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Self-Repairing Spacecraft Uses Ant Logic
Elitist_Phoenix wrote to mention a New Scientist story about what could be the first steps towards a self-repairing spacecraft. From the article: "The team at CSIRO, Australia's national research organisation, is working with NASA on the project and has so far created a model skin made up of 192 separate cells. Behind each cell is an impact sensor and a processor equipped with algorithms that allow it to communicate only with its immediate neighbours. Just as ants secrete pheromones to help guide other ants to food, the CSIRO algorithms leave digital messages in cells around the system, indicating for instance the position of the boundary around a damaged region. The cell's processor can use this information to route data around the affected area."
It is nice that these skin cells can detect that they have been damaged, yet I read nothing about if they have been damaged, how they plan to repair the damages caused?
I guess this is just a way for processing of a system to continue, even if a certain chunk of the spacecraft is destroyed, that it can still function seperate from the rest...
Few Question though about this layout:
1. How is the power system? Is this a central powered source, such as from a battery pack with a solar panel to recharge it, or is each cell having it's own power cell and solar panel to recharge things?
2. What is going to be implemented, as far as damage recovery systems? Is there going to be another group of devices onboard, that can be dispatched to repair cells? Is there going to be a collection of extra cells waiting, so that the damaged cells can be discarded, and the new cells brought into place?
3. Communications among cells are discussed, yet what about relaying this information back to NASA? Also, what happens if the primary communications antenna is destroyed... is there provisions to replace this as well, using this technology?
It looks like this is a start to promising self-healing taking place in satellites and other devices, not to mention the implementations of it being used on Earth...
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substitute 'adjacency updates' for 'pheromones' and you have a generic dynamic routing protocol...
All this sounds like is peer to peer sensor net rather than a central server processing the information.
I agree with your assertions however, because whilst the sensors may themselves be damage limited, unless each unit had its own repair kit, the same centralised problem occurs (micro-meteor through the only welding torch for instance).
liqbase
I cannot, for the life of me, figure out why they would need to use 'ant logic' or whatever for this system. All it does is take readings and process them in each cell... why not just use a central database of all the cells and a central (yet redundant) computer to process all the data.
Seems like you'd get the same result, but it wouldn't be as 'cool' or expensive to develop...
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Erm, I don't get the reason behind the "Self-Repairing" part. As far as I can see, it's Diagnostic they have in mind. As long as they're one piece, solid state cells they ain't going to repair anything. But sure, they can tell you stuff, like any sensor array out there. Imho, we shouldn't consider this anything more than it is: smart skin. Sure we have ceramic/metalic/whatever thingies protecting the space ships now. But if instead of that we could have smart ceramic/metalic/whatever skin that can tell us what exactly is wrong with it (burn, corrosion, impact, radiation levels?), I still think it's a great thing, which doesn't need the bombastic allusion to self contained tech. The only way I see self contained tech occuring is nanotech, and that's just because the "bricks" of it are too small for our perception. In fact, our whole tech is self contained, but we don't really accept it because we see the "parts" being so different and apart. Being small enough will create the illusion of it, but hey, who said we're smarter than that ? :)
I put that at the end of the article when I wrote it (3 days ago) looks like the editors, edited it out.
I for one DON'T welcome our editor overlords!
"I'm going to f***ing bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to f***ing kill Google"
I don't know anything about the project mentioned, but the ant theme suggests a solution - the way large numbers of ants form themselves into a bridge made out of their own bodies to cross gaps. One could imagine heat and impact resistant tiles in a rectangular or hexagonal grid, made out of individual small robots that can climb over each other. If one is damaged the group senses it, and a spare tile makes it's way to the damaged area, releases the damaged one, and takes it's place.
Don't you think? Exactly what our skin does, or rather, the nervous system endings in our skin. If you get cut, all the nerves around the cut go off and send signals, like pain. So, the same can work for a spacecraft, sending off messages about the problem. Now if scientists can just get these processors to perform mitosis so that ships can "heal" themselves, we'll be all set!
And that, my liege, is how we know the Earth to be bannana-shaped.