Dragonfly robot to explore Mars
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Technology THE recent lessening of violence in Baghdad, Iraq, has nothing to do with last year’s “surge” in US troop numbers, satellite images suggest. By comparing the number and brightness of lights switched on at night before, during and after the extra troops were deployed, researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, were able to track the shifts of Sunni and Shiite populations. They found the lights had dimmed much more in certain Sunni districts, and that this trend began before the surge. John Agnew, who led the study, suggests the Sunnis were driven out by their Shiite neighbours, reducing the scope for conflict between the two communities. “Many of the refugees in Syria and Jordan are Sunnis from these neighbourhoods and when they left they turned off the lights,” he says. DRAGONFLIES might not be high on the list of things you’d expect to see on Mars or Titan. But the ExoFly, a robot designed to imitate a dragonfly’s hovering, jerky flight, could act as a guide for planetary rovers once they land. It would be sent out first to explore the terrain and then direct the rover to any sites of interest by the easiest route, 43 US recycling firms were found to have flouted a law banning the export of broken cathode-ray tube TVs and monitors Gel-filled fingertips could give prosthetic hands greater sensitivity, even allowing them to react “instinctively” to objects slipping from their grasp. Human hands automatically estimate the minimum force needed to hold on to an object, using a built-in reflex that responds to tiny vibrations in the skin as an object starts to slip through our fingers. Existing artificial hands do not have this reflex mechanism, so their operators have to consciously estimate the required force. “It’s very mentally taxing,” says Jeremy Fishel, one of a team that built the new fingertip at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. The tip consists of a rubber skin, filled with thick silicon gel. When an object begins to slip, the vibrations in the finger’s elastic skin transmit through the silicon gel to acoustic sensors attached to a central acrylic “bone”. This provides instant feedback, telling the motors in the hand to tighten their grip until the vibrations stop. The finger’s bone is also covered with tiny electrodes, across which a small voltage is applied. Deformations in the elastic skin caused by holding an object alter the distribution of gel in the fingertip, changing the amount of electricity that is conducted between the electrodes. This information could be transmitted to a pressure device worn on a patch of the hand-operator’s healthy skin, helping them to “feel” what their prosthetic hand is touching. The team will present a prototype of the finger at the BioRob conference in Scottsdale, Arizona, next month. A TOUCH MORE SENSITIVE says team member Tanja Zegers of the University of Utrecht, the Netherlands. The work will be presented at the European Planetary Science Congress in Munster, Germany, this week. The ExoFly has a terrestrial predecessor, DelFly, developed at the Technical University of Delft, but it will have to flap its wings much faster than DelFly to stay aloft in the thin atmosphere of Mars. Other ExoFlies would be similarly tailored to their host planets or moons. New navigation software for wheelchairs will allow people to travel around a building using only spoken commands. The chair, developed by researchers at MIT, uses the strength of Wi-Fi signals from nodes around the building to triangulate the chair’s location. Prior to use, the chair must be wheeled around the building so that the software can link spoken commands to a specific location. The US Department of Homeland Security is pressing ahead with plans to develop a system that detects people with “hostile intentions” (New Scientist, 11 August 2007, p 24). Volunteers are being paid to walk through a battery of cameras, lasers and infrared sensors in a bid to build a database of the physiological parameters associated with “hostility and mal-intent”. GIZMO 0 20 40 60 80 100 Console Computer or laptop Portable gaming device Cellphone or PDA Percentage of 12 to 17-year-olds TEENAGE KICKS Ninety-seven per cent of American teenagers play video games on at least one type of device Volvo’s Jonas Ekmark, on an attempt by the car manufacturer to mimic locusts’ ability to avoid each other when they swarm. The idea was to develop cars that did not hit pedestrians, but the insect’s processing system turned out to be far more complex than existing car technology (Wired.com, 18 September) “A lowly locust has man beat, at least for now” –Non-slip, with added grip– JONATHAN WORTH SOURCE: US GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE SOURCE: PEW INTERNET Strife revealed in Baghdad’s lights Mars a good place for dragonflies www.newscientist.com 27 September 2008 | NewScientist | 23
Transcript of Dragonfly robot to explore Mars
Technology
THE recent lessening of violence in Baghdad, Iraq, has nothing to do with last year’s “surge” in US troop numbers, satellite images suggest.
