One year ago today: May 2, 2013, 1958 Dodge Coronet?
Five years ago today: May 2, 2009, computer talk.
Ten years ago today: May 2, 2004, I consider buying a store.
Here is Miguelito test driving the red scooter to locate that rattle. Here’s your typical Florida spring afternoon. Palm trees and puffy clouds that provide no relief. We got into more detail of what he can weld and aluminum is not included. I’ve read before about the difficulties of welding aluminum and now will look into it with fervor. Indigenous fervor. I see no alternative to aluminum. So it is time to familiarize with the topic.
I just threw that last one in there to see if you are paying attention. Other than that, hey, I’m fine. This is not a crab session for ailments, but my policy of telling what it is really like to get old from over here, a place you don’t have to give a single damn about. The skinny on aging without having to ask close relatives. Interesting angle.
There’s no connection but I stayed in the shade and read up on asteroid mining. Little joke there, like you should not study that subject in the direct sunlight. No? Anyway, maybe I’ve been looking at space travel backwards. Instead of devising ways to lift Earth resources up to space, would it not be better to lower space resources back to the ground? To the greens, no, it won’t upset the ecology. Tons of the stuff rains down every day for eons. I won’t live to see this mining, another reason to hate the space shuttle. The shuttle program was the equivalent of Columbus discovering America, but instead of exploring it, he had sailed around Jamaica 600 times and went home.
3D printers and space fuel, that’s all we need to make it go. All the other resources and technology already exit. For those who don’t have time to look it all up, I’ll help out. What mining companies seek is “free ore”, meaning that which requires very little refining. The problem with Earth metals is if they don’t bond with oxygen or silicon, they sink into the core. Those that do bond, such as copper and iron, need to be expensively un-bonded before we can use them. Yet, a single M-type asteroid or meteoroid, of which there are millions, would only have to be a mile in diameter to yield more gold, silver, and platinum than has been mined in all of history. And the metals would be fairly evenly dispersed throughout the bulk.
Why the sudden interest in asteroid mining? Money, need I explain more? I don’t need to be an accountant, but I am. Those asteroids need robots. And the asteroids will pay back ten times what is invested. There’s nothing like that left on Earth, not where you live long anyway. You might say that asteroid profits are out of this world. Don’t hit me. The point is, I firmly believe the initial mining has to be done by robots which can operate autonomously in a vacuum. Fate or not, that is precisely the only type of robot we ever considered over here. Let the teenage boys use them for combat to the death, those and their fast cars.
Trivia, and why is trivia different on this blog? Because even in the age of Google and Wiki, most trivia is monotonous repetition gleaned from other like locations. We can do better. Who is Henrietta Lacks? She died in 1950 but the association here is that her cells have been on those space shuttles. You see, when she died, her cancer cells didn’t. Normally such cells divide three times or so and expire, but hers kept on and are still used today because they are “immortal”.
If you have not been following the lost Malaysian jetliner, that’s understandable. It isn’t news any more. But the latest is that two Iranians had boarded the plane with stolen passports. The tracking transponders were deliberately turned off. No debris has been found. And every country in the flight path has denied everything they can, possibly more. I did not know there are hundreds airports the plane could have landed. So it isn’t over yet. No crash means an inside job. By somebody who knew how to disable every cell phone on board. But why steal an airplane? As usual, the answer is simple but nobody has thought of it yet. My guess is the plane is in Diego Garcia.
Let’s take a closer look at the hypothetical train ride to Washington. You know, like my hypothetical trip to the Grand Canyon five months ago. It says here the train from Miami is specially equipped to carry bicycles as ordinary baggage. That’s something I will triple-check. I’ve been planning some time off to develop robot control algorithms (not the software, just the charts). Could this be combined? The fare is $312 as I’m not a senior yet (anyway, the Amtrak discounts are worse than any jokes I tell here).
This morning was a robotic brainstorming session, a push to get a working robot that does more than the trivial cases exampled on-line. At first glance, this may appear as robot-talk, but it is presented as an insight to how I approach an unfamiliar problem.
Assumption: two wheel-drive. Definitely wheels, anything else is too difficult. Therefore pull rather than push. Steering? By axle, if so, is the steering motor fixed? By differential wheel-speed control? What are the difficulties of driving straight forward with two independent motors? Both methods require two motors.
Drive motors require speed and direction controls, but also acceleration controls, very important. Speed and direction should be separate subroutines. I want identical number of code lines in each module, all local variables, and feedback capability even if not used. Acceleration needs minimum slow creep, regular drive, hi-speed spurt capability, and emergency stop.
To again avoid the trivial, the robot must move under sensor control. Determine the longest straight path in one of eight directions. Move toward it, constantly measuring distance until <500mm. Then stop, measure again. Do-while for 300,000ms or until all directions except direct reverse <500cm.
Stop and beep. Advanced project? Return to start by same or best known path. Side note, most robots examined seem to move forward by internal command. Once a longest path is determined, why not aim a laser pointer at the spot and drive toward it. Straighter path. Possible problem, no or too-weak reflection.
I have placed an order for 7 Arduino Uno, 6 with bootloader, 1 without, plus 28pin sockets for all. $54.02. That’s more than I have crystals to control. What did you plan out today, Ken? The sports channel? Get the Orville Redenbacker, real jocks know that stuff really mellows out the couch toots.
ADDENDUM
It’s a thought experiment only, but yes, the Arduinos can be ganged together to operate in parallel. This is a quantum leap in complexity. I do not have the equipment to test this theory. I’ll provide a plain-English description, so have fun with this. If you review Arduino code, including my own publications, they are limited to single-tasks. While a few on-line examples get fairly complicated, they are still controlling one chore at a time. But even this operation is enough to visibly slow the Arduino down except for simple operations like making lights blink.
If the code could be decentralized, one Arduino could be dedicated to turning the wheels while another operates the sonar sensor, and so on. This would drastically increase speed and make the robot react faster than humans. I’ve already explained the standalone chips cost only 1/7th as much as a full-scale circuit board. That makes them affordable even to me. I got the idea from reading tutorials published by British electronics sites. I’ve decided to place an order for the chips, called ATmega328. (I might have done this a year ago if I’d been able to get a straight answer about how to make crystals work.)
I’ve contacted some attendees from the NOVA meet-up concerning the possibility of setting up at least an e-mail address in common. The monthly sessions are two widespread to keep everyone congruent and I’m hoping some of these guys know how to hack routers and other useful things—but I’ve been wrong about the Internet Generation before. Most of them don’t understand my questions.
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