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Technology

NASA show off new 'Star Wars' type PDA 129

Posted by Hemos from the fun-with-your dept.
urk writes " NASA's got some prototypes of a new 'personal satellite assistant' that could be joining astronauts in 3 yrs time, from telling them about warnings of gas levels, checking on payloads to reading them bed time stories or teaching them russian. It's a little red sphere that floats around the shuttle / space station by itself. It should be able to talk, relay information and have conversations. Star wars comes to life! " The inspiration for this came from the Practice Ball in the Falcon in A New Hope.
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NASA show off new 'Star Wars' type PDA More

NASA show off new 'Star Wars' type PDA

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  • I think the user should be able to modify the appearance of the furby.


    "Look, I got the basketball skin for BOB!"

  • From the article... "The main advantage of the PSA is its portability..."

    Yeah. Real portable. It works in space. :-)

    "But moommm.... the box said said it'd float in the air... mine justs lays limp on the floor..." :P

    (yeahyeah --- i know. i still think it's cool.)
  • The interesting thing is it is now out on DVD. Chapters (Canadian Bookstore) had it available on their web site a few months back.
  • Would contra-rotating fans work? Or maybe little
    toaster wires to make a mini-ramjet? Or one big
    fan constantly running, with little harrier style
    nozzles all over the outside?
    -aiabx
  • Yea, I remember that dog. I couldn't figure out what the big deal about the title substance (flubber) was, since the Williams character had already cracked the secret of antigravity. Anyway, the movie, and especially the floating orb, registered way off the asinine-o-meter.

    Actually, the first movie that came to mind when I read this item was "Phantasm," in which a little floating orb drilled into people's skulls...

    --

  • ...the Christmas Tree and its Imps in Robert L. Forward's Rocheworld novel might have been better. The book even has diagrams of it.

    http://www.whidbey.com/forward/ [whidbey.com]

  • The story has a lot of stuff in it where the technology doesn't really exist yet. Just having the robot fly from one area of a ship and return, can be a challenge. Look how much trouble those robots get into in those university competitions. Also, the story talks of taking verbal commands, etc. Only fairly basic commands could probably be understood, and the satallite would have to have be attached to a central computer.

    -- Moondog
  • Oh... my... god... What a wonderful idea! A bunch of floating assistants with a hive mind! I think I'm getting goosebumps...
  • Are you suggesting that only new news should be on here, and that updates shouldn't be?
  • A couple of ideas:
    1. Compressed air, but carry a small compressor onboard... no big tank to lug.
    2. Gimble the internal compressor and use it as a reaction wheel to help with pointing.
  • Right now they are only working in 2 dimensions - they have a seperately controlled hover thing that suspends it on a cushion of air while they work on the thruster jets that move it from side to side, forward and backward. This same technology will be used when they incorporate the 3rd dimension of movement. (got a buddy working on this project - he had pics up on the net, but they took them down.)
  • Will it shoot laser beams at me?
  • Always end its statements by 'But then again, I'm just a ball!'

    I can see it now... some joker astronaut will reprogram one of these things to constantly ask the rest of the crew if they want some toast...
  • hmm, interesting... I'd forgotten all about space.com -- isn't it the new venture that Lou Dobbs took up, after leaving Moneyline?

  • HAL (Score:2)

    by Zach ( 79700 )
    So what happens if this sphere 'thinks' and decides to kill off the astronauts? NASA wouldn't be too happy then... :)
  • I wonder what the mode of propulsion will be. I suppose all you'd really need is a fan or something to move it around...Just brainstorming, I'd say compressed air might be better though.

    Hmmm...any other ideas?

    GnrcMan
  • hopefully. :)

    But seriously tho, looks pretty spiffy to me. Would make for a great game of low-G Softball.

    I wonder how much each ball will cost NASA...

  • It's the dancing paper clip! (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It looks like you have an oxygen leak.
    Would you like help?
    [] Get help fixing the oxygen leak
    [] Just fix the oxygen leak without help
    [] Cancel
  • Looks more like a Pokeball than that training ball in Star Wars. This looks pretty ginchy, but I wonder - the thing's supposed to be self-propelled by a fan. Wouldn't that cause some problems in a zero-g environment, wrt conservation of spin energy? Though I guess it doesn't matter a whole lot if the thing is spinning or not, and I suppose a counter-rotating fan would solve that problem - physics majors, correct me!
  • 1. Can they fit all that they want to fit in a properly sized ball? I'm sure the voice recognition software would take up a lot, and so would all the sensory crap they want on it...

    2. What happens when it hits a wall? Unless they put even more sensors on it, which brings us back to problem #1...

    3. What's this? Should first be deployed in 2001? Aren't they worried it will decide it doesn't like astronauts and go crazy? Damn that Anti-NASA propaganda from many years ago...

    4. What if it screws up a command? I'm sure that will happen a lot. I'm not kidding.

    5. How much will this little toy cost? Will hovercraft type versions be available for consumers? Will we ever surpass the Jetsons?

    ---------------------------
    "I'm not gonna say anything inspirational, I'm just gonna fucking swear a lot"
  • Don't forget the "poisonous dribbling persistent" in Argon Zark [zark.com]. Just wonderful in an emergency to have the thing hear you wrong.

    Still, the sight of these things floating around on video clips on the 6pm news will cause a lot of people to try to figure out how to do a version in gravity. The coolness factor of this thing would be hard to overestimate.
  • NASA says they modeled it after the lightsaber training remote, but I can help but think that if you paint it black and stick a big ass hypodermic needle on it and you'd have the interrogator droid.

