Colony Mars: A Robot Snake and A Bumblebee On Mars?

24 October 2013

A colony on Mars?  Applications are now being accepted from would-be volunteers.  From these, four colonists will be chosen for a one way trip to the red planet.  No, this isn’t a NASA Project.  The project belongs to a Dutch company, “Mars One.”  So, when are the colonists scheduled to leave? About 20 years from now.

When you consider that the estimated cost will be 6 billion dollars, you wonder how “Mars One” is planning to finance the project.   With a reality TV show.  But there’s yet another twist to the financing.  The 6 billion dollars will be raised by selling sponsorship/advertising for a reality TV show. The show will be televised from Mars and star the four “lucky” colonists who “won” their one-way ticket to the red planet.

Who would want to go on a one-way trip to Mars — 20 years from now?  Surprisingly, a lot of people — about 100,000 applicants, to date, have paid the $38 dollar application fee – each hoping (1) to pass the fitness screening required to be eligible to make the trip and (2) to win the final selection lottery and be one of the four “lucky” colonists.  I’d like to call this “a plan,” but I’m not holding my breath.  It would take something more before I’d take a Martian colonial adventure seriously. [1]

But, then, “something more” happened.   Bumble bees and Wheeko, a robotic snake, volunteered for a mission to Mars.  This was a game-changer.  I knew these were real contenders for a successful colonial mission.

Of course, it didn’t hurt that Bumbles and Robo-snake were being seriously considered by NASA and the ESA, respectively, rather than “Mars One.”  It also didn’t hurt that both Bumbles and Robo-snake are uniquely fitted to be Martian colonists.

In fact, a study published in Gravitational and Space Biology has demonstrated that bumblebees have “the right stuff.” [image] These, rather rotund, wild bees forage for food in the same wild grass and brush in which they build their nests.  I’m sure that, at first, no one saw them as particularly obvious candidates for a trip to Mars.  But, then, NASA identified an atmospheric pressure of 52 kilopascals (kPa) as “the ideal” for extraterrestrial facilities.  That’s a rather low pressure compared to earth’s normal sea level pressure of 101 kPa.  The search was on for fit space travelers and Martian colonists. And “Bumbles” made the cut, and then some. [2]

While the bumble bee’s cousin, the familiar hive-dwelling honeybee, not only stopped working, but completely lost the ability to fly at an atmospheric pressure of 66.5 kPa, the bumble bee not only thrived at the lower 52 kPa atmospheric pressure, but continued its work, pollinating plants and collecting honey, at its usual pace.

When the pressure was dropped below 50 kPa, “Bumbles” continued to work, but at a slower pace. Then, when the pressure was dropped to 30 kPa, the bumble bees lost their ability to fly but, with an amazing display of mettle, these bees kept on working — foraging, pollinating, and gathering honey, more or less, on foot – crawling from bloom to bloom.  I think this the kind of bee we need to conquer the Final Frontier. [3]

Robo-Snake, on the other hand, has the obvious advantage of being a robot.  [image] So, those conditions necessary for the survival of a biological organism are of little importance to this candidate.  However, Robo-Snake is an odd contender, because he is being considered . . . before he exists.

Although the ESA (European Space Agency) is, more or less, including Robo-Snake as a crew member on an upcoming mission to Mars, this particular robotic crew member has not been developed yet.  It’s a little strange.  But, on second thought, is recruiting a nonexistent crew member to go on a real mission to Mars any stranger than "Mars One" recruiting real crew members to go on a nonexistent mission to Mars? [4]

No matter, Robo-Snake’s older brother is standing-in for his sibling in futuro during the evaluation process. Big brother (named "Wheeko") is a robotic snake that looks and moves surprisingly like a real snake.  It’s modus operandi is beyond a brief and simple description, but one video is worth a 1,000 words. [video]

Wheeko, is composed of ten round metal balls, on the balls are rows of what appear to be smaller balls that roll with motive power and make Wheeko move.  With a camera on its “head,” (which is the lead ball), it makes the familiar serpentine movement of its namesake as it travels on the ground.

Wheeko is the subject of a current feasibility study by researchers at the SINTEF Research Institute in Norway and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.  Until now, the primary purpose of the development of a robotic snake was as a tool to be used on search and rescue missions. As one of the project members, Aksel Transeth, explained, real snakes “can climb rocks and slide through small holes.”  It is hoped that a robot with these skills could be used “to find people in a fallen buildings.”

If Wheeko passes all the tests, what will its little brother, the future Martian colonist, be like? Actually, little brother will be different if for no other reason than he has a sidekick.  Or, more accurately, he will be a sidekick.  But, instead of playing sidekick to his fellow bumblebee colonists, Robo-Snake will play sidekick to the more familiar Mars Rover.  These vehicles are designed for off-roading in the rough Martian terrain.  Yet, however carefully they are directed, they do have a tendency to get stuck.

