Humans need a pressurised environment and a continuous supply of oxygen/food/water, and generally prefer to be returned to earth at some point. Robots need none of this so can be sent with a lot less mass (cost) and dont need resupply or recovery. So even if they are less capable than humans, you can send more of them for the same cost and they can stay a lot longer.
Moving the head requires accelerated head stepping to top speed, stepping to close to the track
I just want to point out that hard drives stopped using stepper motors decades ago. They've used voice coils since, which is basically an electromagnet and strong magnet which it deflects to various positions based on the field strength; in other words, it's continuous, not discrete like a stepper motor (though they can do microstepping as well). OK, so in a way, a voice coil is sort of like a stepper motor with only one phase, which is then microstepped...
Well you are half right, but so is the GP. The GP's description is more accurate if you replace "stepping" with "accelerating".
The head does not move to a position based on field strength (open loop control). It is free to move on low friction bearings, the applied field strength accelerates the head. Closed loop control is needed to make it stop at the correct position.
The problem is that pork IS flesh... distinguishing wood and flesh is easy, distinguishing pig flesh and human flesh fast enough to stop a blade... a little harder.
Presumably the humans to be avoided are alive, so will have characteristics that are different from (dead) pork. Passive IR sensors like those in security systems would be pretty good for a first step. Detect a warm thing near the blade? Don't cut it. Meat processing should be in a refrigerated area so warm weather wouldn't affect it.
It's a pick-and-place machine. Most PnP require that the inputs and outputs are stored in well-known locations, and have pretty basic image recognition software (they can tell if a black blob is in the wrong place, for example - if it was loaded wrong). Or to handle the slight misalignment of the source or destination.
In this case, the robot is picking and placing from and to a platform that can move arbitrarily, while it's even doing the picking and placing. That implies it not only knows it has to look for the source and destination, but recognize the platform and perform the task. Even if the thing it's grabbing suddenly decided to move under it while it's doing the picking or placing.
The human might be slower, but they're also a lot more unpredictable, so the robot has it use up its millions of calculations per second to figure out where things are and react when things start moving from under it.
I'm almost certain that the inputs and outputs ARE in well-known locations. As a robotics engineer, the first thing I noticed on looking at the video is that the movable part is mounted on a very solid, rigid, linear actuator. That thing knows the location of the plate to within microns. The second thing I noticed is that the plate that "moves arbitrarily" moves very smoothly with slow acceleration.
So you have a high speed robot putting things on a very slowly moving (compared to the actuator speed) plate, the position of which is known precisely. It would be impressive if the plate could move in 2D or 3D and had a handle for people to move it around with, but as it is.. not impressed at all.
Given the choice of walking on the moon in helmet and gloves or watching a robot crawl across the moon on T.V., I'd much rather be in the helmet and gloves actually on the moon. Even HD and 5.1 surround sound can't capture all the experience of actually being there.
True, but you aren't going there unless you are an astronaut. The choice is between one manned mission, where you get to watch a couple of people walk around and do some experiments, or 5-10 unmanned missions which achieve a lot more.
If the unmanned missions can analyse potential colony sites and deploy some infrastructure, manned missions can follow and you may eventually have a chance to live in an offworld site.
I'm surprised that with all the recent news of NASA being marginalized that they can still have competitions like this? Or have I just got the wrong impression of the state of NASA's future?
The prizes are tiny compared to NASAs budget, and save them a lot of time and resources.
They get multiple groups working on something and only have to pay the prize to the best, so I'd say it's pretty efficient for them. Not so much for the teams that don't win though.
Sorry, but 7 years is too short. I have nothing against copyright for as long as the artists lives. He has to eat, pay rent and should have every right to earn the fruits of his labor
But copyright wasn't invented to repay them for the fruits of their labor, but to encourage things to be released to the public that wouldn't have been released without copyright. If it would have been released anyway (the obvious stuff) then it shouldn't be copyrightable. And it should only be protected for the minimum term to encourage discoveries. That it is not hampering discoveries indicates copyright is in violation of its charter and unconstitutional from any plain-English reading of the Constitution.
If they don't make enough to last them until they can create a new work, they will have to have another job, which takes away from the time available to create such works. It needs to be a balance: Too long and there is no encouragement to make anything new, too short and there is no time to do the creation. Considering that every creation may not be successful, I think 14 years or so is reasonable.
Well it's definately a good idea to require something like this on all new satellites, but the major problem of all the existing debris still remains.
I was hoping that the polymer sheet would also slow down existing debris that passed nearby, but with such a thin sheet and such high speeds I doubt there would be any significant effect.
