Thousands of people are trying to evacuate, but like the banks of the Thames, the mobile networks are overwhelmed.

It is time to send in the drones.

Professor Nick Jennings prefers to call them unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). He is one of the chief scientific advisers to the government, and drew up this fictional scenario as part of his multi-million pound Orchid research project.

Prof Jennings believes the key to mastering the pandemonium that follows large-scale disasters lies in intelligent, co-ordinated action between man and machine.

The system he is testing will be ready next year, and will allow teams of drones to help emergency services from the air with minimal human supervision. It is yet another non-military spin-off in the burgeoning field of drone technology.

After studying real disasters like the Haiti earthquake of 2010, Prof Jennings realised that the key to successful disaster response – amidst all the chaos – is the intelligent allocation of tasks and resources, and humans on the ground are not always best placed to make those life and death decisions.

“Humans can do things like fill in maps based on what they see, starting from a blank map, which is exactly what happened in Haiti. What buildings are damaged, where facilities are, that kind of basic crowd-sourcing already happens,” says Prof Jennings.

“But we want to augment that with autonomous flying vehicles that are able to get a view of the bigger picture on the ground, to improve situational awareness. They can figure out where the disaster responders should go, where the resources should go.”

In his proposed system, UAVs will be launched immediately to monitor the unfolding disaster from the air.

They will provide real-time footage to disaster responders on the ground, who can request specific information from the drones using hand-held electronic devices.

They might ask, for example, ‘how stable is this building’s roof?’ before entering to look for victims.

“We could also have robots on the ground, that would go into areas too dangerous for humans,” says Prof Jennings.

His team is looking at ways that information from members of the public sent by smartphones could be integrated into this system.

Research into non-military applications for drone technology is a booming area, with companies vying to find commercial applications.

From their origins as expensive pieces of military hardware, the price of drones themselves has fallen dramatically, to the point where they are even within the budget of the hobbyist.

Private individuals are adapting these drones, which are capable of programmable flight paths, for their own uses, including everything from wildlife surveillance to farm management.

BAE Systems recently unveiled its research into technology that could allow pilot-less planes to fly in UK airspace, potentially for operations like border control and search and rescue.

But what makes Prof Jennings’s research stand out is that he is interested in allowing drones to fly as squadrons, improvising their own flight paths as a unit in response to new information, without human intervention.

The teams of drones that will patrol a disaster have already been tested extensively in Sydney, Australia.

The drones he uses are in fact Mikrocopter Hexacopters, which have six rotary blades and are just under a metre in width.

“The underlying research is based on aspects of artificial intelligence, getting software to do clever things, and underpinning that is a form of mathematics”, explains Prof Jennings.

During tests, the drones are flown as a unit and allocated multiple tasks from the ground. What is in fact being tested on site is the mathematical algorithms that control the drones’ joint movement.

If successful, these algorithms will direct the drones so that they are in the optimal position to collect information requests from humans and distribute them back to the ground.

‘Decentralised coordination algorithms’ are intelligent enough to deal with out of sync data requests, lost data, and can even predict where future requests will come from. They allow the drones to communicate between each other and work effectively as a team.

The algorithms themselves have already been tested on computer software, like RoboCup Rescue Simulator, that simulates human catastrophes with mock ups of people fleeing towns and cities.

“The next stage,” says Prof Jennings, “is to run some mock disasters in open spaces, and have individual human actors in there, interacting with the robots, doing it for real.”

This is scheduled to take place in October.

A fully operational system is said to be 18 months away.

Several police forces are already interested, Pof Jennings says, and he hopes both governments and NGOs will take up the technology.

So if in the future you are unfortunate enough to find yourself caught up in a terrorist attack or natural disaster and see a robot hovering above your head, take heart – help may be closer than you think.

Source: BBC News

These proposed exobots could efficiently explore our local galactic neighborhood and help locate any extraterrestrials that may be sending radio signals in our direction.

After 50 years of searching the heavens with radio telescopes and coming up empty, the SETI Institute’s search for extraterrestrial intelligence may need an extra robotic boost.

In the current issue of the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, John D. Mathews, a Penn State University professor of electrical engineering, offers his vision of a future populated by helpful and cost-effective exobots.

“It’s extremely expensive to put humans in space,” Mathews told The Huffington Post. “It’s relatively cheap to put robotic vehicles in space. It’s the path I started exploring and realized along the way that maybe we’ve elevated ET to this sort of god-like creature with amazing technology, and maybe that’s not true — maybe that’s why we haven’t found ET.”

