Blogs / 80beats

A small remote-controlled helicopter could help protect thousands of people living in the shadows of active volcanoes, according to a prize committee that awarded $100,000 to the helicopter’s inventor. Scottish volcanologist Andrew McGonigle, who just won a Rolex Award for Enterprise, flies his prototype helicopter over Italian volcanoes like Etna, Stromboli, and Vulcano, checking for a mixture of gases that indicate an imminent eruption. (DISCOVER features McGonigle in the article “Up in Smoke,” in the December issue.)

Sulfur dioxide is pushed out of volcanoes as the magma rises within, and is routinely measured by scientists from afar. However, measuring carbon dioxide can provide a better early warning system, says McGonigle. “The gases are telegrams for the earth’s interior, especially the CO2 which is released 10 kilometres deep and which comes out a long time before the magma gets to the surface,” he said [Telegraph]. Carbon dioxide is released from rising magma weeks or months before an eruption, which would give nearby residents ample time to evacuate.

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How do you get a snot sample from a shy behemoth of the deep? That question stumped researchers studying whale health, who wanted to give the animals check-ups without corralling and traumatizing them. Now, researchers have come up with an ingenious answer, flying a remote-control helicopter through the jets ejected by the whales’ blowholes. The helicopter has petri dishes strapped to it, which collect any bacteria, fungi, and viruses that were in the whales’ lungs.

The collected samples could make a big contribution to scientists’ understanding of infectious diseases in whale populations. Researcher Karina Acevedo-Whitehouse explains: “We don’t know much about them because they are so big and they are in the water all the time, and that makes it really difficult to obtain biological samples that are relevant to determining health in these populations; unless they’ve already stranded or unless they are in captivity, which are hardly representative of a normal population” [BBC News].

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Small helicopters have learned to fly themselves through challenging aeronautic routines with an “apprenticeship” to an expert radio control pilot, researchers say. The clever robots were first steered through the maneuvers several times by the pilot while the helicopters’ computers recorded every movement; then the computers used an algorithm to determine the “ideal trajectory” that the pilot was aiming for on each loop or flip, and replicated those motions when they set off on their own into the wild blue yonder.

Researchers say the helicopters’ self-taught skills are particularly impressive due to difficulty of flying helicopters and their nature to always tend to an unstable state. “The helicopter doesn’t want to fly. It always wants to just tip over and crash,” said Garrett Oku, the pilot [TG Daily]. Because helicopters have to constantly adjust to changing wind currents, the inventors couldn’t simply program them to fly a set routine.

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Last weekend, teams of robots maneuvered through an urban warfare training course in southwest England, dodging sniper fire and swerving around roadside bombs. But this wasn’t a new television show featuring battling bots; the robots were competing in the the U.K. Ministry of Defence’s Grand Challenge, which spurred competitors to build autonomous spy robots.

The ministry is eager to develop uncrewed surveillance vehicles that can help the military identify enemy positions in a town or city before sending in troops. The MoD earmarked £4.5m to stage the contest and develop the technologies for the battlefield…. If future work goes well, the technology could be at the disposal of the army within 18 months [The Guardian].

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