Inasmuch as these aren't actual 3d displays... but simply stereo displays, very limited single-perspective (same as 2d) "flat-image-per-eye"
It's 3D if the display offers more than one viewing angle, composite or not. Or to put it in a way that even the most uninformed consumer can grasp, if a one-eyed person (or a person with one eye closed) can view the object in the perspectives we expect from the real world, it's actually there to perceive. That's something worth characterizing as 3D display.
A one eyed person (or a person with one eye closed) DOES see things with a "very limited single-perspective (same as 2d) "flat-image-per-eye"".
Our eyes don't do any magic, take two photos an eye-distance apart and display one to each eye and you CANNOT tell the difference between the "real 3D" scene and the stereoscopic image unless you move around. Sitting stationary in front of a 3D TV gives a perfectly sufficient 3D effect.
The "true 3D" displays you mention aren't really that useful. Moving your head around to see parts of a display (within the limits of where you can reach) is vastly inferior to observing a stereoscopic display and changing the viewing position/angle/zoom with a mouse or other device.
That said, I am really not looking forward to 3D-extreme-pop-out-in-your-face advertising.
For the future, the company also plans to target other specialized applications, such as pitch-black night vision goggles, cheaper solar cells and even spray-on displays.
Right now night vision goggles give a very grainy tinged image. Clarifying that could have millions of applications.
The grainy image is mostly due to the photomultiplier tube that amplifies the photons. Apart from noise in the tube, at such low light levels individual photons are being made visible so it is not possible to avoid a grainy image.
A 4x improvement in sensitivity would certainly help though.
I worked with a student on a similar Brain-Computer-Interface to what appears to be shown here. In actuality, the interface barely reads your mind at all, the grid of letters you see flashes while you focus on the letter you want to type. When that letter flashes, your brain registers this, and your 'surprise' at seeing the flash is what's measured. Knowing the time that this happened, it is possible to eventually deduce what letter on the grid the patient is focusing on.
If you have to stare at a grid of letters, wouldn't an eye tracker be much faster, more effective, and cheaper?
My bank does this. If you try to send funds to an account you haven't before, you HAVE to sms verify, it's great.
It's not great if you are temporarily living overseas like I am, in a country with no SMS. I had to turn off the SMS security because otherwise it prevents me from using my main bank account at all!
If they offered an alternative option eg email verification that would be fine, but they don't.
Some of the studies were pretty simple, graphing autism rates compared to when the MMR vaccine was introduced. These should be easy to redo if the data is still available. I know the meme that correlation is not causation but in my experience there often is a correlation.
This reminds me of the graph showing a strong correlation between decreasing numbers of pirates (sea pirates) and global warming.
Now if only they would get rid of different release dates for different regions. A couple of days before Mass Effect 2 came out, I saw it on a bittorrent site. I liked the first one, so I thought "nice, I'll buy it on steam to support the people that make good games!". So I looked for it in steam, and it was mysteriously absent. Odd. So I looked on the steam website and found it, but upon clicking I got a message "this product is not available in your region". WTF?!? So I gave up and downloaded it with bittorrent. I may buy it later if I think it is worth it, but why make it difficult for people to buy it?
If you're in a place with too much WiFi noise, try using the Japanese-only channel 14 - it doesn't overlap with any other channels, and you're pretty much guaranteed to be the only person using it.
Unfortunately I'm in Japan, and all channels are completely overloaded. Most people live in apartments, and the majority seem to have a wireless router. The routers all have wireless enabled by default, so although everyone uses cables (the only way to connect) the channels are still all filled. I can't even connect to my wireless router 2m away most of the time.
Sony had it in a $500 camcorder for a few months before being forced to take it off the market because people were using it to film their neighbors screwing... through their neighbor's walls...
No they didn't.
I believe you are thinking of nightshot, which has an IR illuminator for night filming. The "issue" is that some types of clothing that look opaque under normal light are considerably more transparent to IR...
This is completely different to thermal imaging, which is expensive due to the exotic materials required for the lenses and detector.
Slashdot Mirror
Or, maybe just perfect quantum entanglement com systems and drive those robots from Nevada in real time... ;-)
Even with quantam entanglement, no information can (currently/ever?) be transmitted faster than light.
Humans need a pressurised environment and a continuous supply of oxygen/food/water, and generally prefer to be returned to earth at some point.
Robots need none of this so can be sent with a lot less mass (cost) and dont need resupply or recovery. So even if they are less capable than humans, you can send more of them for the same cost and they can stay a lot longer.