By comparing the number and brightness of lights switched on at night before, during and after the extra troops were deployed, researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, were able to track the shifts of Sunni and Shiite populations. They found the lights had dimmed much more in certain Sunni districts, and that this trend began before the surge.
John Agnew, who led the study, suggests the Sunnis were driven out by their Shiite neighbours, reducing the scope for conflict between the two communities. “Many of the refugees in Syria and Jordan are Sunnis from these neighbourhoods and when they left they turned off the lights,” he says.
DRAGONFLIES might not be high on the list of things you’d expect to see on Mars or Titan.
But the ExoFly, a robot designed to imitate a dragonfly’s hovering, jerky flight, could act as a guide for planetary rovers once they land. It would be sent out first to explore the terrain and then direct the rover to any sites of interest by the easiest route,
43US recycling firms were found to have flouted a law banning the export of broken cathode-ray tube TVs and monitors
Gel-filled fingertips could give prosthetic hands greater sensitivity, even allowing them to react “instinctively” to objects slipping from their grasp.
Human hands automatically estimate the minimum force needed to hold on to an object, using a built-in reflex that responds to tiny vibrations in the skin as an object starts to slip through our fingers.
Existing artificial hands do not have this reflex mechanism, so their operators have to consciously estimate the required force. “It’s very mentally taxing,” says Jeremy Fishel, one of a team that built the new fingertip at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. The tip consists of a rubber skin, filled with thick silicon gel. When an object begins to slip, the vibrations
in the finger’s elastic skin transmit through the silicon gel to acoustic sensors attached to a central acrylic “bone”. This provides instant feedback, telling the motors in the hand to tighten their grip until the vibrations stop.
The finger’s bone is also covered with tiny electrodes, across which a small voltage is applied. Deformations in the elastic skin caused by holding an object alter the distribution of gel in the fingertip, changing the amount of electricity that is conducted between the electrodes. This information could be transmitted to a pressure device worn on a patch of the hand-operator’s healthy skin, helping them to “feel” what their prosthetic hand is touching. The team will present a prototype of the finger at the BioRob conference in Scottsdale, Arizona, next month.
A TOUCH MORE SENSITIVE
says team member Tanja Zegers of the University of Utrecht, the Netherlands . The work will be presented at the European Planetary Science Congress in Munster, Germany, this week .
The ExoFly has a terrestrial predecessor, DelFly, developed at the Technical University of Delft, but it will have to flap its wings much faster than DelFly to stay aloft in the thin atmosphere of Mars. Other ExoFlies would be similarly tailored to their host planets or moons.
New navigation software for wheelchairs will allow people to travel around a building using only spoken commands. The chair, developed by researchers at MIT, uses the strength of Wi-Fi signals from nodes around the building to triangulate the chair’s location. Prior to use, the chair must be wheeled around the building so that the software can link spoken commands to a specific location.
The US Department of Homeland Security is pressing ahead with plans to develop a system that detects people with “hostile intentions” (New Scientist, 11 August 2007, p 24). Volunteers are being paid to walk through a battery of cameras, lasers and infrared sensors in a bid to build a database of the physiological parameters associated with “hostility and mal-intent”.
GIZMO
0 20 40 60 80 100
Console Computer or laptop
Portable gaming device Cellphone or PDA
Percentage of 12 to 17-year-olds
TEENAGE KICKS
Ninety-seven per cent of American teenagers play video games on at least one type of device
Volvo’s Jonas Ekmark, on an attempt by the car manufacturer to mimic locusts’ ability to avoid each other when they swarm. The idea was to develop cars that did not hit pedestrians, but the insect’s processing system turned out to be far more complex than existing car technology (Wired.com, 18 September)
“A lowly locust has man beat, at least for now”
–Non-slip, with added grip–
JON
ATH
AN W
ORTH
SOUR
CE: U
S G
OVER
NM
ENT
ACCO
UNTA
BILI
TY O
FFIC
ESO
URCE
: PEW
INTE
RNET
Strife revealed in Baghdad’s lights
Mars a good place for dragonflies
www.newscientist.com 27 September 2008 | NewScientist | 23
