Show Notes 1 April 2022
Story 1: MIT’s Robotic Cheetah Recently Taught Itself How to Walk and Run Over Virtually Any Terrain It Encounters
Source: Gizmodo.com Story by Andrew Liszewski
Link: https://gizmodo.com/mits-robotic-cheetah-taught-itself-how-to-run-sets-new-1848656968
See Video Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BqNl3AtPVw
- Last week we talked about the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s new fabric that can hear and emit sounds. This week, they’re at it again!
- For several years MIT’s 4-legged, mini cheetah [or dog-like robot] has been a hit on TV news and YouTube with videos showing its stunning ability to walk, run, climb stairs, and even do back flips!
- But one challenge remained – being able in real time, to adapt to walking or running over virtually any terrain it encounters – for example, to be able to transition from a patch of loose gravel at one level, to a lower-level flat surface.
- The team decided their robot needed to learn, using a trial-and-error process, and all by itself, to automatically analyze any new terrain it encounters and then modify its behavior and movements accordingly.
- Using a new artificial intelligence-based advanced simulation training program, the team, in just three hours’ time, enabled the robot to experience 100 days’ worth of virtual excursions over a diverse variety of terrains.
- In this process the robot learned, on its own, how to effectively move no matter what might be underfoot.
- The new programming also boosted the Mini Cheetah robot’s running speed to a little over 8.7 MPH, which is faster than the average human can run!
Story 2: The number of planets known beyond our solar system has just passed 5,000.
Source: ScienceNews.com Story by Liz Kruesi
Link: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/exoplanet-nasa-confirmed-5000-milestone-galaxy
- With a recent batch of 60 new exoplanets confirmed late last month, NASA’s exoplanet census tally now stands at 5,005.
- Time out, what’s an exoplanet? An exoplanet is a planet that orbits a star outside of our solar system.
- These additional worlds were found in data from NASA’s now-defunct K2 mission, the “second life” of the prolific Kepler space telescope and confirmed with new observations recently.
- It’s been 30 years since scientists discovered the first planets orbiting a star other than our own.
- My take on this: with so many exoplanets now identified, and more to come, it continues to support the likelihood there’s life out there in some form!
Story 3: French aerospace company Gama is planning to test a new, innovative solar sail propelled spacecraft
Source 1: TechCrunch.com Story by Stefanie Waldek
Source 2: Planetary Society
Link: https://www.planetary.org/articles/what-is-solar-sailing
Source 3: LiveScience.com Story by Stuart Fox
Link: https://www.livescience.com/32593-how-do-solar-sails-work-.html
- First, what is a solar sail?
- Solar sails are a form of spacecraft propulsion that uses very thin, very large sheets of highly polished reflective material combined together to create a sail.
- Instead of wind, a solar sail is driven by the pressure of sunlight.
- Solar sails work by capturing the energy from light particles as they bounce off a reflective surface. Each light particle has momentum, and when it strikes a reflective surface, it imparts that momentum to the reflective sheet, just like a collision of two billiard balls.
- The most exciting thing about solar sails is that they could open up new avenues for space science and exploration. A solar sail-propelled spacecraft could reach distant planets and star systems much more quickly than a rocket-propelled spacecraft because of the continual acceleration that solar sailing provides.
- The latest player in the solar sail arena is French startup Gama which plans to develop a low-cost solar sail.
- Gama recently secured funding from the French Space Agency and other investors to conduct a test in space of its 789-square-foot solar sail this October.
- Gama’s solar sail is not the first, but it is an important step forward.
- The first successful deployment of a solar sail was in 2010 by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. Later that same year, NASA launched the NanoSail-D.
- Here’s what makes Gama’s solar sail different from those before it:
- Solar sails usually are deployed using an inflatable boom system that is triggered by a built-in deployment mechanism.
- Instead of using a boom system, Gama’s solar sail will be deployed by gently spinning the satellite containing it. The resulting centrifugal force will be used to deploy the huge petals of the sail.
- This approach reduces structural weight to enable deployment of much larger and less costly solar sails.
Story 4: Whacky video shows an experimental mini land vehicle driven by a goldfish!
Source: LiveScience.com Story by Cameron Duke
Link: https://www.livescience.com/fish-drive-cars
See video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOb–M5pi6Y
- Recently, a doctoral student at Ben-Gurion University in Israel posted a funny video showing a goldfish in a small aquarium mounted on a 4-wheel motorized vehicle.
- In the video you see the goldfish steering this goofy contraption from one end of a room to another, bobbing and weaving to avoid obstacles along the way.
- The video even shows the fish guiding the vehicle down a street!
- The student, Shachar Givon, wanted to see if the brain networks of a fish that enable it to navigate underwater would allow it to navigate a land surface challenge.
- To conduct his experiment Shachar and his colleagues fabricated what they call an “inverted” submarine – essentially a plastic aquarium mounted on a small platform with wheels and a motor.
- Projecting up from the vehicle’s platform is a pole with a laser detection unit, computer, and camera.
- Using this collection of technology, each of the six goldfish used in the experiment learned to navigate as the camera, computer and laser detection unit tracked and responded to their body movements.
- As a fish moved left, right, or forward, the camera above the tank tracked its movements. Based on the camera’s signaling, an algorithm [powered by a small Raspberry Pi programming computer], moves the fish tank vehicle, enabling the fish to “drive”.
- Bottom line: You have to see the video to believe it!