Enter Robo-Snake. [image]

Not a lone player on the Martian surface, Robo-Snake would be a deployable snake robot or an actual arm attached to the Mars Rover.  The Rover vehicle could detach Robo-Snake to investigate the nooks and crannies of the terrain while allowing the Rover to maintain a safe distance from areas in which the Rover might get stuck.  And if the Rover gets stuck, one proposed design would turn Robo-Snake into something like the Rover’s tentacle arm.  Such an amazingly versatile arm would be able to both push and pull to extricate the Rover if caught in too tight a spot.

So, together, the bumble bees and the Robo-Snake may be the first Martian colonists.  Of course, they won’t be traveling together.  NASA is interested in “Bumbles” and the ESA is interested in Robo-Snake.   But even if they don’t share the same flight to the red planet, they’ll probably meet when they get there.  Right now, Mars isn’t that crowded.  

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Robo-Raven’s Masquerade

19 September 2013

            Robo-Raven is a new reconnaissance and surveillance drone developed by the Army Research Laboratory. [image] Detectible to radar, this drone isn’t stealth.   But it adds some new twists to what we normally associate with camouflage.  As a surveillance and reconnaissance drone, the small Robo-Raven is designed to gather information while flying over a stationary or mobile target. 

            These basic functions, alone, would make Robo-Raven little different from any other military drone. However, reconnaissance and surveillance aren‘t it‘s only functions.  This drone also designed to accomplish its mission while being observed, but not identified.  In other words, Robo-Raven is designed not just to look like a bird, but to be reliably mistaken for a bird. [video]

            Making a military combat or reconnaissance device look like something else is nothing new.  It’s camouflage.

            During World War II, airplanes were painted a particular color and outfitted with carefully positioned lights, which made them blend into the sky.  This delayed identification by ground spotters and allowed an addition measure of surprise.

            Military vehicles are painted with an irregular green, gray, brown, and black pattern to blend into surrounding foliage.  Now used in fashion clothing, that particular color pattern retains the name “camouflage.”

            These examples use paint and lights (counter illumination) to achieve visual crypsis.  Crypsis is a type of camouflage in which an object is designed to blend into a certain type of background, making the object difficult to see or detect.

            However, Robo-Raven adds something new to drone technology as, perhaps, one of the most advanced and innovative examples of the use of mimesis.  Mimesis is particular form of camouflage less mysteriously called masquerade: the camouflaged object looks like something else, which is of no special interest to the observer.

            Robo-Raven is designed not only to look like a bird, but also to move like a bird.  The drone’s wings are designed to move independently and make its bodily movements more naturally match those of a bird.  But that’s not all.  This drone’s pattern of flight is characteristic of a bird.

            So, to improve its masquerade, Robo-Raven is equipped with a substantial set of animatronic movements replicating a bird’s kinesics (body language) and manner of flight.  Borrowed from Hollywood, animatronics is the art and technology of designing mechanical models of animals that move like the real thing.  These models are, generally, used to create the illusion of real animals for film audiences.  In Hollywood, animatronics is about entertainment.  But, with Robo-Raven, animatronics is about concealment.

            So, Robo-Raven isn’t just a camouflaged object that moves.  This drone’s animatronic movements are part of its camouflage — part of its masquerade.  But Robo-Raven’s masquerade doesn’t end with its appearance and movement.  It has something more.  Something that takes it deeply into the world of biorobotics

            The term biorobotics refers to a special subfield of robotics: the study of how to make robots emulate or simulate living biological organisms.  For example, when students of animal behavior observed that the leader of a school of fish beat, or swished, its tail with greater frequency than the followers in the rest of the school, they formulated the question: Does a particular tail movement make a particular fish the leader of a school?

            To answer this question, researchers at the Polytechnic Institute of New York University used a basic form of biorobotics.  They designed a “bio-inspired” robotic fish, which mimics the tail movements of a swimming fish.  This robotic fish’s tail could be set to beat at different speeds by remote control.  When researchers placed their robotic fish in a water tunnel with a school of golden shiner fish, the robotic fish was ignored.  But when its tail speed was set on high, it became the leader.

            The robotic fish was more than just a robot with animatronic movements designed to entertain or even fool human beings.  Its movements were designed to fool other fish.  And Robo-Raven can do the same with other birds.

            John Gerdes, mechanical engineer with the Aberdeen Proving Ground has reported that Robo-Raven “already attracts the attention” of birds in its area.  “[S]eagulls, crows, and songbirds have flown around the Raven in formation,” and the drone has been attacked (unsuccessfully) by “hawks and falcons.” [video] So, Robo-Raven’s animatronic movements not only fool humans, they also fool other birds.