    "Now we'll discuss yout the location of your secret rebel base."
  • No, this is clearly inspired by the "bit" from Tron. Does it change shape when it answers "YES" or "NO"?
  • 1. Can they fit all that they want to fit in a properly sized ball? I'm sure the voice recognition software would take up a lot, and so would all the sensory crap they want on it...

    My solution to this (I'm not a NASA scientist though), would be to make a ball that communicates with a larger system. Just use some wireless technology that won't disturb navigation or anything....
  • It's great to hear from someone on the inside. Thanks for posting!

    Here's a few of my off-the-cuff-dime-a-dozen ideas for propulsion mods/alternatives:

    1. Your greatest fan.

    ONE fan, possibly exterior, with some sort of rotating outer shell to direct the thrust. This could be a bigger fan with more thrust. Directing the thrust effectively could involve an overly fragile assembley, be overly complex and use up a lot of power, tho'. Or have a single fan statically mounted, but give the SMR some sort of internal gyro thingy that causes it to spin around to redirect the thrust quickly and on the fly (pun intended). It'd be like the space ships on the old Space War game, or Asteroids, except in 3d.

    2. Alka-Selter.

    The tablets go in, the chamber seals, water is injected, and voila! 'Gas' propulsion, directed to any of the 6 exhaust ports. (belch) Excuse me. Give it a docking bay so it can change tablets itself.

    3. Electro-magnetic.

    The power of attraction instead of thrust. There's lots of metal in the shuttle, I think. Would it take a lot of power to use internal magnets to pull it this way and that? Bit of a stretch, I know.

    4. Carrots.

    Design an SMR that likes carrots. Attach a short stick to the top of the SMR with a small bit of carrot fastened to the end of it. The SMR, equipped with various genetic electronic algorhythms, will eventually engineer its own way of attaining the carrot, the most likely result of which will be some sort of thrust. The danger here of course is that it could develop a mutation to get the carrot that compromises the integrity of the crew, like psionic abilities enabling the SMR to psychicly manipulate the crew into endless research and experimentation tasks soley devoted to growing carrots in space, at the expense of their normal duties and survival.

    Well. There you have it. Can I have a lab coat?

  • That one had the Bit. It didn't do much other than float around and answer yes or no questions. Kind of a binary magic 8-ball.

  • Nice, but... (Score:3)

    by MostlyHarmless ( 75501 ) <[artdent] [at] [freeshell.org]> on Thursday September 09, 1999 @08:06AM (#1692428)
    OK, these little orbs are really cool and everything, but how much will they cost? I'm not just talking about the cost per ball; I'm talking about all of the research, development, Vomit Comet flights, programming, hardware, man-hours, and evertyhing else that goes into the making of a successful prototype. Correct me if I'm wrong, but NASA has been facing the budgetary squeeze for quite some time now by members of Congress. The space station is barely staying afloat (with no help from the Russians ;-) ), and NASA is struggling to find capital for numerous other projects. Could the money spent on this admittedly cool project have been better used elsewhere?

    The astronauts originally wanted a "tricorder"-type device; a hand-held status report would have been just fine, and a floating sphere with voice recognition is overkill for this project. Was there perhaps a simpler and less expensive way to accomplish this task?

  • Observations, and my 2 cents... (Score:3)

    by Superfreak ( 27384 ) on Thursday September 09, 1999 @08:06AM (#1692429)
    Okay - this may get a bit disjointed.

    Propulsion: I would think a stationary, counter-rotating dual blade ducted fan (to solve torque problem) with tubes would be a good way to propel it. Basically, have all the tubes open or closed all the time, but have a tiny wastegate in each to alter the airflow. I would think it could be made lighter than using separate fans for everything.

    Another nifty device to have onboard would be a laser pointer:
    (remote): Dave, there is a serious oxygen leak over here!
    (Dave): Where?
    (remote): Right there!
    etc... some of those conversations would be much easier if the remote had a means of pointing to exactly what it was talking about.

    As far as the voice recognition and control... since it costs about $10k per pound to get those astronauts up there in the first place, I think a ground controller could be paid to sit there & do nothing but watch the feedback from the remotes - if the remote is less than 90% certain what it's doing, he could clarify by keyboard...

    I was thinking a compressed gas propulsion system might work, but it would need to be something that can be done with small, lower pressure cartridges (CO2 and Nitrous Oxide come to mind...but I'm not sure I'd want a half-dozen remotes hovering around me farting Carbon Dioxide or Laughing gas...)

  • toy (Score:1)

    by darklink ( 79588 )
    oooh i want want , have it flowting around and talking to me , is any one starting to feel like its 2001 . hal hal hand me that note pad. could you see a sworm of these moving around the streets of a city .well i think i is cool.

    SPoons!
  • That's a Beowulf swarm. Or better yet, a flock. Yeah! I can see it now!

    [root@nostromo]$ wondertwin_power -enable
    Multiprocessing enabled...starting subsystems
    Nodes 1..90 engaging...
    Clustering successful. Your Sytem is Totally Flocked.
    [root@nostromo]$ glquake&
    [root@nostromo]$

  • Yeah, but can I run RedHat on my Red Ball? :)

  • The air hockey table is a good idea. I'd guessed you were going to have to use the 'Vomit Comet' for testing--you could give that work to the interns.

    Not sure if you'll read replies to your AC post (if you get an account there's a link that makes checking for replies much easier), but what kind of processor is used? Is the code written in LISP or C like most embedded code?

    Thanks.

  • I'd forgotten all about Happy Fun Ball!
    (wipes tear from face)
    Woo!

    The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
  • Now go do your homework.

    ;)
  • And yes, the fans spinning up in micro-g cause all kinds of control problems. From where I'm sitting, I can see two
    people that are using up all of our writing pads trying to solve them.