I just want to point out that hard drives stopped using stepper motors decades ago. They've used voice coils since, which is basically an electromagnet and strong magnet which it deflects to various positions based on the field strength; in other words, it's continuous, not discrete like a stepper motor (though they can do microstepping as well). OK, so in a way, a voice coil is sort of like a stepper motor with only one phase, which is then microstepped...
Well you are half right, but so is the GP.
The GP's description is more accurate if you replace "stepping" with "accelerating".
The head does not move to a position based on field strength (open loop control). It is free to move on low friction bearings, the applied field strength accelerates the head. Closed loop control is needed to make it stop at the correct position.
The problem is that pork IS flesh... distinguishing wood and flesh is easy, distinguishing pig flesh and human flesh fast enough to stop a blade... a little harder.
Presumably the humans to be avoided are alive, so will have characteristics that are different from (dead) pork. Passive IR sensors like those in security systems would be pretty good for a first step.
Detect a warm thing near the blade? Don't cut it.
Meat processing should be in a refrigerated area so warm weather wouldn't affect it.
How about we get a humanoid robot that can successfully walk up and down stairs on earth before we send that bad boy to the moon?
I don't think there are any stairs on the moon...
It's a pick-and-place machine. Most PnP require that the inputs and outputs are stored in well-known locations, and have pretty basic image recognition software (they can tell if a black blob is in the wrong place, for example - if it was loaded wrong). Or to handle the slight misalignment of the source or destination.
In this case, the robot is picking and placing from and to a platform that can move arbitrarily, while it's even doing the picking and placing. That implies it not only knows it has to look for the source and destination, but recognize the platform and perform the task. Even if the thing it's grabbing suddenly decided to move under it while it's doing the picking or placing.
The human might be slower, but they're also a lot more unpredictable, so the robot has it use up its millions of calculations per second to figure out where things are and react when things start moving from under it.
I'm almost certain that the inputs and outputs ARE in well-known locations. As a robotics engineer, the first thing I noticed on looking at the video is that the movable part is mounted on a very solid, rigid, linear actuator. That thing knows the location of the plate to within microns. The second thing I noticed is that the plate that "moves arbitrarily" moves very smoothly with slow acceleration.
So you have a high speed robot putting things on a very slowly moving (compared to the actuator speed) plate, the position of which is known precisely. It would be impressive if the plate could move in 2D or 3D and had a handle for people to move it around with, but as it is.. not impressed at all.
Given the choice of walking on the moon in helmet and gloves or watching a robot crawl across the moon on T.V., I'd much rather be in the helmet and gloves actually on the moon. Even HD and 5.1 surround sound can't capture all the experience of actually being there.
True, but you aren't going there unless you are an astronaut. The choice is between one manned mission, where you get to watch a couple of people walk around and do some experiments, or 5-10 unmanned missions which achieve a lot more.
If the unmanned missions can analyse potential colony sites and deploy some infrastructure, manned missions can follow and you may eventually have a chance to live in an offworld site.
First, name something that isn't a limited resource.
Stupidity.
Now if only we could generate power from it...
I'm surprised that with all the recent news of NASA being marginalized that they can still have competitions like this? Or have I just got the wrong impression of the state of NASA's future?
The prizes are tiny compared to NASAs budget, and save them a lot of time and resources.
They get multiple groups working on something and only have to pay the prize to the best, so I'd say it's pretty efficient for them. Not so much for the teams that don't win though.
I would much prefer a 3rd episode of No One Lives Forever! This game was really fun and addictive.
YES! YES!
A perfect example of a game that is awesome because of design, humour, and storyline rather than just "realism" or fancy graphics.
Sorry, but 7 years is too short. I have nothing against copyright for as long as the artists lives. He has to eat, pay rent and should have every right to earn the fruits of his labor
But copyright wasn't invented to repay them for the fruits of their labor, but to encourage things to be released to the public that wouldn't have been released without copyright. If it would have been released anyway (the obvious stuff) then it shouldn't be copyrightable. And it should only be protected for the minimum term to encourage discoveries. That it is not hampering discoveries indicates copyright is in violation of its charter and unconstitutional from any plain-English reading of the Constitution.
If they don't make enough to last them until they can create a new work, they will have to have another job, which takes away from the time available to create such works. It needs to be a balance: Too long and there is no encouragement to make anything new, too short and there is no time to do the creation. Considering that every creation may not be successful, I think 14 years or so is reasonable.
Everyone prepare for another console game with a dodgy PC port.
I hope you like terrible graphics, auto-aim, and "combos".
Well it's definately a good idea to require something like this on all new satellites, but the major problem of all the existing debris still remains.
