"The CPD's third criterion requires that the candidate have a level of support of at least 15% (fifteen percent) of the national electorate as determined by five selected national public opinion polling organizations, using the average of those organizations' most recent publicly reported results at the time of the determination."
This is reason Badnarik wont make it into the debates.
I had the pleasure of working with the team at the University of Texas at Austin Center for Electromechanics developing a similar system ("rack and pinion" motor system vs. linear motor).. that was back in 1998 and 2001.. the first time was for developing a ride height sensor for testing the overall movement of the CG of the vehicle.. and the second time for looking at the marketing for that type of system and a quicklook venture plan for trying to turn it into a business...
market was pretty weak.. system was too expensive.. ambulances, police cars, and luxury vehicles... otherwise it was prohibitively expensive for the average Joe...
the CEM system is and has been patented for a while.. there were a number of other companies worldwide (as there always are) working on similar sytems back then too.. even some semi-active systems (rheological fluid is used which increases viscosity under magnetic field.. basically making a variable damper in the dynamic motion equation)
got to drive a HMMWV (military Hummer) fitted with this active suspension.. stock springs replaced with super soft springs and the damper replaced with 3phase DC brushless motor and rack and pinion systems to move the A-arm assembly... the algorithm ran on an Alpha processor to sample acceleromters in the wheel hubs and the frame mounting points for the A-arms.. the difference in acceleration between the relative points would drive the motor to pull the wheel out of the way (or drive it down) of obstacle driving the large acceleration of he wheel hub vs. the mount point sensors...... it would drive over those parking blocks (keeps you from driving through parking spots) like they were barely there..
the engineer turned off the the suspension and only used the soft spring.. did tight donuts in an open field.. the HMMWV had major roll... turned it on, and it was only a couple of degrees of roll.. hardly noticeable at all.. he said they had to actually add a small amount of roll otherwise the the driver couldnt tell when they were turning so fast that they would lose lateral traction and begin sliding (the idea being that roll tells you to back off the accelerator).... cool stuff..
the big push right now is to transfer it to a transit bus..
I worked at JSC through a subcontractor between my degrees.. let me say that most of the technical work seemed to be done by subcontractor personnel.. most of the civil servants I encountered were busy climbing the ladder to micromanage everything.. this is a generalization, mostly from what I saw working there for a few years.
dont get me wrong; I am a space advocate. I think it is one of the most noble undertakings of the human race. But NASA has left a bad taste in my mouth (at least my experience at JSC) and I eagerly await privitized space without the regulation of NASA... Im waiting on plans for the moon base, and as others have noted, launch costs are prohibitive.
The way NASA blows through the money they have at the end of the fiscal year... its like expensive toy shopping.. "use all your budget money! congress wont give us the same budget next year if they see that we dont use it this year".. NASA likes to penalize subcontractors for being underbudget just as much as overbudget. It would just make sense to me to move the money to projects that are overbudget (and this is not to say projects should go overbudget knowing that hopefully some project goes underbudget) rather that blowing it on things that just arent necessary to make it look good on paper to the NASA monitors...
Regarding the academy idea, there is already a braindrain seperated by age gap.. The outgoing older management that probably worked in the good ol' days of space seem to be only replaced by younger managers.. no tech transfer to the younger generation, just management skills. You can pick up a lot in school, but experience with technical people means so much more, especially when the funding and public popularity of the good ol' days isnt there.
Basically, we are haveing to start form the ground up again. We have newer technology, but its still in its infancy and no real funds to develop them. All the old tech for launch vehicles (however wasteful) has virtually been lost with retirees.
An academy would be a great idea, but just as you have to sell the idea of space to the public, you have to sell it to engineers/technicians as well... Money is always a motivator and the aerospace industry isnt as lucrative as other engineering industries (I guess given the number of unemployed engineers, anything is better than nothing). If the subcontractors are doing most of the tech works, its the subs that need the academy pool, but if the contracts dont have the money to support the salaries there is no need for personnel.
IIRC, Bob Lazar came up with the whole story based on a Scientific American paper from 1969 about superheavy element synthesis (the 114 element).. it was an effort to stir up hype for a movie for his TriDot Productions.
I used to work in this lab as an engineer about 5 years ago when the forearm/hand was being first developed and would like to clarify a few things...
As to there being no legs, well, the lab is the Dexterous Robotics Lab, hence they mostly develop new articulated robotic hands and test with their current telerobotics capabilities. And the hands arent small. The forearms are a little large.. Robonaut just has really wide shoulders. The 'see-through' face, well, that is just a plastic head (and the designer told me that it was just a coincidence that it looked like Boba Fett) created using stereolithography and mainly there to hold the camera (eyes). You should see it without the coverings....
The problem with proportions when building these types of telepresense robots is that the motors/linkages/cables needed to power all the degrees of freedom in motion. Also, creating complex custom one-off circuit boards for motor contol have to fit in small places.. The brain is a big ol' VME rack (in the chest). The forearm and hand is a whole unit that can detach... all the motors to control the fingers are housed in the forearm.. not to mention all the wires running to and from the joints to sense positon and joint angles.
All in all, this is a functioning advanced PROTOTYPE. Im not sure what the probability is that THIS robonaut will ever fly (probably pretty low), but I know that the engineers plan to thermo and vibro test this prototype somewhere along the way. Functionality over aesthetics. Actually, the dexterity of the Robonaut hand is considerably better that a pressurized astronaut glove.
Plus, the last time I looked at an astronaut flying though space, that big bubble head didnt really give me a great impression of stardard human proportionality.
