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Polar Robots to Explore the Arctic
Roland Piquepaille writes "It's now almost certain that the world's ice shelves are melting. And while satellites provide lots of data about their evolution, ground-based weather stations could be even more useful. But if scientists can no longer stay on fragile and volatile ice sheets, what can they do? They can use specially designed robots called SnoMotes developed by U.S. researchers. 'The SnoMotes work as a team, autonomously collaborating among themselves to cover all the necessary ground to gather assigned scientific measurements.' More importantly, a SnoMote is an 'expendable rover that wouldn't break a research team's bank if it were lost during an experiment,' according to the lead researcher." Reader coondoggie adds a link to another story on these robots at Network World.
'cause like, polar robots have something better to explore than like the *poles* ?
--Q
Wonder what those temperatures will do to the battery life? Could a battery compartment warmer allow more battery life than it costs?
...my job yet, that's what :P
When machines first began taking over jobs during the inception of the industrial revolution, I recall there being much resistance.
I wonder, as robots do begin to take the remaining jobs, will the same resistance be encountered?
I, for one, so welcome our robotic, network-administering, garbage-collecting, smooth-jazz-composing, polar-region-exploring robot overlords.
Read my Very Short "Stories"
With the ice caps melting, do the 'bots get endangered species protection?
Why did it have to be the Arctic? I had a shoggoth joke ready to go.
I write sci-fi for metalheads
I, for one, welcome our bi-polar robot overlords.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
These robots will not only study global warming but reverse it. The problem that, since they're designed for the ice, they'll surely want the entire earth terraformed to their liking. I, for one, welcome our frosty robot overloads.
A robot that goes out to collect data is just another scientific instrument to be used. Ultimately, people are still going to have to make sense of the data.
It takes a certain kind of person to want to go out into extreme conditions to take measurements. Being able to make meaningful conclusions based on them in the field when you have other things to worry about also takes a special kind of person.
Robots can go out, measure, and send back to you in your comfy office. The only sad thing is that we're moving towards a world of astronomers without astronauts, so to speak.
Without the adventure there is a lot less to inspire 8 year olds -- imagine if the draw to NASA had been "hey, kids! you can wear starched shirts and use a slide rule!" instead of "you can be a kick-ass fighter pilot, get a FREE Corvette and wear an Omega watch!"
The reality is that even the astronauts had to put on the starch and take out the slide rule, but that's not what you want to show kids up front.
That its being shown to them now that space is mostly going to just get the machine treatment and astronauts aren't going to do much past float around not be able to go to the bathroom for a few weeks, its small wonder that the smart kids who have the wanderlust as well look at Marine Bio as the new Apollo.
When I was substitute teaching about a year ago lots of kids wanted to be marine biologists. none of them were saying astronaut anymore.
Hope they float, even if they're cheap it's going to add up quickly...
And, if we want to "save the planet," letâ(TM)s quit flying and driving. Thatâ(TM)s all it would take; we need neither to survive. No person must drive to live.
We don't need "paper or plastic." Or water for our lawns. Each family must grow some of their own food and yards and gardens I see in my neighborhood should be replanted with corn, okra, asparagus, and spinach. Showers will Auto Shut Off after a certain point and baths are banned as they take more water than the ASO shower. Thereâ(TM)s no reason to wash that car we wonâ(TM)t be driving. Absolutely, positively no reason for T.V. If anything itâ(TM)s more detrimental to the environment than nuclear waste simply because of volume and they only rot peopleâ(TM)s brains. Militaries, huge natural resources wasters, are banned. And when did it become necessary to have a cell phone? Everyday I go to work I wear a suit and tie. Thanks to global warming, itâ(TM)s 109 degrees out and I have on a jacket. And I have yet to see anyone dead in the street because he failed to wear a tie. One year I missed the Super Bowl, completely! And, the next morning I woke up. The point is âoeI woke up;â I somehow survived without it. I havenâ(TM)t tried it, but I bet we survive without the Masterâ(TM)s, Indy 500, Wimbledon, Kentucky Derby, or any of this other resource wasting nonsense. All families must be no bigger than four total, including remarriages. And why canâ(TM)t the newspaper I read be produced only electronically? All regions of the world must only grow indigent plants; others consume too much energy. No perfume, antiperspirant, furniture polish, toilet bowl cleaner, carpet freshener or those goofy ass things we plug in the wall that make our homes smell like French whorehouses. Letâ(TM)s eliminate all articles of convenience and then start on things we need to survive. I think there are populations, maybe Tibetan monks, who use less oxygen. Perhaps thereâ(TM)s some training they can provide to teach us how to conserve oxygen before the Chinese exterminate them. We donâ(TM)t need all these restaurants and they have to be super-big wasters of natural resources By taking the measures I outline in the preceding, we will extend our fresh water by several generations. But, we must march to the sea and begin mining her salt as the Mahatma did, the byproduct being salt-free water.
Will be Northrend, employed by Thottbot!
Always going forward, 'cause we can't find reverse.
Phew! At first I read that as "...explore your attic"
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Do they combine to form a larger kick ass robot? Can they take on Devastator?
Help find a cure for cancer!
Not all the world's ice shelves are melting
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Allowing these devices to function autonomously is going to be quite interesting. My research involved such issues, but only in mobile software agents. I've read, and been told by some of my then-fellow-students that autonomous land vehicles are more difficult to control than UAVs.