I was hoping that the polymer sheet would also slow down existing debris that passed nearby, but with such a thin sheet and such high speeds I doubt there would be any significant effect.
Inasmuch as these aren't actual 3d displays ... but simply stereo displays, very limited single-perspective (same as 2d) "flat-image-per-eye"
It's 3D if the display offers more than one viewing angle, composite or not. Or to put it in a way that even the most uninformed consumer can grasp, if a one-eyed person (or a person with one eye closed) can view the object in the perspectives we expect from the real world, it's actually there to perceive. That's something worth characterizing as 3D display.
A one eyed person (or a person with one eye closed) DOES see things with a "very limited single-perspective (same as 2d) "flat-image-per-eye"".
Our eyes don't do any magic, take two photos an eye-distance apart and display one to each eye and you CANNOT tell the difference between the "real 3D" scene and the stereoscopic image unless you move around. Sitting stationary in front of a 3D TV gives a perfectly sufficient 3D effect.
The "true 3D" displays you mention aren't really that useful. Moving your head around to see parts of a display (within the limits of where you can reach) is vastly inferior to observing a stereoscopic display and changing the viewing position/angle/zoom with a mouse or other device.
That said, I am really not looking forward to 3D-extreme-pop-out-in-your-face advertising.
FTFA:
Right now night vision goggles give a very grainy tinged image. Clarifying that could have millions of applications.
The grainy image is mostly due to the photomultiplier tube that amplifies the photons. Apart from noise in the tube, at such low light levels individual photons are being made visible so it is not possible to avoid a grainy image.
A 4x improvement in sensitivity would certainly help though.
Agreed. It's not the tv making them fat. It's the fat that makes them fat.
Or the fat making them watch TV.
I worked with a student on a similar Brain-Computer-Interface to what appears to be shown here. In actuality, the interface barely reads your mind at all, the grid of letters you see flashes while you focus on the letter you want to type. When that letter flashes, your brain registers this, and your 'surprise' at seeing the flash is what's measured. Knowing the time that this happened, it is possible to eventually deduce what letter on the grid the patient is focusing on.
If you have to stare at a grid of letters, wouldn't an eye tracker be much faster, more effective, and cheaper?
what if you're buying a bike and the credit card machine at the bike shop has a skimmer installed?!
Use a car.
My bank does this. If you try to send funds to an account you haven't before, you HAVE to sms verify, it's great.
It's not great if you are temporarily living overseas like I am, in a country with no SMS. I had to turn off the SMS security because otherwise it prevents me from using my main bank account at all!
If they offered an alternative option eg email verification that would be fine, but they don't.
Some of the studies were pretty simple, graphing autism rates compared to when the MMR vaccine was introduced. These should be easy to redo if the data is still available.
I know the meme that correlation is not causation but in my experience there often is a correlation.
This reminds me of the graph showing a strong correlation between decreasing numbers of pirates (sea pirates) and global warming.
Now if only they would get rid of different release dates for different regions.
A couple of days before Mass Effect 2 came out, I saw it on a bittorrent site. I liked the first one, so I thought "nice, I'll buy it on steam to support the people that make good games!". So I looked for it in steam, and it was mysteriously absent. Odd.
So I looked on the steam website and found it, but upon clicking I got a message "this product is not available in your region". WTF?!?
So I gave up and downloaded it with bittorrent. I may buy it later if I think it is worth it, but why make it difficult for people to buy it?
If you're in a place with too much WiFi noise, try using the Japanese-only channel 14 - it doesn't overlap with any other channels, and you're pretty much guaranteed to be the only person using it.
Unfortunately I'm in Japan, and all channels are completely overloaded. Most people live in apartments, and the majority seem to have a wireless router. The routers all have wireless enabled by default, so although everyone uses cables (the only way to connect) the channels are still all filled. I can't even connect to my wireless router 2m away most of the time.
Sony had it in a $500 camcorder for a few months before being forced to take it off the market because people were using it to film their neighbors screwing... through their neighbor's walls...
No they didn't.
I believe you are thinking of nightshot, which has an IR illuminator for night filming. The "issue" is that some types of clothing that look opaque under normal light are considerably more transparent to IR...
This is completely different to thermal imaging, which is expensive due to the exotic materials required for the lenses and detector.
Why a helicopter when you could use a blimp type device? Million times easier and more stable. And less fragile or dangerous.
Any sort of wind an you're off for a little detour...
Even air conditioning can make things difficult.
Actually it is electrically powered, and if it is similar to other quadrotors that size, can fly for around 20 mins carrying all it's gear.
Vehicles like this are waiting for a more dense energy source, with a longer flight time they will really start to become useful.