Slashdot Mirror
The Zombie Apocolypse and You
A Quicktime movie
"The CPD's third criterion requires that the candidate have a level of support of at least 15% (fifteen percent) of the national electorate as determined by five selected national public opinion polling organizations, using the average of those organizations' most recent publicly reported results at the time of the determination." This is reason Badnarik wont make it into the debates.
I had the pleasure of working with the team at the University of Texas at Austin Center for Electromechanics developing a similar system ("rack and pinion" motor system vs. linear motor).. that was back in 1998 and 2001.. the first time was for developing a ride height sensor for testing the overall movement of the CG of the vehicle .. and the second time for looking at the marketing for that type of system and a quicklook venture plan for trying to turn it into a business...
.. ambulances, police cars, and luxury vehicles... otherwise it was prohibitively expensive for the average Joe...
... it would drive over those parking blocks (keeps you from driving through parking spots) like they were barely there..
market was pretty weak.. system was too expensive
the CEM system is and has been patented for a while.. there were a number of other companies worldwide (as there always are) working on similar sytems back then too.. even some semi-active systems (rheological fluid is used which increases viscosity under magnetic field.. basically making a variable damper in the dynamic motion equation)
got to drive a HMMWV (military Hummer) fitted with this active suspension.. stock springs replaced with super soft springs and the damper replaced with 3phase DC brushless motor and rack and pinion systems to move the A-arm assembly... the algorithm ran on an Alpha processor to sample acceleromters in the wheel hubs and the frame mounting points for the A-arms.. the difference in acceleration between the relative points would drive the motor to pull the wheel out of the way (or drive it down) of obstacle driving the large acceleration of he wheel hub vs. the mount point sensors...
the engineer turned off the the suspension and only used the soft spring.. did tight donuts in an open field.. the HMMWV had major roll... turned it on, and it was only a couple of degrees of roll.. hardly noticeable at all.. he said they had to actually add a small amount of roll otherwise the the driver couldnt tell when they were turning so fast that they would lose lateral traction and begin sliding (the idea being that roll tells you to back off the accelerator).... cool stuff..
the big push right now is to transfer it to a transit bus..
I worked at JSC through a subcontractor between my degrees.. let me say that most of the technical work seemed to be done by subcontractor personnel.. most of the civil servants I encountered were busy climbing the ladder to micromanage everything.. this is a generalization, mostly from what I saw working there for a few years.
dont get me wrong; I am a space advocate. I think it is one of the most noble undertakings of the human race. But NASA has left a bad taste in my mouth (at least my experience at JSC) and I eagerly await privitized space without the regulation of NASA... Im waiting on plans for the moon base, and as others have noted, launch costs are prohibitive.
The way NASA blows through the money they have at the end of the fiscal year... its like expensive toy shopping.. "use all your budget money! congress wont give us the same budget next year if they see that we dont use it this year".. NASA likes to penalize subcontractors for being underbudget just as much as overbudget. It would just make sense to me to move the money to projects that are overbudget (and this is not to say projects should go overbudget knowing that hopefully some project goes underbudget) rather that blowing it on things that just arent necessary to make it look good on paper to the NASA monitors...
Regarding the academy idea, there is already a braindrain seperated by age gap.. The outgoing older management that probably worked in the good ol' days of space seem to be only replaced by younger managers.. no tech transfer to the younger generation, just management skills.
You can pick up a lot in school, but experience with technical people means so much more, especially when the funding and public popularity of the good ol' days isnt there.
Basically, we are haveing to start form the ground up again. We have newer technology, but its still in its infancy and no real funds to develop them. All the old tech for launch vehicles (however wasteful) has virtually been lost with retirees.
An academy would be a great idea, but just as you have to sell the idea of space to the public, you have to sell it to engineers/technicians as well... Money is always a motivator and the aerospace industry isnt as lucrative as other engineering industries (I guess given the number of unemployed engineers, anything is better than nothing). If the subcontractors are doing most of the tech works, its the subs that need the academy pool, but if the contracts dont have the money to support the salaries there is no need for personnel.
my $0.02
just ran across it the other night..
Trisenx.com
They make some kind of scent dome that uses refillable cartridges.. connects to the computer via serial...
looks like an expensive useless piece of crapola...
IIRC, Bob Lazar came up with the whole story based on a Scientific American paper from 1969 about superheavy element synthesis (the 114 element).. it was an effort to stir up hype for a movie for his TriDot Productions.
some new tech
I used to work in this lab as an engineer about 5 years ago when the forearm/hand was being first developed and would like to clarify a few things...
As to there being no legs, well, the lab is the Dexterous Robotics Lab, hence they mostly develop new articulated robotic hands and test with their current telerobotics capabilities. And the hands arent small. The forearms are a little large.. Robonaut just has really wide shoulders. The 'see-through' face, well, that is just a plastic head (and the designer told me that it was just a coincidence that it looked like Boba Fett) created using stereolithography and mainly there to hold the camera (eyes). You should see it without the coverings....
The problem with proportions when building these types of telepresense robots is that the motors/linkages/cables needed to power all the degrees of freedom in motion. Also, creating complex custom one-off circuit boards for motor contol have to fit in small places.. The brain is a big ol' VME rack (in the chest). The forearm and hand is a whole unit that can detach... all the motors to control the fingers are housed in the forearm.. not to mention all the wires running to and from the joints to sense positon and joint angles.
All in all, this is a functioning advanced PROTOTYPE. Im not sure what the probability is that THIS robonaut will ever fly (probably pretty low), but I know that the engineers plan to thermo and vibro test this prototype somewhere along the way. Functionality over aesthetics. Actually, the dexterity of the Robonaut hand is considerably better that a pressurized astronaut glove.
Plus, the last time I looked at an astronaut flying though space, that big bubble head didnt really give me a great impression of stardard human proportionality.