    Hi! I might have a solution. I'd guess you are using the fans in pairs, two next to each other
    on three axis. (if not, this solution is bogus)

    Anyway, set the fans up so that they counter-rotate. The spins will (roughly) cancel each other out.

    If the SMR was designed with this in mind (the structure), it could be built with a 3-axis "core" that is hollow, with the fans mounted inside, so it could thrust in 6 directions. It would be able to produce thrust in 3 directions, and change vectors quickly.

    Anyway, if you want to brainstorm, email me at "gigantin@shore.net" or start a discussion on sci.space.policy, with either "SMR" or "PSA" in the subject.

    Good luck with the project, it's a great idea! And, market the damn thing, when it's finished! 8)

    J05H
  • OK, I can sorta believe that they could give the PSA an internal (or accessible via wireless) 3D static map of its environment. I can even imagine some sort of proximity sensor so it doesn't try to fly through an object (such as an astronaut) that happens at that moment to be between it and wherever it wants to go. But I have trouble believing it will be able to do instantaneous collision avoidance with another moving body (such as an astronaut) attempting to pass through the same space at the same time.

    Just how quickly will one of these things be able to stop? And how much will it hurt if it doesn't? (Gravity might be nil, but mass is still mass.)

    -- R.

  • Re:HAL (Score:1)

    by ocie ( 6659 )
    Nah, if it's based on the SW training droid it will just give you a nasty shock.
  • Thou art hereby granted permission to do something with your life other than constantly monitor Slashdot for duplicate articles and writhe about and shout like a wrenched weasel upon finding them.

    Go! Play!

  • You could have the ball radio/IR/whatever linked to a central computer on the ship and just have the ball as a I/O device.

    I think it would be more intresting if they used Furbys with little jetpacks instead.

  • Any B5 fans out there will remember the cameras that would follow reporters around the station. Mobile, autonomous, with lights, lenses, and one or two big (quiet) fans for lift.

    Also, these were used in Crusade to explore a section of the ship that was too dangerous to send people.

    I'm glad to see these things coming around. How long will one of these things go without having to recharge? I can imagine that Sony could do a good job by porting the Aibo to a few of these for recreation.

    Chris
  • What this really reminds me of are the drones in Ian Banks Culture novels, who float around nagging the human characters.

    Wait till NASA comes out with "knife missiles".. then we're in trouble.

  • Re:My Friend the Red Ball (Score:4)

    by tgd ( 2822 ) on Thursday September 09, 1999 @08:40AM (#1692447)
    Okay, not to throw a light of doubt on this, but I'm not so sure an A/C claiming to work at NASA throwing around some ideas should really be trusted.

    Couple reasons:

    1) The fans spinning wouldn't be an issue with a simple fixed-axis gyroscopic system like they use in airplanes for the horizon control.

    2) You can't use one of those with six fans, that's the biggest proof that this guy doesn't know what he's talking about. To move around in a 2-d surface, you'd need fans to push it in each of the directions in 3-d space (6, unless you're reversing the fans, but that'd mean having air passages through the device, which uses up a lot of the interior space), PLUS you need fans to control orientation in space. Sure, you could use actuators on a system like the one I mentioned above to force it to turn against the interia of the gyroscopes, but if they were doing that, then the stability wouldn't be an issue would it?

    There's pleanty of other ways to counteract the tendancy of the device to spin when the fans turn -- like doubling up on the fans, on axis, and spinning them in opposite directions. But that's twelve fans, and still doesn't solve the problem how how to adjuct yaw, pitch, and roll.

    I dunno, I just don't find this post that likely to be real.

    I also can't imagine that carrying compressed air really would be an issue. Weight isn't an issue, only mass. And anyone whose ever had the luck to see someone knock a valve off a scuba tank can tell you that mass to thrust, you can get a lot of oomph out of compressed gas, especially in a microgravity environment.

    You'd think an engineer working on this would know the distinction.
  • Couldn't 3D motion be done a bit simpler and for less energy cost with 4 fans instead of 6? To move along the fan-less axis, just pitch 90 degrees up or down on one of the other axes first by briefly imbalancing the counterrotation. Speed of movement can hardly be a priority for this thing, and this way you need one-third less propulsion machinery, and you get two free faces for sensors/whatever.

    Niko
  • All this fuss over the control logic problems of a spherical PDA seems oddly defeatist. After all, the military has been flying fundamentally unstable jets for two decades, and some company has built a high-tech wheelchair that can keep you perfectly balanced and stable when it stands up on two wheels. Robotics research struggles to replicate human-looking movement, but moving a sphere in a very non-human way is, pardon the pun, a breeze by comparison.

    As for those complaining about how much R&D on this PDA has cost, and why they didn't just build a tricorder, the point is that NASA wants something that could be used outside the shuttle, say, to inspect heat shield tiles or investigate a crippled satellite. Any PDA data-crunching capability can be kept on a network base (AirPort anyone?), leaving only the manuevering brain in the sphere itself. If all you want is a tricorder, just soup up a f*$%#ing Palm Pilot!
  • Does it matter? Rob can throw a "feature" sticker on it you can't complain anymore. Don't you know SLASHDOT stand for? "SLASHDOT is not a news site :} ... it's a linux bar. The strict rule of real newssites make them duller. I only actually click the news article once for every 5-7 discussions I read, really.

