Self-Repairing Spacecraft Uses Ant Logic 111
Elitist_Phoenix wrote to mention a New Scientist story about what could be the first steps towards a self-repairing spacecraft. From the article: "The team at CSIRO, Australia's national research organisation, is working with NASA on the project and has so far created a model skin made up of 192 separate cells. Behind each cell is an impact sensor and a processor equipped with algorithms that allow it to communicate only with its immediate neighbours. Just as ants secrete pheromones to help guide other ants to food, the CSIRO algorithms leave digital messages in cells around the system, indicating for instance the position of the boundary around a damaged region. The cell's processor can use this information to route data around the affected area."
Why do I get the feeling.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why do I get the feeling.... (Score:1)
Re:Why do I get the feeling.... (Score:2, Interesting)
I agree with your assertions however, because whilst the sensors may themselves be damage limited, unless each unit had its own repair kit, the same centralised problem occurs (micro-meteor through the only welding torch for instance).
Re:Why do I get the feeling.... (Score:5, Funny)
In Other News.. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Why do I get the feeling.... (Score:1)
Re:Why do I get the feeling.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Why do I get the feeling.... (Score:2)
Re:Why do I get the feeling.... (Score:1)
Re:Why do I get the feeling.... (Score:1)
What do you expect, using ant logic. Every time you de-bug it, it stops working...
Re:Why do I get the feeling.... (Score:2)
IronMan worked this out years ago on one of his earlier armor designs.
Someone just needs to ask Tony Stark for some help.
Reminds me of a bad sci-fi movie (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Reminds me of a bad sci-fi movie (Score:1)
woohoo.
hell, even i could have come up with that:
1) Put a 4-way switch in a brick with one connector on each side.
2) Use power-over-ethernet
3) 'fuse' every incomming connector.
Tell me if i'm wrong.
Great Concept... (Score:5, Interesting)
It is nice that these skin cells can detect that they have been damaged, yet I read nothing about if they have been damaged, how they plan to repair the damages caused?
I guess this is just a way for processing of a system to continue, even if a certain chunk of the spacecraft is destroyed, that it can still function seperate from the rest...
Few Question though about this layout:
1. How is the power system? Is this a central powered source, such as from a battery pack with a solar panel to recharge it, or is each cell having it's own power cell and solar panel to recharge things?
2. What is going to be implemented, as far as damage recovery systems? Is there going to be another group of devices onboard, that can be dispatched to repair cells? Is there going to be a collection of extra cells waiting, so that the damaged cells can be discarded, and the new cells brought into place?
3. Communications among cells are discussed, yet what about relaying this information back to NASA? Also, what happens if the primary communications antenna is destroyed... is there provisions to replace this as well, using this technology?
It looks like this is a start to promising self-healing taking place in satellites and other devices, not to mention the implementations of it being used on Earth...
Re:Great Concept... (Score:3, Interesting)
Main processing computers goosed? Ahhhh well, just plug in a spare laptop into the bathroom wall and carry on.
Could even have various redundent machines connected wherever around the ship.
It becomes fun when additional modules (ISS habitats) connect into the net and can access information from any other part of the ship.
It makes for an amazingly robust communications cha
Great Start (Score:3, Informative)
You cant repair something if you dont know its broke...
So, this would be the logical first step.
Re:Great Concept... (Score:5, Informative)
Um, no, a skin cell cannot detect that it itself is damaged. Undamaged neighbors that can't communicate with a cell can decide it is damaged.
"repair" in the sense used means routing communication and tasks around the damaged cells.
Re:Great Concept... (Score:1)
Re:Great Concept... (Score:1)
A meteorite had knocked a large hole in the ship. The ship had not previously detected this because the meteorite had neatly knocked out that part of the ship's processing equipment which was supposed to detect if the ship had been hit by a meteorite. --Mostly Harmless, DNA.
Re:Great Concept... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Great Concept... (Score:2)
I can think of a couple of reasons:
1.) Sigs have a 120 character limit.
2.) People can turn of sigs, but they cannot prevent the link in the post from being posted.
Re:Great Concept... (Score:1)
I mean, at least my website, http://www.nerdsystems.com/ [nerdsystems.com] has to do with computers, which is semi-related to this matter... and if I have people clicking on my Google Ads, at least I can make a little money off thin
Hey, we can actually use the real quote here! (Score:4, Funny)
You know...the one about Homer in space and the ant experiment they sent up got broken and there are ants floating around....guess you had to have seen it.
Re:Hey, we can actually use the real quote here! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Hey, we can actually use the real quote here! (Score:1)
Re:Hey, we can actually use the real quote here! (Score:2, Interesting)
I for one DON'T welcome our editor overlords!
Logic vs Anti-logic (Score:1)
The main problem with anti-logic is that, when it comes into contact with logic, a huge explosion results.