Combining this type of cooperation with autonomous navigation and the "bidding" system described could have some interesting commercial applications, ranging from autonomous "taxis" and delivery vehicles (such as an office-wide or city-wide version of FedEx) to branching out the bidding algorithms to help automate search and rescue efforts. Imagine if a group of specialized bots could be dispatched to look for signs of life - a large number with basic sensory capabilities that could then call in one of a smaller number of more advanced bots? Perhaps even summoning something similar to the much-chided "buddy bot" discussed earler on Slashdot.
I know the "buddy bot" seemed silly, but if you consider the more basic functions it could be very useful. It provides two-way communication with rescuers, so you can say "I'm alone" or "I'm here with two of my children, and one of them is bleeding badly", to "I'm trapped, but I'm otherwise OK." This could help rescuers better prioritise their efforts, much like triage on the field - if someone's bleeding badly, send help sooner, while the person who is trapped but otherwise safe can hang on a little longer, and then two lives are saved instead of only one. (I fully realize that type of situation may not always work out as desired - people lie, things can collapse further, etc.)
I also have to commend Dr. Howard for her creativity in utilizing what was essentially an "off-the-shelf" component for the main device - the little snow-mobile. Very well suited for the majority of the terrain for which it is designed.
There is much more behind this work than first meets the eye. I'll be quite interested in watching this one develop further. Now where did my 9-year-old put that Mindstorms NXT?
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/ Not only are they not melting its pretty obvious the antarctic is in growth.
Almost certain? If the scientists can no longer be there to study the phenomena because it is no longer safe, I'd say that's pretty certain.
I'd be curious to see more information (from both sides of the argument, actually).
It's now almost certain that the world's ice shelves are melting
... only for some value of "certain" which equates to "certainly not" is that a defensible statement, methinks.
Funny, that's not what the actual facts show. We're at the highest ever recorded ice cover in the Southern Hemisphere right now:
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/s_plot.html
which already more than balances out the Northern Hemisphere's recent decline,
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/n_plot.html
and now that the PDO has entered a cool phase,
http://jisao.washington.edu/pdo/
it's as certain as anything to do with climate is that you're going to see that trend smartly reverse itself as well.
Soooooo
In response, proponents of Intelligent Design, created a BiPolar bot that alternates between shouting "Then End is Near" and denying any scientific data it observes.
Sig Follows: "Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself." -- Mark Twain
Is it just me, or do those robots look entirely too fragile? Worse yet, the treads appear to be about a hand's width in length. There's no way something like that will be useful out in the wild. It'll come across a 5 inch ridge in the ice and be blocked!
...Cartesian robots are angry about being passed over for these jobs without even being considered.
The laws of probability forbid it!
It's simple, really. Equip them with jump jets! That way they just fire up the engines, point them towards the ice, and...
... oh.
The poles are not melting, have not been melting. How could they melt at 50 below? That's like saying Greenland is melting, since it's only 30 below zero in the summer. In case you actually want to look, and see for yourself, the latest is at this site ... Arctic http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh
Antarctic ... http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/antarctic.jpg
I guess not many actually look, since the sat data has been available since about 1979, the first year we were able to actually measure the ice, you can do comapres if you want.
I wonder what the polar bears did when it was so warm during the last interglacial when the Boreal Forest grew right up to the banks of the Arctic Ocean? And how do we know that, the dead trees are buried in the tundra of today.
Maybe I'm missing something, but I think Global Warming is a good thing. Melt all the damn ice shelves for all I care, more fresh water for us all, and better weather to boot. So what if the ocean levels rise a good 5 ft? I think the temperature benefits and the increased fresh water is a small price to pay for that. Plus the land we lose due to islands submerging will be made up in the form of land farther north or south that will now be viable.
Also, if you look at the history of the Earth over the past few hundred thousand years, you will see the global temps are always rising and falling. I think our greenhouse gases may contribute to it a little bit, but come on, I'm sure there's some global temperature cycle most people are not taking into account.
Am I the only one who thinks this is a good thing? Seriously, maybe people need to start thinking and questioning for themselves instead of always saying "wow, I heard Global Warming is bad, let's stop it!"
(Obligatory...) Imagine a beowulf of these things... oh wait...
Seriously though, the additional cost of a mechanism to allow one SnoMote to rescue another damaged SnoMote (and the additional power to carry it long distances) would surely be less expensive than just replacing them any time one falls into a hole. Perhaps such a mechanism is already in place, but I don't see anything like that in the pictures, and there's no mention of such a thing in TFA.
-proidiot
So That hows how they are finding the oil in the artic!
-- if you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine
How dare you speak against the will of the Supreme Council of Scientists, comrade Snocone. Obviously, you are a member of the Counterglobalwarming Clique bent on drowning the proletariat in the melting polar caps. However, in the name of the Mother Earth and the Green Revolutionaries, we of the Supreme Council of Scientists take pity upon you and sentence you to 10 years at the Consensus Gulag for re-education.
Like meat variety researchers.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
1. Quite attractive
2. Comfortable with a screwdriver
3. is fixing a robot
Yet I haven't read a single comment complimenting her obvious geek/nerd eligibility. Fella's OPEN YOUR EYES.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
There is clearly already a solution since the various NASA robots have worked fine on Mars and although they are solar powered they will require batteries so they don't have to turn completely off during the night.
Cool robots, man!
...Polaroids ?
we have used RC aircrafts in the Arctic, using an Open Source autopilot
http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2008/04/03/222680/cots-uav-makes-arctic-debut.html