in is not cost effective to say the least. There are only a couple of places on the earth where Helium is mined from the ground, and they will run out. There was an article in NewScientist about this a month or two ago.
The cost of Helium has gone up considerable over the past 5 years. Helium has uses that are much more important than filling birthday balloons or floating around delivery blimps- MRI and NMR scanners for example in the medical and chemical industries rely on expensive liquid Helium to run properly, and ultra-pure Helium is already reserved for other research purposes.
We will run out of Helium within 20-30 years if we don't becoem more conservative with our uses of it; Once the ground-supplies of Helium run out it will become rediculously expensive to seperate atmospheric Helium, and by then I'd bet any Helium harvested would be completely reserved for medical/research needs.
Booya.
Why can't people get it straight that "inter" is "between" and "intra" is "within"? This "automatic inter-office delivery" is actually "automatic intra-office delivery".
Geez, learn the language, dudz!
Long ago and far away, R. Buckminster "Bucky" Fuller designed a building that consisted of a central spire and floors suspended from it by cables. He intended this system to be delivered by dirigibles (i.e. blimps on steroids). You can find lots of discussion and his drawings in "The Dymaxion World of Buckminster Fuller" (Doubleday, 1973).
Once again, Bucky was there first!