If you don't believe me, watch any debate between scientists and creationists.
Even when no logic is present, sparks can fly if anti-logic is present in sufficiently large quantities, say, during debates between candidates for the U.S. Presidency.
Small amounts of anti-logic can be handled safely by ignoring it (e.g., most guests on the Okra Windbag show (esp. Tom
ants? (Score:5, Interesting)
Nope (Score:1, Troll)
1. discover an efficient route
2. detect loss of connectivity
3. goto 1
This is only step 2 and only for a finite, non-expanding, known set of nodes whose relative topological positions are pre-arranged for convenience. Ie in terms of relative complexity this is to Tic-tac-toe as dynamic routing is Go.
Re:ants? (Score:1, Troll)
(JetiAnts [jetiants.tk] and AntsP2P [sourceforge.net] are offshoots of MUTE as far as I can tell.)
Yeah, well. (Score:5, Funny)
Mutant Space Ants. (Score:1)
Guess it's time to get cracking on those orbital farms.
Ah, finally! (Score:5, Funny)
Rerouting through secondary coupling.
Bypassing damaged pathways.
Red alert! Red alert!
Diverting power around fused regulator 4A-CJ1.
The colony is under attack! Protect the Queen!
Which one's the Queen? I'm the Queen! No you're not!
Freedom, horrible horrible freedom!
The ants and space stuff kinda threw me off, but either way it's about time if you ask me.
These will all come back in super-intelligent... (Score:4, Funny)
no kidding (Score:2)
Re:no kidding (Score:2)
... then you get the nanorobotic virus.
Why is that needed? (Score:4, Interesting)
Seems like you'd get the same result, but it wouldn't be as 'cool' or expensive to develop...
Re:Why is that needed? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Why is that needed? (Score:3, Informative)
to try and get rid of the central point of failure.
Um, duh. (Score:2)
Re:Um, duh. (Score:1)
The whole point in a cooperative cell system is that it's ultimate redundancy, there is no 1 or 2 systems that if destroyed bring down the whole system.
If you don't see the merit in that for a spaceship... well, hopefully you never get a job designing spaceships
Just an addon, it's "unnecessary" yes, it's true, the english language doesn't use the exact same letters for every sound.
Re:Why is that needed? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why is that needed? (Score:2)
Yes, you can have a central database, but then you need to waste a lot of system resources
In other words... (Score:1)
Re:In other words... (Score:1)
More cliche (Score:2)
Re:More cliche (Score:1)
"We are sorry Dave, we can't do that" in a Borg voice.
Misleading title (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Misleading title (Score:1)
Exactly. It's not self repairing, it's just self redirecting. If it was self repairing, it would actually repair the affected region instead of bypassing it using the neighbor cells.
But if instead of that we could have smart ceramic/metalic/whatever skin that can tell us what exactly is wrong with it (burn, corrosion, impact, radiation levels?)
That should also be integrated, or at least something along those lines, they would be stupid not to
Not a "Misleading title" (Score:2)
The system as a whole "fixes" itself.
You could think of it as the software being self-repairing by routing around the damaged hardware.
To use a human analogy, a person who has a stroke can recover to some extent, even though individual neurons may be permanently damaged or killed.
The system as a whole (human/spacecraft) is self-repairing, even though individual components (neurons/cells) may noy be.
Watchmakers? (Score:1)
http://web.mit.edu/teamhtml/Athena/watchmakers/ [mit.edu]
there is a book by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournell called "The Mote in God's Eye" and the moties are some interesting charactors...
Re:Watchmakers? (Score:1)
Obligatory Atom Ant reference... (Score:3, Funny)
Not Really Ant logic but Skin logic (Score:5, Interesting)
Re-entry telemetry: (Score:2)
A note for the scientists (Score:3, Funny)
Good, cuz that'll solve this problem... (Score:5, Funny)
Click, hum, click, hum, click, hum.
Click, click, click, click, click, hum.
Hmmm.
A low level supervising program woke up a slightly higher level supervising program deep in the ship's semi-somnolent cyberbrain and reported to it that whenever it went click all it got was a hum.
The higher level supervising program asked it what it was supposed to get, and the low level supervising program said that it couldn't remember exactly, but thought it was probably more of a sort of distant satisfied sigh, wasn't it? It didn't know what this hum was. Click, hum, click, hum. That was all it was getting.
The higher level supervising program considered this and didn't like it. It asked the low level supervising program what exactly it was supervising and the low level supervising program said it couldn't remember that either, just that it was something that was meant to go click, sigh every ten years or so, which usually happened without fail. It had tried to consult its error look-up table but couldn't find it, which was why it had alerted the higher level supervising program to the problem .
The higher level supervising program went to consult one of its own look-up tables to find out what the low level supervising program was meant to be supervising.
It couldn't find the look-up table .
Odd.