    CY
  • Isnt that the flying bit in tron that can only say
    yes and no? I want one of those! "yes yes yes" :))

    ---
  • IEEE803.11 specs at 11Mb/s, fast enough for pretty much any application. The balls server as I/O points, with a large central computer on the space station that can handle voice recognition, and other high bandwidth/processing applications.
  • Evolution is reproducable. Hell its all about reproduction
  • Voice rec is getting pretty damn good these days actually. I have a friend at Lucent who's working on "Daisy"- a sort of computerized secretary. And even though she's working on relavtively older tech, she's VERY good at voice rec and command lookup- bad phone lines can screw her up, but I don't imagine that would be the case in space. The real problems in voice rec aren't actual recognition, but trying to figure out confused meanings (like "read" (present) and "read" (past) being two different words). Doing this requires tons more computational power for syntax and grammar analysis, which is usually way more bulky than designers want (and terrible forfloating PDAs....) But if you use a simple, constant verbal command system, there really isn't any problem, and depending on how big you want the language lookup tables to be, you can definately get "holler when it's lunch time." Holler = verb lunch time = noun when = conditional- time- related to "lunch time" command form once speech recognition is down, creating a modular language interp isn't THAT hard. It can be VERY buggy, because it's just about impossible to program for all eventualities of creative linguistic expression, but as long as you don't read the "Jaberwocky" to the thing, it should be able to do just fine.
  • Think about it people. The space shuttle and the new space station have very small tightly controlled air spaces. Also, they are at VERY low pressure, like 4 or 5 psi compared to 14.7 psi at sea level on earth. If you go spraying CO2 or anything else into the vehicle you are going to rapidly alter the air quality: this is bad. I could see the use of a small compressor, but not compressed gas canisters. As for guidence, you only need 3 fans (one on each access) and a gyroscope control system. You could counter fan rotation with the gyro system and also use the gyros for pitch/yaw/roll manuvers. Andrew
    --
    ...Linux!
  • As the user "georgeha" said, the mentioned a fan in the article:
    and a fan for propulsion
    Which I'm guessing, since I'm assuming that, the PDA is so small, and since it'll be in the zero (?) gravity of space, it'll be so light that all it'll need are a couple of teensy little fans, kinda like the ones used in laptops.. (they're _so_ small!)
  • Re: the speech recog and language parsing -- have we forgotten about the cyc project [cyc.com]?
    I think it could do what they say in the news release, just fine.

    it's gonna take a while to build the sensors and work out the locomotion stuff. By the time the ball is ready, the software has had a lot of time to grow up. It would be a much nicer place for erwin [userfriendly.org] to live.

    I think it's another reason to colonize space. ;-)

  • On 3d movement (Score:3)

    by Crutcher ( 24607 ) on Thursday September 09, 1999 @09:40AM (#1692461) Homepage
    There have been a lot of posts about how fan control would work in 3 space, and the answer is NOT 6 fans (though that would work). The minimum number of control points you need is 4, distributed evenly over the surface of the device.

    The four would give you all the mobility you would need, though the control logic would be horrible (but logic is cheap, hardware is expensive) For starters, every adjustment would use all the fans (except for maybee a few distinct special cases).

    Also, if it's gyro stabilized, your aditude adjustments would largely be gyro based, with occasional gyro spin downs using the fans.

    Personaly, I would stick a dual fan in the core (on axis, spining in alternate directions) and route inflow and out flow with valves leading to external control points. properly engineered, it could be used as a gyro as well.

    My $0.02
    -Crutcher
  • I wonder how they plan to balance the torque of the fan. Otherwise this WILL start to spin(opposite the direction of the fan rotation)
    --

  • Don't believe the AC? Do the physics. (Score:5)

    by Tau Zero ( 75868 ) on Thursday September 09, 1999 @09:44AM (#1692463) Journal
    If there's anything I hate, it's ignorance of something so basic as elementary physics.
    Okay, not to throw a light of doubt on this, but I'm not so sure an A/C claiming to work at NASA throwing around some ideas should really be trusted.
    The AC comment appears well-informed, unlike your criticism. Taking yours apart point by point:
    1) The fans spinning wouldn't be an issue with a simple fixed-axis gyroscopic system like they use in airplanes for the horizon control.
    Aircraft attitude-control systems use aerodynamic forces, not gyroscopic, to aim the nose in the desired direction. The gyros are for reference, not reaction.
    2) You can't use one of those with six fans, that's the biggest proof that this guy doesn't know what he's talking about.
    'Fraid he's right and you're not. You have exactly three perpendicular axes, so three thrust lines will do. To balance torque around each one, you have two fans per axis. Each fan pair can pull as well as push, so you do not need two fans per face. Three axes * 2 fans/axis = 6 fans.
    I also can't imagine that carrying compressed air really would be an issue.
    Look up Froude efficiency, and compare that of an air jet to a fan 4 cm across. Then compute the energy capacity of a volume of compressed air at 1000 PSI, and the same volume of NiMH battery. How long can each deliver 0.01 Newton of thrust? Show your work.

    Confucius say: Is better to be silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt. I believe the AC; I can't take you seriously.

  • I imagine one could program it to make all the same annoying noises, (and get in the way all the time.)
    I imagine that the ball dosen't need to have the
    entire memory and computing system inside it.
    All it really needs to be is a remote with the
    real work going on in a nice secure server via
    radio link.
    Stick a lil solar panel on it and it could hang out near a window and rechage itself when bored.
    In my mind, mini fans on lil arms would make for more effcient locomotion then some internal.
    Space shuttle navigation system version .89b

  • As you are inside the project, may be you could tell me: how this "space ball" is going to know where it is ?

    I can see two solution:
    a) this ball carry a very precise accelerometer
    b) you put radio emitters in the space station and the ball use these emitter to know where it is.

    And how the astronaut are going to move this ball ?:
    - vocal orders:"go left, right, up"
    - use a joystick
    - a laser pointer (as someone else suggested it)

    Is this ball is able to emit images, otherwise it must operate under the direct supervision of astronauts, which limits the usefulness of the thing...

