Slashdot Mirror
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?
I, for one, welcome our bi-polar robot overlords.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
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...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
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?
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
For anyone curious, the link feeds you straight to a fairly convincing data set which would lead me to the opposite conclusion. Indeed since 2002 it would appear there has been a slight increase in the area of the Antarctic sea ice, here is a neat graph. 6 years does not a significant trend make my friend. Additionally, the overwhelming theme of the data is the significant loss multi-year sea ice - the stuff that sticks around in the summer. How precisely did you interpret this data to draw the conclusion that the ice caps are not melting, and that the Antarctic is in growth?
Prediction: The real iPhone killer is going to be sex robots from Japan. Think about it.
...Cartesian robots are angry about being passed over for these jobs without even being considered.
The laws of probability forbid it!
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!"