Mathews suggests that extraterrestrials may be traveling the same path to the stars as humans are, sending robots instead of living beings.

“If we explore our solar system, we’ll use robots first,” he said. “Humans may follow, and we can’t launch everything from Earth because of the cost. We need to have robots reproduce themselves. Furthermore, they would communicate using very narrow-beam laser systems. If ET is doing that, it makes them very difficult for us to see, except by accident.”

NASA took its first step in using humanoid robots in space last year when Robonaut 2 hitched a ride to the International Space Station on board one of the final space shuttle missions.

R2 was created to help with specific tasks, and with many more robots planned for future space endeavors (like the two mechanical men at right), it’s a natural leap to have robots help make that first contact with an alien civilization.

But there are still some who oppose reaching out to ETs.

In 2010, famed British astrophysicist Stephen Hawking said he believed aliens are out there, but cautioned against trying to make contact with them, fearing it might turn out very badly for Earth.

“Hawking is concerned about the possibility of betraying our presence, that, if they were to come here, it might not be good for us,” said Seth Shostak, senior SETI astronomer. “It’s hard for me to believe that they actually have (hostile) intentions on us,” he added.

Shostak told AOL News that the search for aliens is like listening to a radio station: “When you tune in your favorite DJ, he doesn’t know you’ve tuned him in, so there’s no danger in SETI.”

Mathews agrees that there’s probably nothing to worry about if aliens pick up on any signals humans send into deep space.

“Unless there’s a way around the limitation of the speed of light, it’s very difficult for me to see why anyone — why ETs — would want to come to Earth in robotic form to do any harm. The barrier is immense, but if there’s a way around the speed of light, all bets are off.”

Check out this SETI video:
[youtube width="500" height="344"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJ_oNK8jOkA[/youtube]

The Penn State engineering professor would like to see humans go back to the moon to establish a robotic factory. From there, he envisions sending exobots to asteroids to monitor the many large space rocks that pose potential threats as their orbits sometimes bring them close to Earth.

These exobots could aid the search for alien signals and might eventually intercept one from an extraterrestrial robot coming toward Earth. “As we go out into the solar system, we might actually find that ET is already here in the form of robots,” Mathews said.

“We need to make decisions on what we will do when approached or when we discover that we’re not alone, because I firmly believe we are not alone.”

“It was important to me that the odours and chemicals came from within the robots and that they were an integrated means for them to communicate with the humans who would surround them. Each robot that I have augmented with a ‘sweat gland’ emits a particular chemical that has a specific effect on humans and the chemical has been chosen to further enable the robot’s primary function.

In the case of the bomb disposal robot the ‘sweat gland’ releases the smell of human fear. It has been proven that humans can identify this specific smell and it tends to enhance cognitive performance in. I propose that this robot would enable surrounding humans to work more effectively and to differentiate dangerous situations from false alarms.

In the case of the picker robot. It releases a chemical called androstadienone, which is found in male sweat. This has be shown in research to effect mood in females under certain circumstances. I have speculated that this robot when used on a production line could enhance the performance of female employees in it’s vicinity.”

Author: Cory Doctorow | Source: Boing Boing [Jun 28th, 2011]

Part of the Robotic Lander Development Project at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, the prototype is part of an attempt to create landers not only capable of performing science and exploration research, but fit to cope with landing on airless bodies, such as the Moon and near-Earth asteroids, without the need for aero-braking and parachutes.

In this flight, the robotic lander flew up to 2.13 meters for 27 seconds, before landing safely. This proves it could control its position, orientation and hover independently. Despite these successes, however, this is just the start — more flight tests are planned for a lander to reach heights of up to 30 meters for around a minute.

Video and image: NASA Marshall Spaceflight Center

Source: Wired.co.uk [Jun 23rd, 2011]

On July 22 my 13-year-old son, Patrick, tied his shoelaces. It was a moving occasion. For the first time in his life he had performed this routine but intricate task, on his own and unaided.

He went on to cut up his own steak at dinner, lift a glass of orange juice to his lips, and pick up a grape between forefinger and thumb. Each new achievement was a cause for pride and satisfaction.

We had just spent five days with Touch Bionics, a medical technology company based in Livingstone in Scotland. The company had manufactured and fitted him with an ectro-mechanical hand that responds to muscle activity in the arm, transforming it into movement in the powered fingers and thumb.