  • Would have to be better then the tomagachi.

    little toe controls... wheeee!
  • Yes. We need a central computer called Holly ;-)
  • remember the little floating guys in 'black hole'? the movie sparked my personal science fiction obsession at a very young and impressionable age.. sigh.

    i'm also reminded of the little floating robot in one of the later installments of the hitchhikers' guide to the galaxy. ford ripped out his logic and just connected a piece of wire to his 'happy' circuit, so he was robo-orgasmic all the time. i think his name was colin.

    nothing to contribute, just reminiscing
  • Can anyone say vectored thrust ? Seen a Harrier jet flying, hovering (+yawing), forwards, backwards etc ?

    Is it not better to get the number of fans right down, the thing will probably spend 95% of it's time going 'forward' ie the way the camera faces.

    Put a tube through the center and have two contra-rotating (kill most of the torque reaction) fans in this tube. this can be pretty efficient for normal forward flight. lead several ducts from this tube to positioning thrusters that can rotate the device and/or provide minimal thrust in other directions (maybe swivel nozles, maybe more but fixed).

    You have the advantage over the Harrier that you can make the fan run reverse the Harrier is stuck with forwards only.

    Keep all the heavy bits you can near the center to reduce angular momentum. Now you only have one motor and some light control gear.

    Of course all these have the problem they only work in an atmosphere, spose you can stick on an ion drive for operation outside :-)
  • The computing power necessary to actually make this work would be great, and it makes me wonder as I often have in the past when I think about personal assistant-style bots. Since it would seem as if this is to be used within the compounds of the ship, why not have a full *powerful* computer somewhere, with a series of radio (IR, any frequency really, as long as it doesn't fry the other componants, or change the channels on the space-tv) towers to keep it ino touch. It just seems that, yes, miniturization is getting there, but as of right now, you're always going to be able to pull more out of a bigger, "landlocked" base computer, and just have this be a peripheral of it. Just a thought...
  • Good luck with the project, it's a great idea! And, market the damn thing, when it's finished! 8)

    Yeah, the market for Zero-G devices on earth is so big...
    %japh = (
    'name' => 'Niklas Nordebo', 'mail' => 'niklas@nordebo.com',
    'work' => 'www.pipe-dd.com', 'phone' => '+46-708-444705'
  • I take it (just skimmed the article) that these will only work in a zero gravity environment (so no levitation folks).... which renders it a bit useless anything other than sensory work as it has no anchor point with which to hold onto "STUFF" whilst it does other "STUFF". Unless it has an electro magnet on it shell...so then it could propel itself to a "station" magnetise itself in place and hook up R2D2 style to do the biz. Could be funky. I want one.... Anyone got a Zero G room I can play with it in?
  • Yes something like this that is vacuum certified to also inspect exterior surfaces would be exceedingly useful for astronauts.
    For example if they suspect damage to a section of the spacecraft they can simply send out one of these little guys to take a look. The alternative would be to spend several hours suiting up, outside in EVA and desuiting.
    However these things are going to need an alternate propulsion system for vacuum as opposed to those fans (nothing to push against in space). A simple compressed air system would be perfect, and would also be safe for internal use if you just compressed the normal breathing mix.
  • Uh break the fan blades? It sounds like you are assuming this thing would have fans that are not enclosed in a nacelle housing of some kind, or simply inside the body with holes for airflow. Now if I was an astronaut I would find the idea of an autonomous sphere floating around with exposed fans under its own guidance somewhat unnverving to say the least. You would not want it to get jammed in your hair or to accidently run into more personal spaces. Might be somewhat more painful that the original Star Wars dron with its zapping lasers.
  • Damn Jim, I'm a ball, not a doctor!
  • I doubt the voice recognition and analyzation software to do what they are talking about even exists, or will for awhile. 'Give a holler when it's lunch time'??? A small nitpick I know but pretty important. I wouldn't want to be fixing a leak or something when I tell the droid thingie to get me a wrench and it fetches a glass of Tang. It's definately a cool idea though.

  • Who needs a topic (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 09, 1999 @06:30AM (#1692480)
    These would make a really *cool* floating, talking beowulf cluster.
  • But who can blame you for forgetting that woofer? I can't even remember what it's name was, but it was that yellow doojobbie that hovered around Robin William's head offering snide remarks and hiding appointments from him.

    OK, I just checked at the IMDB, and it was called Weebo. What a dumb name. Cool idea, though.
  • They mentioned a fan in the article.

    George
  • Reminds me alot of B.O.B. from the old Disney flick The Black Hole. If it runs WinCE, Microsoft could market it as: Microsoft B.O.B.!!!
  • wasnt the cyc project expecting to get a thinking program out by now?
    --
  • I really don't see why it would be necessary to limit this thing to only six fans. If enough blades are used (per fan), they should be able to be made small enough to produce sufficient thrust. Granted, a dozen fans would tend to deplete the batteries faster than six would; but if power consumptionn is that big an issue, then why use six? Use four instead. Six fans tend to imply (at least to me) thinking in terms of up, down, forward, etc. In G, orientation as such ceases to exist as such. With four fans, the ball flys in its desired direction by first determineing it's desired direction, and then it calculates how much thrust is necessary by summing the vectors of the appropriate fans (technically, any number of fans would use the same method).

