/ News
Tiny flying robot soars like a ... jellyfish?
For centuries, humans looking to tame the skies have tried to mimic the movements of birds and insects. But engineers building flying machines have now found an unlikely muse: the ocean-dwelling jellyfish.
A tiny flying robot built at a lab in New York University mimics the gently puffing movements of the efficient swimmer's gelatinous bulb — not to paddle through water, but to stay aloft in air.
"Our [robot] is an aerial jellyfish if you will," Leif Ristroph, assistant professor of mathematics at NYU who designed the tiny machine, told NBC News. The four-winged robot is wire-connected to a power source. Like an umbrella, the robot's four wings collapse and open, "squirting" the air downward and allowing it to lift off.
"No one’s ever built this, and as far as we know nature never built it either to fly in air," said Ristroph, who was to present his design at the Fluid Dynamics Conference in Washington on Sunday. "Maybe that indicates that it’s a bad idea? In any case we got it to work, so maybe not that bad."
Leif Ristroph / NYU. The jelly-bot rests beside a quarter.
Water and air are both fluids, so the rules governing movement in either media are similar. Buoyancy helps stay afloat in water, but the real difficulty staying up in air is generating a lift to balance the body weight of the craft, Ristroph explained.
Other flying robots, like the tiny robotic bee built at Harvard's Wyss Institute, or the H2bird flapping-wing drone built at a lab at Berkeley, sense the direction and location and adjust their movements to stay in the air.
But Ristroph's pint-sized robots are "sort of dumb," he said. With no fancy sensors, the bots' physical design ensures that they stay upright just by opening and flapping their wings.
"That's the beauty of the design," Ristroph said, "It doesn't need a 'smart' design to help it recover."
Very tiny flying robots, each just centimeters across like his demo prototype, are best suited to adopt this spare design. And how might they ever be used? "[You'd] make a hundred of them and throw 'em up into the air and monitor the air quality above NYC — the pollutants or CO2," Ristroph said, making for a "nice peace-time application."
Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/tiny-flying-robot-soars-jellyfish-2D11641780
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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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