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The Robot Explorer That Will Navigate Jupiter’s Liquid Moon
NASA's Europa Jupiter System Mission, set for 2026, will be the first survey Jupiter's frozen moon. Scientists also plan to explore the moon's liquid oceans, which are buried under 6km of ice. Getting through that will be tough. But once we hit water, Eurpoa's interior will be explored by the most advanced autonomous underwater vehicle ever built.
The Deep Phreatic Thermal Explorer (DEPTHX) is the brainchild of Dr. Bill Stone, CEO of Stone Aerospace in Austin, Texas. It has been developed by his team in concert with Carnegie Mellon University, the Southwest Research Institute, the University of Texas at Austin, the Colorado School of Mines, and NASA Ames Research Center. The DEPTHX is designed to explore and map submerged areas while collecting water and core samples. Unlike the Mars Rovers, the incredible distance to Europa—roughly 5.2 AU on average—and constantly changing aqueous environment preclude any sort of Earth-based control system. Instead, the DEPTHX will have to think for itself.
Bill Stone first had the idea for the DEPTHX in 1999 while working on an underwater survey project. By 2003 NASA had granted DEPTHX a three-year, $5 million development project. For the next three years Stone's team worked through a multitude of initial designs before reaching the current egg shape in 2006. The DEPTHX is roughly 13 feet long and eight feet wide. Packed into this frame are 54 sonars for navigation, 36 computers for information processing, six thrusters and twin battery stacks, a suite of accelerometers, velocity loggers, observational instruments including liquid and core samplers as well as an onboard microscope to hunt for microbial life. It communicates with the the Valkyrie mother craft using a single fiber optic tether as well as Wi-Fi. And to keep all 1.3 tons of this machine floating, the DEPTHX employs two variable-buoyancy engines that sense the temperature, salinity and pressure of the water around it and adjusts the amount of water it takes on to adjust its relative buoyancy down to 3,280 feet.
The most impressive feature of the DEPTHX is its self-guided navigation. An array of 54 sonars can locate objects within a 300 meter radius to map the machine's surroundings while the onboard accelerometers, velocity loggers and guidance instruments all help to inform the DEPTHX about its position within the space. What's more, the soar array performs double duty by generating a 3D map of what it senses ion real time. The technique is known as 3D Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (3D-SLAM) and allows the robot to navigate for itself. The DEPTHX is, according to Stone Aerospace, "literally an all-seeing eyeball. Using forward and backward-looking range sensors and very sophisticated real-time mathematics, DEPTHX can locate itself within a geometric environment, even one that it just explored for the first time only seconds previously. The 3D-SLAM accuracy on DEPTHX is approximately 1 meter anywhere within a 500-meter cube about the vehicle."
Source: http://gizmodo.com/5928772/the-robot-explorer-that-will-navigate-jupiters-liquid-moon
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Founded by Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov in February 2011 with the participation of leading Russian specialists in the field of neural interfaces, robotics, artificial organs and systems.
The main goals of the 2045 Initiative: the creation and realization of a new strategy for the development of humanity which meets global civilization challenges; the creation of optimale conditions promoting the spiritual enlightenment of humanity; and the realization of a new futuristic reality based on 5 principles: high spirituality, high culture, high ethics, high science and high technologies.
The main science mega-project of the 2045 Initiative aims to create technologies enabling the transfer of a individual’s personality to a more advanced non-biological carrier, and extending life, including to the point of immortality. We devote particular attention to enabling the fullest possible dialogue between the world’s major spiritual traditions, science and society.
A large-scale transformation of humanity, comparable to some of the major spiritual and sci-tech revolutions in history, will require a new strategy. We believe this to be necessary to overcome existing crises, which threaten our planetary habitat and the continued existence of humanity as a species. With the 2045 Initiative, we hope to realize a new strategy for humanity's development, and in so doing, create a more productive, fulfilling, and satisfying future.
The "2045" team is working towards creating an international research center where leading scientists will be engaged in research and development in the fields of anthropomorphic robotics, living systems modeling and brain and consciousness modeling with the goal of transferring one’s individual consciousness to an artificial carrier and achieving cybernetic immortality.
An annual congress "The Global Future 2045" is organized by the Initiative to give platform for discussing mankind's evolutionary strategy based on technologies of cybernetic immortality as well as the possible impact of such technologies on global society, politics and economies of the future.
Future prospects of "2045" Initiative for society
2015-2020
The emergence and widespread use of affordable android "avatars" controlled by a "brain-computer" interface. Coupled with related technologies “avatars’ will give people a number of new features: ability to work in dangerous environments, perform rescue operations, travel in extreme situations etc.
Avatar components will be used in medicine for the rehabilitation of fully or partially disabled patients giving them prosthetic limbs or recover lost senses.
2020-2025
Creation of an autonomous life-support system for the human brain linked to a robot, ‘avatar’, will save people whose body is completely worn out or irreversibly damaged. Any patient with an intact brain will be able to return to a fully functioning bodily life. Such technologies will greatly enlarge the possibility of hybrid bio-electronic devices, thus creating a new IT revolution and will make all kinds of superimpositions of electronic and biological systems possible.
2030-2035
Creation of a computer model of the brain and human consciousness with the subsequent development of means to transfer individual consciousness onto an artificial carrier. This development will profoundly change the world, it will not only give everyone the possibility of cybernetic immortality but will also create a friendly artificial intelligence, expand human capabilities and provide opportunities for ordinary people to restore or modify their own brain multiple times. The final result at this stage can be a real revolution in the understanding of human nature that will completely change the human and technical prospects for humanity.
2045
This is the time when substance-independent minds will receive new bodies with capacities far exceeding those of ordinary humans. A new era for humanity will arrive! Changes will occur in all spheres of human activity – energy generation, transportation, politics, medicine, psychology, sciences, and so on.
Today it is hard to imagine a future when bodies consisting of nanorobots will become affordable and capable of taking any form. It is also hard to imagine body holograms featuring controlled matter. One thing is clear however: humanity, for the first time in its history, will make a fully managed evolutionary transition and eventually become a new species. Moreover, prerequisites for a large-scale expansion into outer space will be created as well.
Key elements of the project in the future
• International social movement
• social network immortal.me
• charitable foundation "Global Future 2045" (Foundation 2045)
• scientific research centre "Immortality"
• business incubator
• University of "Immortality"
• annual award for contribution to the realization of the project of "Immortality”.
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