    An easier method would be to use several dozen small, fixed compressed air jets. Only a few would be used at any one time, and things such as yaw, pitch, etc could be accomplished by jets set tangent to the sphere's surface.
  • Dude, you may want to debug your signature...
  • "It could also sit by an astronaut, offering advice on an intricate systems upgrade" I gave up on thinking how cool this was. It reminded me of the oh-so-hightech cars of the eighties that -oh my god- talked to you. Those puppies were so cool that they advised you to fasten your seat belt ("please fasten your seatbelt"), or that your door was open ("your passenger side door is ajar").
    If our NASA elite have not yet set some sort of detection system to alert the astronauts of an oxygen leak then as of now - I have stopped supporting them.
    Lastly, I'm sure that's the first thing an astronaut wants when he is trying to think of a solution is a stupid red ball flying around his head like a horse-fly saying -

    "YOU HAVE AN OXYGEN LEAK"
    "YOU ARE GOING TO DIE SOON IF YOU DON'T THINK OF SOMETHING"
    "GOOD THING I DON'T NEED OXYGEN"
    "YOU SHOULD UPDATE YOUR CARGO BAY DOOR DRIVERS"
    "I AM A BALL, WHY AREN'T YOU LISTENING TO ME"

    I could see it now - an astronaut swating violently at some ball that is dodging his every swipe while repeating in a Johny5 voice "you have an oxygen leak, you have an oxygen leak"

    I would just save the R&D money and stick with the alert buzzer/light.

  • Re:Don't believe the AC? Do the physics. (Score:3)

    by tgd ( 2822 ) on Thursday September 09, 1999 @12:06PM (#1692493)
    One thing you may want to add to your list of things you hate: accusing someone of igorance with a criticism that demonstrates far more ignorance than the comment you are critisizing.

    Aircraft attitude-control systems use aerodynamic forces, not gyroscopic, to aim the nose in the desired direction. The gyros are for
    reference, not reaction.

    No kidding? Really? Damn, no wonder I had to push on those pedel things and turn that wheel last time I was flying a plane. I was confused for a moment. Betcha I was talking about the artificial horizon. Ooops. Probably should've spelled that out. My bad.

    Here's an experiment for you kids at home: Take the wheel off your bike. Hold on to both sides of the axle, and get someone to spin it for you. Try to rotate it. Every first grader has done that in science class (except in Kansas where the wheel doesn't exist because the Bible has the value of Pi wrong, and Man never evolved to calculate it better...). You most certainly can stabilize an object from rotational forced using three gyrosopes aligned to each axis.

    Oh, and they're frequently used in missile guidance systems for stabilization, not just referance.

    'Fraid he's right and you're not. You have exactly three perpendicular axes, so three thrust lines will do. To balance torque around each
    one, you have two fans per axis. Each fan pair can pull as well as push, so you do not need two fans per face. Three axes * 2 fans/axis = 6
    fans.

    'Fraid you're doing the same thing he did, assuming you've got to be able to control movement in three axis when maneuvering in 3-D. Obviously you've never tried it. I haven't in zero-g, obviously, but I have underwater. You need to be able to move along X, Y, and Z, plus rotate around those axis (yaw, pitch, roll). Otherwise you can't turn around. And notice in the diagrams there's a camera. Sucks if something interesting is happening behind it and it can't turn around.

    You don't need two fans per face, that's true. But unless you have them equidistant from the center of gravity, you have stability and control issues. If you have them inline, spinning in opposite directions (one fan blade has its blades inverted), then you can cancel it out. But with only six, you need to vent the air for the opposite site through the device, with as little resistance as you get on the powered side. Tough to get right, but doable. Not much room for electronics in a sphere like that after you do, however. Six just can't do it. Hell, four can't do it in 2-D, because you still have X, Y, and orientation (three axis instead of six).

    Look up Froude efficiency, and compare that of an air jet to a fan 4 cm across. Then compute the energy capacity of a volume of
    compressed air at 1000 PSI, and the same volume of NiMH battery. How long can each deliver 0.01 Newton of thrust? Show your work.

    You're operating in a nearly frictionless environment. Efficiency isn't an issue. You need accuracy in thrust. Releasing compressed gas through an accurate valve is a lot more precise than issues with varying efficiency of a fan at different speeds, and compensating for spin-up time. But that's neither here nor there. Six gas jets, six fans, either way its simply not going to work.

    Confucius say: Is better to be silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt.

    Maybe you oughta stop reading the fortune cookies, and think more about your posts.
  • Whenever I hear NASA and Star Wars together, I can't help but think of the STAR WARS SDI program. When I first read the headline, I thought that there would be some kind of PDA which controlled the STAR WARS satellites. Strange thought, but consider the fact that they're reconsidering the SDI program, it's not something beyond reality I think...
  • The fans will let it get around the crew compartments without any problems. However, it wouldn't be able to get around the cargo hold--fans don't work well in a vacuum.

    If this works, expect a larger unit for vacuum work, as NASA tries to do everything possible to reduce the number of EVAs required. You would need another propulsion system (likely a compressed-air system), some lead shielding (orbital radiation is likely to mess up your average microprocessor), and something to bleed off waste heat (you have to radiate, rather than just dump heat to the surrounding air).

  • and it says "Outlook cloudy. Try again later"

  • I agree with Hobbes. The ball itself does not have to contain the CPU. Also, sensor technology is getting very cheap (relatively), with fiber-optic laser gyros and multi-axis micro electro-mechanical system (MEMS) accelerometers under $10,000 now, and they are both about the size of a pack of smokes.

    Add to that a microthruster system using the same kind of tech that are in ink-jet printers, and you have the guts of a free-roving flying 'bot.
  • This would be great, but the only problem is that data transmission rates are as yet too slow for this type of device; after all, voice recognition requires extremely high bandwidth (no, fm or ssb won't work because it has to be digitally encoded). Not even spread spectrum or other high-bandwidth transmission methods would work. And on some missions, the latency would get kind of awkward...
  • It was in both (i think there were only 2 novels.. if there were more i've not read them). The command was (my spelling's probably off), 'prikazivat' or something similar. I forget what it meant.. command i think. Rather like the 'computer' command prefix in 'trek.
    Dreamweaver
  • Small Red Balls of Evil [tm] slowly drifting across the cabin and bumping into people's heads. They will then stare at the astronauts until the balls cause them to get cross and make a mistake.

