The current issue of the IEEE Spectrum Insider has a video interview with Dean Kamen founder of DEKA Research (and inventor of the segway, iBOT, and founder of the FIRST robotics competitions). He answers five questions on the future of robotics, the hype surrounding the segway, and education.
Watch Dean Kamen’s interview here.
Kevin Knuth
Albany NY
Posted under Entrepreneurship, Inventions, Research, Robotics, Technology
This post was written by drknuth on March 29, 2008
Dean Kamen, an engineer was on The Colbert Report last night discussion his latest invention: the Vapor Compression Distiller. This device takes dirty or salinated water and produces clean fresh water. The distiller is produced by Dean Kamen’s engineering compand Deka Research, and they are aiming to distribute it world-wide to help solve ongoing and future water shortage distasters.
While I do not know precisely how this distiller works, in general a distiller would boil the water, collect the steam in baffles and let it condense into water and flow out of the machine.
Dean Kamen claims that this machine cleans all forms of dirty water. I am not sure how this is possible without membranes or filters. Any volatiles in the water with a boiling point less than or equal to that off water will boil off and possibly be collected in the baffles.
Regardless, it is an impressive machine as it will save thousands of lives.
Kevin Knuth
Albany NY
Posted under Entrepreneurship, Inventions, Technology
This post was written by drknuth on March 21, 2008
During the second spacewalk of the STS-123 mission, the crew began assembling Dextre. Dextre is the newest member of the International Space Station’s Mobile Servicing System, and will act as a repair and construction robot for the ISS’s exterior. Dextre is enormous “standing” or rather floating at 12 feet tall. He has an 8 foot shoulder space and two 11 foot arms!
From National Geographic News, Astronaut Garrett Reisman stated,
“Now I wouldn’t go as far to say that we’re worried it’s going to go run amok and take over the space station or turn evil or anything because we all know how it’s operated and it doesn’t have a lot of its own intelligence,” Reisman told the Associated Press last week.
“But I’ll tell you something,” Reisman said. “He’s enormous, and to see him with his giant arms, it is a little scary. It’s a little monstrous, it is.”
Dextre is provided by the Canada Space Agency, who has for years supported the robotic arm on the shuttle.
This is a video of the installation:
High resolution – 50.3 MB
Low resolution – 2.6 MB
More videos and images can be found here.
Kevin Knuth
Albany NY
Posted under Exploration, Intelligent Systems, Research, Robotics, Space, Technology
This post was written by drknuth on March 18, 2008
The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) captured for the first time ever an avalanche in progress on another world!
These images were taken with the Hi Resolution Imaging Experiment (HiRISE) flying on the MRO. This image was taken at 34° latitude and 235.8° longitude, which is in Mars’ north polar region. The geology of this region is that of a layered dome of material, and this cliff is located at the edge of it. The cliff is about one half of a mile high! (70 m = 2300 ft) and is incredibly steep with slopes as great as 60°. The cloud of dust is about 590 feet across and extends about 625 feet from the base of the cliff.
This image was taken on February 18, 2008 at 1:05pm Martian local time. In the northern hemisphere of Mars, spring began on December 10, 2007, and the Carbon Dioxide ice (seen in the left side of the image at the top of the cliff) is beginning to thaw in the spring “heat”. The Carbon Dioxide ice does not melt, instead it sublimes (turning from a solid to a gas). As it does sediments and ice in these steep cliffs give way to avalanches.
The scientists have been watching these particular locations with the hope of catching one in action. They have succeeded!
Here you can compare before (PSP_007140_2640) and after (PSP_007338_2640) photos.
Kevin Knuth
Albany NY
Posted under Astronomy, Exploration, Mars, Space
This post was written by drknuth on March 11, 2008
I recently received a comment on my post on controlling NXT robots with Matlab that pointed me to the RWTH – Mindstorms NXT Toolbox for MATLAB®, which is a public domain Matlab package that enables one to interface with and control LEGO mindstorms.
The RWTH – Mindstorms NXT Toolbox for MATLAB® was developed as a student project in the Institute of Imaging and Computer Vision at RWTH Aachen University in Aachen Germany. It provides a Matlab interface with the NXT brick that includes Bluetooth communication, sensor interface and motor interface. It requires a working Matlab license, of course.
The package is very easy to set up. It took me less than ten minutes to successfully test the example programs over Bluetooth.
There are some very nice motor features, such as motor synchronization and speed ramp-up and ramp-down.
I have yet to explore how easy it is to modify or extend the code, but it ought to be a straightforward matter.
The package can be downloaded from
http://www.mindstorms.rwth-aachen.de
Kevin Knuth
Albany NY
Posted under Computation, Fun, Intelligent Systems, Lego, NXT, Research, Robotics, Software, Technology
This post was written by drknuth on March 9, 2008