            Of course, Robo-Raven is designed to fool human observers into believing that it’s a bird.  But this drone’s ability to fool real birds is not just an interesting sidelight — it was one of the design objectives.  Fooling other birds is yet another level of Robo-Raven’s masquerade.

            The designers understood that this drone’s “social interaction” with other birds would also be observed by humans.  When Robo-Raven is seen flying with a flock of real birds or being attacked by real birds, human observers will be all the more certain that Robo-Raven is “just a bird” — not a reconnaissance and surveillance drone.

            So, Robo-Raven’s masquerade is composed of its appearance, its movements and, even, its interactive behavior.  In other words, this drone has the appearance and movements of a bird plus something more.  Robo-Raven has the behavior of a bird among birds.

            Robo-Raven is a substantial step forward in both drone technology and biorobotics: a robot that, outwardly, so closely resembles a bird that it becomes more difficult for people or animals to distinguish between the real and the robotic.  In the future, we may all be eying the birds around us — wondering whether they’re really birds. This technology certainly turns the table on birdwatchers.  Who’s watching who?

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Robot Bees, Mini Surveillance UAV’s & Genetically Engineered Super Bees

25 July 2013

Scientists at Harvard are working on the development the first robotic bee. They hope that their robo-bee will, someday, be able to pollinate flowers and crops just like the organic original: the honeybee.

Beginning in 2009, Harvard’s “Micro Air Vehicles Project” has used titanium and plastic to replicate the functions, if not the appearance, of the familiar honeybee. The robo-bee pops up, complete with wings, from a quarter-sized metal disk. The the creators hope that, one day, “robo-bees” will be engineered to fly in swarms, live in artificial hives, and coordinate both their target locations and pollination methodologies.

In fact, the researcher’s vision of the future “robo-bee” is so striking that one writer expressed the wish that the project’s spokesperson add the phrase “for the good of all mankind” to each progress report. Without it, readers might be reminded of all the movies “about technology that eventually destroys mankind.” In fact, the robo-bee may help save us or, at least, save our food supply.

Bees have been dropping like (the proverbial) flies for over 7 years now. The current bee depopulation was termed a “disappearance,” then, a “die-off” and, now, is formally referred to as “Colony Collapse Disorder.” The decline in bee populations continues at an alarming rate. However, bee die-offs are not just a part of modern life. There have been a number of die-offs in that last couple of centuries. The original European honeybee disappeared from Europe long ago. Its successor, our modern honeybee, was imported from Turkey into Europe and, then, into the United States.

Bees get a lot of scientific attention because they are vital to American agriculture, which is vital to the American economy. Without bees, production of some of our most profitable crops would be impossible. Every few weeks, a news article announces the discovery of “the cause” of the threatened bee “extinction.” Blaming pesticides is almost fashionable. However, these sensational claims do little more than draw attention to particular studies, and the involved researchers. In fact, there probably isn’t a single cause. The current die-off seems to be the result of several factors working together. Sadly, our familiar honeybee may be gone long before the exact combination of factors can be found.

The puzzle goes like this. A bee (1) has a parasite like varroa mites; (2) is exhausted by transport over long distances; and (3) is exposed to a particular pesticide. Alone, none of these factors would kill a bee. Even all of these put together wouldn’t kill a bee. However, all of these put together might weaken the bee’s immune system. Then, with a compromised immune system, the bee contracts, and dies from, a completely unrelated disease. That disease is the final cause the bee’s death. However, the underlying cause is an immune system compromised, not by one factor, but by a particular combination of several factors. For now, that combination remains a mystery.

While science fiction films have portrayed the replacement of human beings with robots, films have never explored the possibly sinister side of robo-bee. Imagine a robotic “Stepford Bee” hiding quietly in the wings waiting for death of the last honeybee. And, then, a “brave new” technological world–without any bees at all!

There is something a bit creepy about human-engineered bees pollinating crops grown from human-engineered seeds. One writer described the disturbing vision as “swarms of tiny robot bees . . . pollinating those vast dystopian fields of GMO cash crops.”

By the way, one developer of those “GMO cash crops,” Monsanto, sponsored a recent “Bee Health Summit” in Saint Louis, Missouri. A company spokesperson acknowledged that the beekeepers might have heard some “scary stuff” about Monsanto. The summit is the company’s effort to “introduce itself to the beekeeping industry” and “raise their comfort level.”  And there was some discomfort with one beekeeping guest commenting, “I can’t believe I’m at Monsanto.”