    The ball next to the fridge has decided to call itself Dennis . . .


  • They have tested just such a thing during one of last years Shuttle flights. It was a remote control bot about the size of a soccer ball. It was maneuvered using compressed nitrogen just like the MMU's.
  • You're right, I guess that would work. Still, if you have 10 of these floating around or whatnot it might be more cost-effective to have the voice-recognition mounted on the client; processing power is not hugely expensive, and the server might already be loaded with other apps.
  • Not to start a flamewar, but there are distinctions that tgd misses persistently. In the interest of accuracy, I'm going to deconstruct his last post also.
    One thing you may want to add to your list of things you hate: accusing someone of igorance with a criticism that demonstrates far more ignorance than the comment you are critisizing.
    Careful, son. You just added English to your list of demonstrated marginal skills. At the rate you're going, you'll be in remedial classes by next week. Just a hint: I've been at this (writing to get my point across, physics, and the Net, as well as aviation) long enough to know what I'm doing. You obviously have not.
    Aircraft attitude-control systems use aerodynamic forces, not gyroscopic, to aim the nose in the desired direction. The gyros are for reference, not reaction.

    No kidding? Really? Damn, no wonder I had to push on those pedel things and turn that wheel last time I was flying a plane. I was confused for a moment. Betcha I was talking about the artificial horizon. Ooops. Probably should've spelled that out. My bad.

    Betcha you didn't know that the auto-pilot, which uses an attitude gyro, does not torque the airplane around by the little wheel spinning behind the panel; it's just a reference in space used to define "up" and "heading". All the twisting of the airplane is done with servos moving the control surfaces, just like the ball-bot will need its twisting done by pushing against the cabin air with its fans.

    Incidentally, I hope you don't forget to pull power next time you do a spin to the left. If the engine is cranked up to speed the gyro effect of the prop can hold the nose up and put you into a flat spin, and judging from your comments above I don't know if you'd be able to reliably recover from the normal situation.

    Here's an experiment for you kids at home: Take the wheel off your bike. Hold on to both sides of the axle, and get someone to spin it for you. Try to rotate it. Every first grader has done that in science class (except in Kansas where the wheel doesn't exist because the Bible has the value of Pi wrong, and Man never evolved to calculate it better...). You most certainly can stabilize an object from rotational forced using three gyrosopes aligned to each axis.
    Notice something else when doing that experiment: If you try to use the gyro wheel to torque yourself around or resist an outside torque, it precesses; the axis of rotation shifts direction. This destroys your 3-space reference. Gyro tables are gimballed and often servoed to offset bearing friction in the gimbals; the whole point is to avoid torquing the gyros, so they will remain pointing in the same direction in space.
    Oh, and they're frequently used in missile guidance systems for stabilization, not just referance.
    ... providing direction and rate information to the servo systems which control the flight surfaces and/or thrust vector. As I said, they provide a reference, not torque.
    'Fraid he's right and you're not. You have exactly three perpendicular axes, so three thrust lines will do. To balance torque around each one, you have two fans per axis. Each fan pair can pull as well as push, so you do not need two fans per face. Three axes * 2 fans/axis = 6 fans.

    'Fraid you're doing the same thing he did, assuming you've got to be able to control movement in three axis when maneuvering in 3-D. Obviously you've never tried it. I haven't in zero-g, obviously, but I have underwater. You need to be able to move along X, Y, and Z, plus rotate around those axis (yaw, pitch, roll). Otherwise you can't turn around. And notice in the diagrams there's a camera. Sucks if something interesting is happening behind it and it can't turn around.

    To turn around: Activate both yaw fans or both pitch fans in the same direction (I'm implicitly assuming that the fan pairs are coaxial, pushing along the same line through the ball's CG). Reaction from fan momentum and torque dissipated in the air causes the ball to rotate. When rotation is complete, de-spin by reversing the rotation of both fans. Voila, the camera is pointing somewhere else.

    Just a hint: you're not symmetrically buoyant in the water. Your legs are a lot heavier than your lungs, giving you a head-up bias. You can't generalize from what you experience paddling around with your hands to zero-G.

    You don't need two fans per face, that's true. But unless you have them equidistant from the center of gravity, you have stability and control issues. If you have them inline, spinning in opposite directions (one fan blade has its blades inverted), then you can cancel it out. But with only six, you need to vent the air for the opposite site through the device, with as little resistance as you get on the powered side.
    Not necessary. Air will flow over the surface of the sphere and detach on the opposite side where the converging flows cause the pressure to increase and make the boundary layer separate. Nothing needs to go through the sphere unless it's convenient, which leaves you room for nice things like cameras, computers, batteries and motors.
    Tough to get right, but doable. Not much room for electronics in a sphere like that after you do, however. Six just can't do it. Hell, four can't do it in 2-D, because you still have X, Y, and orientation (three axis instead of six).
    If you'd care to place a small wager on the results of the NASA development effort and the number of fans it requires, feel free to contact me. I love betting on a sure thing.
    Look up Froude efficiency, and compare that of an air jet to a fan 4 cm across. Then compute the energy capacity of a volume of compressed air at 1000 PSI, and the same volume of NiMH battery. How long can each deliver 0.01 Newton of thrust? Show your work.

    You're operating in a nearly frictionless environment. Efficiency isn't an issue. You need accuracy in thrust. Releasing compressed gas through an accurate valve is a lot more precise than issues with varying efficiency of a fan at different speeds, and compensating for spin-up time. But that's neither here nor there. Six gas jets, six fans, either way its simply not going to work.

