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The main problem with MAVs has to do with the way they respond (or don’t respond) to dynamic environments--things like shifting or gusting winds, moving bodies, and other variables that have to be accounted for in realtime. MAVs are tiny, so there’s not a lot of space for computing assets or sensor payloads, and that leads to a sort of intractable problem: how can engineers make these things smaller and more capable while also adding increased situational awareness and better in-flight processing?

When facing a tough problem like this a little biomimicry never hurts, and that’s exactly where the Pentagon is looking with its recent contracts. If two research stipends recently handed down are any indication, the micro-drones of the future may have tiny hair-like sensors all over their bodies and big, compound eyes.

The cilia-like hairs will serve to keep the drones’ hovering and flight stable by sensing changes in air flow at the tiniest levels. That means the drone could sense a wind gust coming shortly before it arrives, allowing it to compensate for the change in circumstance. It would also aid in maintaining overall stability during flight, as the MAVs central processor would possess a constant awareness of--and the ability to manipulate--the boundary flow layer of air surrounding the drone as it hovers and flies.

The bug-like compound eyes would similarly help MAVs navigate in cluttered spaces by increasing the amount of visual data available to the drones’ processors. An on-board minicomputer would process images in realtime, using those visual cues to automatically avoid obstacles and navigate cleanly and efficiently.

[Danger Room]

Replicating a tiny rocket inside the body brings some, well, health concerns. And those are valid; traditional rocket fuels like hydrazine are extremely toxic, highly flammable and dangerously unstable, all of which make it a pretty lousy candidate for a substance you'd like spurting out of a tiny rocket inside your body. Instead, the research team made rolled up metal nanotubes coated with platinum, so that platinum side would be on the inside, and put them in a weak hydrogen peroxide solution. The platinum catalyzed the peroxide, speeding its decomposition into water and oxygen, which forced gas bubbles out of the tube, generating thrust, even in bodily fluids such as blood, saliva or urine.

The rocket can travel up to 200 times its own length per second, and the researchers are able to control its speed by changing the temperature of the fluid. They can also steer the nanorocket using a magnetic field, to precisely direct the drugs to where they are needed.

While using peroxide is infinitely better than toxic rocket fuels, at 0.25 percent peroxide, it's still not completely safe. Researchers would like to dilute the solution further, or even better, create rockets that can be powered by glucose, or another substance already in the body.

Check out the rockets in action in the video below:

[New Scientist]

[AFP]

It runs along a guide rail, keeps its balance after two guys try to tip it over, and rights itself after lying on its side, not unlike your pet getting up from its nap.

As we heard earlier this week, AlphaDog is designed to carry 400 pounds, last 24 hours and carry enough fuel for a 20-mile trip. It is also significantly quieter than its predecessor, BigDog, which further solidifies AD’s position as leader of the pack.

This video shows a lab prototype undergoing early tests, according to Boston Dynamics. It's being developed under DARPA's Legged Squad Support System (LS3) project. DARPA and the Marines are expected to take this beast for a walk sometime in 2012.

[IEEE Spectrum]

The footage comes via an event at Southmead Hospital in the U.K. aimed at raising awareness of men’s cancers. To show just how effective Da Vinci can be in the operating room, urology fellow Ramesh Thurairaja grabbed the sticks and delicately showed a grape just what Da Vinci is capable of.

There are more than 1,000 Da Vinci robots worldwide, and this particular robot has performed 450 prostate cancer removals alone. No man wants to think of his grapes anywhere near the forceful hands of a massive multi-armed machine, but this demo shows just how magnificently precise and steady-handed our robot surgeons can be.

[WIRED UK]

This is useful because atom interferometers are super sensitive, more so than the inertial sensors used widely on modern aircraft. Those inertial sensors have been known to fail with potentially disastrous results, but more frequently they cause slight errors to creep into navigation systems that must later be corrected. With no moving parts and a high degree of accuracy, atom interferometers could mitigate these problems, recording inertial effects 300 times weaker than the normal fluctuations in the acceleration in a standard aircraft.

But the vibrations in an aircraft have previously made deployment of atom interferometers in planes unfeasible. That’s where Remi Geiger at the Laboratoire Charles Fabry in Paris comes in. He and his colleagues have created a system that compensates for the effects of vibrations via mechanical accelerometers that record the movements of the aircraft itself.

Using that vibration data, their system recalculates the interferometer’s data to compensate for any vibration that might be skewing its final result. By stripping out the vibration noise, they end up with a clean, high-resolution atom interferometer result. The system could go a long way toward delivering better acceleration data to the cockpits of large jets. Geiger and company have already tested their system successfully on an Airbus A300.

But an atom interferometer that can operate free of laboratory constraints isn’t limited to jetliner applications. The researchers hope their method will lead to more precise measurements of geodesy and of gravity itself, enabling some fundamental experiments that have been previously very difficult to conduct and challenging some existing principles of physics with more and better data. More at arXiv.

[Technology]

The 8.5-metric-ton Tiangong 1 (it means “heavenly palace”) is slated to stay in orbit for two years. During that time, China will launch three missions to rendezvous with the orbital lab. Shenzou 8 and Shenzou 9, launching in November and early in 2012 respectively, will be unmanned missions meant to test various rendezvous and docking technologies. Shenzou 10, also slated for sometime in 2012, could be a manned mission if the first two go smoothly. It could also carry China’s first female astronaut, Chinese space officials said.

There are two ways to view this achievement. The more cynical view says that China is only just now doing what America and Russia were doing in the 1970s (Tiangong is way smaller than Skylab and Mir, and America was rendezvousing in orbit during the Gemini days), and that projects like the ISS are light years ahead of the Chinese.

And that’s certainly true. But when you look at the window in which China has ticked these technologies off its checklist, the pace is impressive to say the least. Like nearly everything in China over the past decade or two, its space program is modernizing at a seriously ambitious pace. China launched its first man into space in 2003. Today it put its first space station in orbit, and by 2020 it aims to have a full-blown 60-ton manned orbiting station in place--the only space station belonging to a single sovereign entity.

And this is just the first step for China, whose space ambitions reach all the way the moon and beyond it to Mars. China plans to put a robot on the moon in 2014 followed by a manned lunar base sometime beyond that. And in 2013 a joint Russian-Chinese mission hopes to put a robotic rover on Mars. As the nomenclature of its booster rockets suggests, China is developing a long reach into space.

But all that depends, for now, on the success of Tiangong 1 and the three technology testing missions that follow. And how you feel about this initiative probably has a lot to do with how you feel about China. One reason China generally goes it alone in space rather than collaborating with other spacefaring nations like Japan or the U.S. is that China’s space program is closely tied into its military and therefore shrouded in secrecy. Should China become a dominant player in space over the next century--and given its current trajectory, it certainly could--the balance of power in orbit and beyond could begin shifting. Starting this morning.

[SPACE, BBC]