It looked again. All it got was an error message. It tried to look up the error message in its error message look-up table and couldn't find that either. It allowed a couple of nanoseconds to go by while it went through all this again. Then it woke up its sector function supervisor.
The sector function supervisor hit immediate problems. It called its supervising agent which hit problems too. Within a few millionths of a second virtual circuits that had lain dormant, some for years, some for centuries, were flaring into life throughout the ship. Something, somewhere, had gone terribly wrong, but none of the supervising programs could tell what it was. At every level, vital instructions were missing, and the instructions about what to do in the event of discovering that vital instructions were missing, were also missing.
Small modules of software -- agents -- surged through the logical pathways, grouping, consulting, re-grouping. They quickly established that the ship's memory, all the way back to its central mission module, was in tatters. No amount of interrogation could determine what it was that had happened. Even the central mission module itself seemed to be damaged.
This made the whole problem very simple to deal with. Replace the central mission module. There was another one, a backup, an exact duplicate of the original. It had to be physically replaced because, for safety reasons, there was no link whatsoever between the original and its backup. Once the central mission module was replaced it could itself supervise the reconstruction of the rest of the system in every detail, and all would be well.
Robots were instructed to bring the backup central mission module from the shielded strong room, where they guarded it, to the ship's logic chamber for installation.
This involved the lengthy exchange of emergency codes and protocols as the robots interrogated the agents as to the authenticity of the instructions. At last the robots were satisfied that all procedures were correct. They unpacked the backup central mission module from its storage housing, carried it out of the storage chamber, fell out of the ship and went spinning off into the void.
This provided the first major clue as to what it was that was wrong."
Re:Good, cuz that'll solve this problem... (Score:1)
I vaguely remember reading something very close to this in a novel a long time ago... If so, can you please refresh my memory?
Thanks
Re:Good, cuz that'll solve this problem... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Good, cuz that'll solve this problem... (Score:1)
Mars Probe Steals Potato Salad, News at 10 (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously, though:
"Other groups are developing impact sensor systems controlled by a centralised processor. But such systems would fail if the area containing the processor were damaged. So a distributed system could be much more reliable, says Bill Prosser of NASA's Nondestructive Evaluation Sciences Branch in Langley, Virginia."
That kind of seems like overkill. It's like "One processor is too risky, so we should instead have 100." Have 3 processors and 3 busses. If something can damage all 3, then the probe is F'd beyond all repair anyhow. You have to wire power to 100 processors anyhow if you do that such that a damaged power bus can still take out multiple panels. Weight is premium on probes, and 99 processors is not a very effective use of weight.
Re:Mars Probe Steals Potato Salad, News at 10 (Score:2)
Re:Mars Probe Steals Potato Salad, News at 10 (Score:1)
Actually it may be cheaper just to have a camera(s) on a mobile arm to take images of the probe surface to look for problems. Such arm may also be able to nudge stuck antennas and booms, so it has multiple uses. Stuck booms a
Re:Mars Probe Steals Potato Salad, News at 10 (Score:2)
There is no reason why you should NOT have electronics and sensors in every cubic centimetre of the space ship. Once you remove the considerations of costs, the default decision be
Not the ant I was thinking of... (Score:2, Funny)
ant clean, repair
to fix their spacecraft. Ah well. This is cooler.
Re:Not the ant I was thinking of... (Score:2)
Borg! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Michael Crichton? (Score:1)
Oh swell... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Oh swell... (Score:1)
Ant music for Sex people!
Somewhat old news (Score:2, Informative)
Wrong logic... (Score:2)
Re:fucking nasa (Score:1)
Re:fucking nasa (Score:1)
i say the design is bad because it makes implementation difficult and also has a huge flaw, and you just point out the huge flaw isn't VERY likely to be exploited by conditions... and thus the original design is OK?
people like you are why these moronic designs are probably getting through the pipeline over there at nasDUHHHHHHH.
i'm out.
First Launch (Score:3, Funny)
Misleading article title (Score:1)
This is deceiving. From the title I thought they had java software recompiled in space :-)
People should add either TM (Trademark) or RL (Real Life) when they use confusing terminology. This way nobody would be confused reading headlines like Self-Repairing Spacecraft Uses Ant (RL) Logic or Bug Found In Ant (TM)
Actually this is a bad idea. Since Microsoft has copyrights on the whole english dictionnary it would be difficult to use english anymore: Windows, Office
Re:Misleading article title (Score:1)
Another fine example of degenerate American English. B-)
Ant -Logic (Score:1)
Good uses... (Score:1)
I'm confused.. (Score:2)
Are the sensors all Cell processors? That would rock! Just think, a synergistic CPU in a grid of hundreds or thousands... the space-based supercomputer. And no need for extra cooling if the skin is facing away from the sun!
Sounds like Flex-Metal (Score:1)