    I see you failed to do the physics. Also:
    1. You're not in a frictionless environment; cabin fans produce air currents, which will continuously drag anything in their path with them. Holding position against air currents is part of the job, and it requires more or less continuous thrust.
    2. Efficiency is an issue for speed of motion (how many accelerate/stop cycles to .5 m/sec can you do before you run out of juice?) as well as operating time between recharges.
    3. You've not explained why an air jet is more precisely controllable than a fan coupled to an electric motor. The air jet is either on or off; the motor is potentially controllable from zero to max RPM in infinitesimal steps.
    I could go on, but I'm bored now.
    Maybe you oughta stop reading the fortune cookies, and think more about your posts.
    Always nice to see a man who takes his own advice. ;-)
  • It's not a personal attack on you, you know? So why insult me - particularly as you're posting anonymously and your post was moderated as redundant.

    There seems to have been some progression by the engineers since the first article (which I missed), so I would class it as an update. And new can refer to something that already exists. As in here's the first version of the doodad, and here's the new version.

  • A floating sphere! Wow, NASA has like, totally gone and invented levitation behind our backs!!!

    I hope it doesn't get sucked down the special "astronaut toilet".

    -konstant
    -konstant
  • I'd think they'd use a very structured command language, a sort of controlled english, for this, to avoid the ambiguities of casual spoken english.

    Seems like something like that was used in one of Niven and Pornelle's "Integral Trees" novels, but I can't remember which one off-hand. Anyways, to access the computer, the grad used a Russian (I think) word to get the computer's attention, followed by the necessary command.
  • Okay I have to go buy a copy of that movie now. I used to love that thing. My old copy that my mom has( I called her and asked) is totally worn out.

  • Re:Hmmm. Pokeball! (Score:3)

    by Tau Zero ( 75868 ) on Thursday September 09, 1999 @06:43AM (#1692511) Journal
    It would be pretty much trivial to have straightening vanes on all the fans, so that the net torque is zero... or not. Another solution is contra-rotating fans on opposite faces; they can either produce thrust while cancelling torque, or produce torque while cancelling thrust. This allows the fans to push, twist, or any combination along/around the axis of the fan shafts. Pairs arranged as top/bottom and left/right look easy, but a back/forward pair appears problematic for little things like the camera field of view.
  • A fan would work for moving the "flying Furby" around because it would be in the atmosphere of the main vehicle...
  • Flying one on the Vomit Comet would be a fairly easy way to shake it down, and cheap compared to a rocket launch. A business jet is certainly a lot cheaper to operate than even the Vomit Comet, can probably fly the required parabolic arc, and is likely roomy enough to test a robot intended for use in confined spaces. You just have to make sure that the robot lands on something that won't break the fan blades between periods of free fall [purrsia.com].
  • Has anyone ever seen the cartoon Captian Simaian and the Space Monkeys? I belive that this is whatever the heck the thing was that gave them advice... Much more of an anoyance than anything else...
  • No offense, folks, but I'm seeing a lot of posts offering some rather obvious ideas for providing propulsion to these things.

    Think about it: These guys are NASA engineers; I don't think a bunch of Slashdot posts are going to come up with anything they haven't thought of yet. :)

    That's not to say I don't enjoy reading them, and I'd probably enjoy reading NASA's take on propulsion ideas more, but here on Slashdot, these ideas are all academic and, for the most part, either redundant or faulty.

  • Never had a Gyro as a kid, huh? (Score:3)

    by BooRadley ( 3956 ) on Thursday September 09, 1999 @06:59AM (#1692519)
    Just use the fans for acceleration. Use pitch/roll/yaw gyroscopes for steering. That way you control spin without worring about COE.
  • The other day they had Star Wars on the Superstation I believe. I had forgotten what that thing looked like and when I saw the picture of this NASA type assistant looks quite similar although orange instead of white and blue and silvery.

  • My Friend the Red Ball (Score:5)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 09, 1999 @07:02AM (#1692523)

    I figure I may as well chime in here. I'm one of the research scientists at NASA working on the PSA (though it's been renamed SMR, Spacecraft MicroRobot, nobody seems to want to call it that). Right now, we have a version that floats on an air hockey table in two dimensions (actually, a fifteen ton granite slab is the table, and the PSA has an air pump so that it floats like a hovercraft), just as a proof of concept and to test control algorithms. We are currently designing the gimbal to test the three dimensional (though larger, since it will still be a prototype) version, which we are also designing right now.

    As for a few of the things posted by other people: the speech technology is pretty far along. If you look at the NYT this morning, there is an article about a car computer that accepts speech commands. There are still many issues that we need to work on, but it's not that far off.

    The current plan for propulsion are a bank of six fans (not pictured on the model). We have four fans on the 2D version, so 6 will give us enough to move in 3D. Compressed air is a nice idea, but the question becomes how to direct it, how to generate it (assumming that you don't want to have to carry a canister, which is very heavy), and how much force you can actually get from it.

    I like the image of a PSA avatar (the dancing paperclip).

    We can test it in microgravity in two ways: First, we are building the gimbal that I mentioned above, which allows us to test it in a limited range here in the lab. Second, we will use the "Vomit Comet", the plane that goes into a long dive, providing low-gravity for about thirty seconds at a time.

    And yes, the fans spinning up in micro-g cause all kinds of control problems. From where I'm sitting, I can see two people that are using up all of our writing pads trying to solve them.

  • I wonder if these balls will:

    Help you practice your lightsabre skills.

    Actually work as a tennis ball;

    Always end its statements by 'But then again, I'm just a ball!'

    Come coated with Nerf foam for stress relief.

    :)

    "There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."

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