Just after NASA made the sad announcement that the Mars Phoenix Lander had run out of power and ceased communicating, word comes of power problems with the Mars rover Spirit, which has been blithely rolling over the Martian terrain for almost five years.
NASA revealed yesterday that dust storms last week left Spirit’s solar panels coated with dust and caused power levels to drop to an all-time low, and that the rover then shut down operations and went dormant. Spirit’s scientists are now hoping for a message signaling that the rover survived the storm and has recovered power.
Spirit may emerge unscathed. “We are cautiously optimistic that we can get through this dust storm without a catastrophe,” says rover project scientist Bruce Banerdt…. That’s because spring is dawning in the southern hemisphere, where Spirit is located, and the extra sunlight means the rover needs less energy to run its heaters. Had the storm occurred six months ago, during the local winter solstice, the craft would have less chance of survival, says Banerdt [New Scientist].
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Honda’s robotics division has unveiled the prototype of a strange new helper: a “walking assistant.” Honda says the robotic legs could restore mobility to the elderly or infirm, and could help prevent factory workers from straining their muscles–if they don’t mind being joined to the strange looking device. The user would employ the device by stepping into a pair of shoes attached to jointed legs. The legs support a mildly-scary looking U-shaped saddle, which cups the wearer’s groin and buttocks firmly to deliver solid uplift…. Honda say that the machine reduces load on the hip joints, and helps not just with walking but also standing – and especially with maintaining a crouched position [The Register].
The device, which weighs about 14 pounds and is powered by a motor and Lithium ion battery, is the result of Honda’s nine-year-old initiative to develop mobility-assisting technologies. The creation of the device borrowed heavily from the walking research that went into Honda’s advanced humanoid robot, ASIMO [Daily Tech]. Honda hasn’t yet announced plans to begin selling the walking assistants, but tests of the prototype will begin this month.
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One of the teams competing for the $20 million top prize in the Google Lunar X Prize has announced its plans for an ambitious series of moon missions, beginning with a proposed trip to the historic Apollo 11 landing site. The team, Astrobotic Technology Inc., wants to send a rover to Tranquility Base in May 2010 to see how the relics left behind by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin have weathered over the 40 years.
The proposal has sparked a debate over whether new rovers can be trusted to not disturb the hallowed ground. Astrobotic Tech says its rover will land far from the Apollo 11 site and will be able to recognize and circumvent footprints and artifacts on the lunar surface, but not everyone shares this optimism. [Space policy expert] John Logsdon … believes the team should first perform trial runs on Earth. “I’d like to see them demonstrate their ability to do a precision landing someplace else before they try it next to the Apollo 11 site,” Logsdon says. “You wouldn’t have to be very far off to come down on top of the flag or something dramatic like that” [Seed].
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Five sophisticated computer programs chatted with human examiners this weekend and tried to convince the judges that they were conversing with another human being, vying to be the first to pass the Turing Test for artificial intelligence. Although none of the programs achieved their goal of duping 30 percent of the judges, several came quite close to that threshold and all fooled at least one judge. Said organizer Kevin Warwick: “…although the machines aren’t yet good enough to fool all of the people all of the time, they are certainly at the stage of fooling some of the people some of the time” [Telegraph].
The contest draws on the ideas of British mathematician Alan Turing, who came up with a subjective but simple rule for determining whether machines were capable of thought. Writing in 1950, Turing argued that conversation was proof of intelligence. If a computer talked like a human, then for all practical purposes it thought like a human too [AP]. Since 1991, an annual competition has been conducted in which judges chat simultaneously with computer programs and their “confederate” humans, and try to determine which is which.
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NASA is keeping the faith and pushing forward with its most ambitious Mars rover mission to date, despite serious cost overruns and technical problems. NASA officials announced on Friday that they expect the Mars Science Laboratory to launch as planned in 2009, rebutting speculation that NASA would postpone the craft’s launch until 2011, or even cancel the mission. “It’s easy to say, ‘let’s just cancel it and move on’ but we’ve poured over a billion-and-half dollars into this,” [NASA official Ed] Weiler said. “The science is critical. It’s a flagship mission in the Mars program and as long as we think we have a good technical chance to make it we are going to do what we have to do” [SPACE.com].
The SUV-sized rover was originally expected to cost $1.6 billion, but it’s already $300 million over budget and the latest cost overruns may push the final price to over $2 billion. To meet costs, NASA may be forced to scale back or postpone other Mars missions, and could even take funds from other planetary missions. A group of scientists that advises NASA on planetary missions called this week for an outside investigation into the Mars Science Lab’s financial troubles. The scientists noted that the pricey project was a “poor model for future missions” [AP].
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Engineers have designed a robotic spy plane that is modeled on the pterodactyls that swooped through the sky between 228 million to 65 million years ago, while dinosaurs tromped over the land below. Perhaps unsurprisingly, researchers say that their prototype is the first aircraft inspired by a pterosaur (the broader scientific name for all winged lizards).