On the comforting side, Monsanto is after one of the oldest and most clearly identified factors in declining bee health, the parasitic varroa mite, which spreads a variety of viruses to honeybees. Researchers with Beeologics, one of Monsanto’s recent acquisitions, are planning to use RNA, a genetic regulator that determines how a plant or insect “works.” The RNA would be fed to the bee and, then, would be ingested by the mites. Once in the mite’s system, the RNA would “turn off” the mite’s virus transmitting gene.

With this RNA intervention, and other technologies, our honeybees may yet be saved from relative extinction.  Then, their robotic replacements would have to remain on the shelf.  But hold on. Genetically engineering the mite is only one step closer to genetically engineering the honey bee. So, we may be saved from robotic bees by . . . GMO bees?

Well, as our GMO bees pollinate our GMO crops, we can only feel a pang of sorrow for our robo-bee languishing in the shadows. With a revived, genetically engineered super-honeybee, where could a robotic bee go? What would it do?

No problem.  Harvard’s Micro Air Vehicles Project had that covered from the beginning.  The project’s published reports also suggest potential military uses. So, robo-bee, with some market repositioning, becomes the world’s smallest drone.

Well, if Monsanto “saves” the honeybee, who will be interested in our newly re-branded and repositioned mini-drones? Again, possibly Monsanto, which, at least once in the past, retained a private security contractor “to protect its GMO crops.”   The “protection” was less exciting than it sounds.  It was limited to the simple monitoring of public information. 

Still, what security company couldn’t use swarms of surveillance mini-drones?  So, if Monsanto needs security in the future, robo-bee might play a part in the security provider’s services.

Finally, we end up with yet another, unexpected vision of our future.  Just picture it.  We stand watching the setting sun as swarms of genetically engineered super-bees pollinate “dystopian fields of GMO cash crops,” while we, ourselves, are closely surveilled by swarms of robo-bees or, rather, “mini-drones.”

Why does everything just keep getting weirder?

The End?

[Author’s Note: Actually, Robo-Bee is a long, long way from rolling off the assembly line and into the fields.  Even farther away are the technologies and knowledge necessary to genetically engineer anything as complicated as an insect.]

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 Selected Source Links:

Harvard scientists unleash the robot bees

Robotic Bees to Pollinate Monsanto Crops, 04/08/13, Russ McSpadden http://earthfirstnews.wordpress.com/2013/04/08/robotic-bees-to-pollinate-monsanto-crops/

Monsanto hopes to win over beekeepers with cure, 06/14/13, Georgina Gustinhttp://www.stltoday.com/business/local/monsanto-hopes-to-win-over-beekeepers-with-cure/article_19e82066-0e5f-5a57-bcfd-9232d81db401.html

A Short History of Biomimicry

5 March 2015

            Robotics has taken an unexpected turn in the last few decades.  1950’s science fiction conditioned us to image of advanced technology as something completely unfamiliar and exotic.  These fictional images presented a family of devices that could and would do things we’d never even imagined.

            But pause for a moment

            Why do we need a technology to do things we don’t apparently need?  Think about it.  If we don’t know about something and can’t even imagine it, we probably don’t want or need it.

            Out of this was quietly born the new study.  That study, biotechnology, began from the understanding that we technology to perform those activities with which we are most familiar – the drudgery of repetitive tasks, and the danger of possibly injurious tasks.

            In short, we needed technology that could perform everyday tasks in the way we might perform them.  The jeeps high suspension revolutionized motorized travel over rough terrain, but no jeep could go to most of the places a walking human could easily reach. 

            In short, if you needed a machine to do what a particular biological organism can easily do, you may have to design the machine that works exactly like that biological organism – or abandon the project all together.

            Modern biorobots began about the turn of the 19th to the 20th century with a field named biomechanics.   But that certainly wasn’t the intention of its creators or researchers of the time.  They were physicists and engineers interested in one of the greatest challenges presented by nature – understanding the physics of the movement and actions of living organisms.  Describing in mathematical, engineering formulae how, for examples, human beings walk on two legs.

            This challenging endeavor would revolutionize the study of biology.  But these researchers were also doing something they did know or imagine.  They didn’t even have a word for it, but they were “reverse engineering” biological species.     

            When sci-fi was still dominated by those inhuman and unnatural versions of mechanistic technology, a new technological methodology was, quietly, born.  “Biomimetics” was the first term used to describe the development of technology designed to imitate and replicate the activities of biological systems and organisms.  Then, another term, “biomimicry,” was widely adopted to describe any technology imitating (copied from) from nature. 

            Again, in some contexts, biomimicry is more of a necessity than a choice.  If you want drones that work in a particular way, and the only known example of such performance is a biological organism, you’ll either have to imitate the organism or forget the project altogether.  So, to get flying ‘bots that maneuver the way flying insects and birds do, the ‘bots must be designed to imitate the actual form and movement of these same creatures.

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