Patrick had become the youngest of the small number of people round the world – some 1,400 or so – fitted with the Touch Bionic prosthetic. He was the “bionic boy”.

When he was nine months old, my son fell victim to a vicious strain of meningitis. He also developed septicaemia (blood poisoning) and was on the edge of death for many days, unconscious in intensive care for three weeks, and spent three months in St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington, London.

He beat the disease, thanks to his fighting spirit and the skill of the staff at St Mary’s. But it took a terrible toll. His right leg was amputated below the knee, as was most of his left hand. His shortened left arm ended as a stump of scar tissue, with the growth plates between the bones of his arm permanently damaged. continue reading, telegraph.co.uk

Now a robotics team from Leeds University, working with Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, is preparing a machine which they hope will solve one of its enduring mysteries.

The pyramid, known as the Pyramid of Khufu after the king who built it around 2,560BC, is the only wonder of the ancient world still standing. At its heart are two rooms known as the King’s Chamber and the Queen’s Chamber. Two shafts rise from the King’s Chamber at 45-degree angles and lead to the exterior of the monument. They are believed to be a passageway designed to fire the king’s spirit into the firmament so that he can take his place among the stars.

In the Queen’s Chamber, there are two further shafts, discovered in 1872. Unlike those in the King’s Chamber, these do not lead to the outer face of the pyramid

No one knows what the shafts are for. In 1992, a camera sent up the shaft leading from the south wall of the Queen’s Chamber discovered it was blocked after 60 metres by a limestone door with two copper handles. In 2002, a further expedition drilled through this door and revealed, 20 centimetres behind it, a second door.

“The second door is unlike the first. It looks as if it is screening or covering something,” said Dr Zahi Hawass, the head of the Supreme Council who is in charge of the expedition. The north shaft bends by 45 degrees after 18 metres but, after 60 metres, is also blocked by a limestone door.

Now technicians at Leeds University are putting the finishing touches to a robot which, they hope, will follow the shaft to its end. Known as the Djedi project, after the magician whom Khufu consulted when planning the pyramid, the robot will be able to drill through the second set of doors to see what lies beyond.

Dr Robert Richardson, of the Leeds University School of Mechanical Engineering, said they would continue the expedition until they reach the end of the shafts.

“We have been working on the project for five years,” he said. “We have no preconceptions. We are trying to gain evidence for other people to draw conclusions. There are two shafts. The north shaft is blocked by a limestone door and nothing has penetrated that door. With the south shaft a previous team has measured the thickness of the stone, drilled through it and put a camera through it and found there was another surface. We are going to determine how thick that is and we could drill through it. We are preparing the robot now and expect to send it up before the end of the year. It’s a big question, and it’s very important not to cause unnecessary damage. We will carry on until we find the answer. We hope to get all the data possible which will be sufficient to answer the questions.” Source: independent.co.uk

The engineers are part of a manufacturing cooperative called Astro-Technology SOHLA, which is based in Osaka Prefecture, a local governing unit in the Kansai region on Honshu – the main island of Japan. The huge development costs could make it difficult for the group’s plans to materialize, but the association is poised to try. They feel the project could boost Japan’s manufacturing industry by showing the public that small and mid-size companies can have lofty goals and be competitive, the engineers said.

Japan is known for its advanced robot manufacturing technology, and the association stated that it would be able to use its expertise in dealing with radiation and heat to develop a robot that could function on the lunar surface, reported the Daily Yomiuri.

Last year, Astro-Technology SOHLA successfully built a satellite that they named Maido Ichigo. The Daily Yomiuri reported that the association is tentatively naming the human-like robot Maido-kun, in honor of the satellite.

The robot’s estimated cost is approximately 1 billion yen (about $10.6 million U.S.). The Japanese central government and the Japanese Aerospace Agency (JAXA) are preparing to send a research robot to the moon in 2015, and Astro-Technology SOHLA hopes that their robot design will be able to accompany it on the planned mission.

JAXA had previously considered sending a two-legged robot to the moon, but experts felt that a wheeled robot would encounter less technical issues, and would be more stable to travel on the moon’s sandy surface.

Meanwhile, NASA is already planning to send a human-like robot, called Robonaut 2, to the International Space Station aboard the space shuttle Discovery, set to launch in September. The dexterous robot will be the first human-like robot to become a permanent resident at the space station. The robot consists of a head and torso with two arms and two hands, but no legs. Source: Space.com