Paleontologist Sankar Chatterjee partnered with engineer Rick Lind to design their “Pterodrone;” the two men say the work was driven in part by their admiration for the vesatility of pterosaurs. With lightweight bones and an intricate system of collagen fibers that strengthened their wings, [pterosaurs] ranged from the size of a sparrow to the size of a Cessna plane. “These animals take the best parts of bats and birds. They had the maneuverability of a bat but could glide like an albatross. Nothing alive today compares to the performance and agility of these animals” Chatterjee said [AP].
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NASA’s next robotic Mars explorer may be meticulously designed to trundle over the Martian landscape, but it’s having trouble getting off the planet Earth. Huge cost overruns and technical difficulties may cause the $2 billion dollar [sic] Mars Science Laboratory to be delayed or canceled outright, members of a NASA advisory committee were warned on Oct. 2. “Our problem is enormous,” said Jim Green, director of the space agency’s Planetary Science Division, as project costs soar up to 40 percent above budget [McClatchy Newspapers].
The Mars Science Laboratory is currently scheduled to launch in the fall of 2009, which would get it to Mars the following year. Scientists have high hopes for the big rover, which is intended to study the geology and look for evidence of past microbial life in Mars’ distant past, when liquid water flowed on the planet. But the Science Lab is four times heavier than the current rovers trundling across the planet’s surface. It features a plethora of advanced tools and instruments designed to analyze rocks, soil, and atmosphere. [T]hat complexity has led to technical troubles and higher costs [Science, subscription required].
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The Mars rover Opportunity is wheeling off on what could be its final mission, and is starting a two-year journey that it may not even complete. The small robot climbed out of the Victoria crater a few weeks ago, and NASA’s science team has now decided to direct Opportunity towards an even larger crater, known as Endeavor.
The 7-mile stretch between Victoria and Endeavor craters matches the total distance the rover already has covered in the 4 1/2 years since landing on the planet. “We may not get there but it is scientifically the right direction to go anyway,” said [researcher] Steve Squyres…. “This crater (Endeavor) is staggeringly large compared to anything we’ve seen before” [Reuters].
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Bumblebees that have a close encounter with a dangerous predator are still cautious and wary the next day, even though their trepidation slows them down as they forage for food. In a new study, researchers used robot spiders to briefly trap the bees and study their behavior afterwards, and found that in the end, some of the bumblebees get a little paranoid…. “They’re behaving as if they’re starting to see ghosts,” [co-author Lars] Chittka says [Science News].
The researchers used small robots to imitate the look and behavior of crab spiders, which are one of the major predators of bumblebees. They lie in wait in flowers which the bees need to visit to collect nectar, and are difficult to spot because they can change colour to match their surroundings [New Scientist].
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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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A man who was paralyzed below the waist 20 years ago is walking again, thanks to a robotic “exoskeleton” that moves his legs and can even navigate up and down hills. The inventors of the device, dubbed the ReWalk, say the experimental technology can give paraplegics a psychological boost through renewed mobility, and can also help people avoid medical problems caused by long-term wheelchair use.
One of the first paraplegics to test out the device is Radi Kaiof, a former Israeli paratrooper who has been paralysed for the last 20 years following an injury during his service in the Israeli military. He says the device has changed his life. “I never dreamed I would walk again. After I was wounded, I forgot what it’s like. Only when standing up can I feel how tall I really am and speak to people eye to eye, not from below” [BBC News].
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An unmanned, solar-powered plane has unofficially broken the record for the longest uninterrupted flight, staying aloft for 82 hours and 37 minutes; it flew through the nights by drawing energy from batteries that it recharged during the day. Engineers for the high-tech aircraft, the Zephyr, say that the three-day flight is just the beginning of what it can do. [T]he aircraft’s designers, at the defence firm QinetiQ, in the UK, think the plane could fly indefinitely. “We think the aircraft, in future, will be capable of weeks or months duration,” said Paul Davey [Guardian].
The flight was a demonstration for the U.S. military, which is interested in using the craft for reconnaissance and battlefield communications. But the Zephyr didn’t officially break the record for the longest flight because representatives from the world air sports federation weren’t on hand to observe the feat. The flight beats the current official world record [for an uncrewed flight] of 30 hours, 24 minutes set by the US robot plane Global Hawk in 2001 [Telegraph].
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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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Researchers have built a “biological brain” for a robot using a dish full of rat neurons, and have harnessed the neurons’ electric signals to navigate the robot around a pen. Researchers say the experiment should add to their understanding of how brain cells function, and could provide insight into what goes wrong in neurons affected by diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
The robot’s controller nestles inside a small pot containing a pink broth of nutrients and antibiotics. Inside that pot, some 300,000 rat neurons have made – and continue to make – connections with each other. As they do so, the disembodied neurons are communicating, sending electrical signals to one another just as they do in a living creature [New Scientist]. The neurons’ automatic drive to connect and communicate may be an indication of how sturdy brain cells are; researcher Steve Potter, who has been involved in similar experiments, says that brain cells have “evolved to reconnect under almost any circumstance that doesn’t kill them” [Telegraph].
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