Mach 1.8

Spike Aerospace Company, recently has built a prototype supersonic jet for business and commercial use: the S-512. It tops at a ridiculous mach 1.8! That is nearly two times the speed of sound! The best part of this prototype and design is the fact that it is a passenger aircraft. Until recently, there were only a handful of passenger supersonic jets, and since 2003, the last of them have been decommissioned, and even so, they traveled at mach 1.5 and below.

So what is stopping us from all getting one? For one, Money; it costs $80,000,000. Also, This model is a prototype, and has not actually been tested with passengers; it is a theoretical craft, with all of the kinks not worked out. It is, to my knowledge, still a bit of a mystery, as to what would happen to un-equipped businessmen or children at the point when the plane went supersonic. Supersonic jets, when entering those speeds, create a sonic boom due to the compression of air in front of and around the aircraft. The people may go deaf because of the sound. Naturally, there would be no great bodily harm, because the internal air is contained. The safety features that are placed in larger planes, would need to be altered, because opening the hatch at supersonic speeds would likely result in many deaths. Despite some cons, I have to say that shortening a 16 hour trip down to eight is greatly luring. I predict that there will be developments in the coming year in this field, but commercial jets will not break the sound barrier for at least another ten years, and several accidents. 

Windows Phone

I got a Nokia Lumia for Christmas, and it is basically the first real phone that I've ever had. It is kind of sad, getting it when I'm seventeen, but whatever. Anyways, I have used the android software as well as the IOS7 software on my parents phones, and I have to say that windows is majorly underrated.

Frankly, I have gotten a little bored with apple. They are not progressing their software at their previous rate, and android has basically caught up. Also, while they have a nice user interface, bugs with apple maps and app crashes do get in the way a lot. Apple is sleek and modern, but in my eyes, has lost it's charm. Android is the complete opposite of Apple. They are building up a great app store, and very innovative user interfaces. The customizability is particularly cool, because you can literally restructure your entire phone! On the other hand, it is an labyrinth to navigate. There are just so many things. First you have your main screen which is huge, but the app icons are too small and obscure that you cant easily find what you are looking for, and second, after a few months of use, it quickly gets unresponsive, or "laggy"(based on my dad's and some friends' experiences). When I used it once, I spent a whole ten minutes just looking for the settings.

Now to the point of my rantings: The windows phone, while it has it's quirks, is much more efficient and convenient than any other. I bought my Lumia 1020 for it's ENORMOUS camera. The OS on the device gives me a lot of customizability(live tiles), nad also the option to sync all of my accounts to the phone, so that everything from my Facebook, to my contacts, to my email, to Skype, is all right there at the touch of a button. The interface is simple and small, but all apps have a similar design, so the overall feel is coherent and sophisticated, whereas the iphone and android have a more open application design; android more so. The simplicity of the setup and navigation is really what startled me. I literally spent no more than a fifteen minutes on it, and found out how to do everything. Overall, well done, Microsoft.

Robotic Muscle

In an article today in Gizmag, they demonstrated a robotic muscle developed at the micro scale, that they claimed "is 1000 times more powerful that a human's." It runs on the idea that vanadium dioxide, at a certain temperature, abruptly changes its molecular structure, and that expansion that it undergoes, when combined with many other vanadium dioxide molecules will amount to a very large force. The problem that I found with this is that first of all, all of the tests were conducted at a micro scale, and succeeded only under controlled conditions. next, nature gave humans a certain amount of muscle strength because with more, we would harm ourselves. On a large scale, controlling the energy output is difficult, because there are only two states (muscle expanded and muscle contracted), and there isn't a gradual increase in in power

however, I believe that this advance is still a great thing, because it has better applications outside of the robotics genre. This could be used perhaps as a repairing agent. cracks formed in roads or bridges could be resealed much more easily, by using the tremendous forces to press asphalt in to the roads. It could also be used as a component in nano robots, because current nano robotics lacks the technology to have a muscle that small, and plus, the power boost would increase their efficiency.

Transformers

A couple of days ago, I saw an article on Popsci :http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQf0qsRTsoA&feature=youtu.be. The video link shows a chain of motor modules that link together and rotate to create various shapes.

The approach was based on protein chains in living things that change shape to perform different functions. About a year ago, I saw an approach to this by modeling the modules after muscles and joints. The modules were plastic pouches attached together using plastic joints that could turn front, back, left, and right. the pouches had four sections each of which expanded or contracted when filled with air, similar to muscles. these air modules would turn in very rigid ways however, and used up a lot of power to pump air in. Sadly, I can not find the link for that video.

The approach that the video shows makes use rotating motors that require very little power to turn, and are much less rigid. The individual modules are rather large and clumsy, however if made smaller, without reducing the life of the motor, they could work. This also brings up the topic of nanotechnology. Yet a skeptical subject, nanotechnology makes use of microscopic modules either biotic or mechanical, to cure illness, fix computers, espionage; a plethora of theoretical uses. These large motor modules could make that sci-fi fantasy a reality.

Well why do we want these things in the first place? They seem expensive and crude, and wouldn't it be much easier just to make the things you want like we do now? I think that the answer comes down to standardization If everything was made of the same stuff, then one could have whatever he wanted, and the need to waste time and money to buy unnecessary items would go away. You could buy an oven, pull off a handle, and turn it into a blender! The problem of greed would end, because everyone would have everything they wanted. 

Let's Play Catch!

I saw an article on popsci today: http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2012-11/watch-awesome-robot-play-catch-better-your-dad. The page has a small video of a humanoid robot that has a hand which can catch a ball. This is an amazing development  in technology, because catching a ball needs precision of where the hand is held, and the robot must also be able to calculate the final position of the ball within milliseconds, not to mention moving the arm fast enough. This version of the robot uses an external camera with an ultrasonic sensor of some sort to locate the position of the ball in three dimensional space. Perhaps the same camera can be placed in the head. If that were done, the robot would need to calculate the speed based solely on the distance that the ball is from itself, an would also need to know the exact location of it's own hand. This calculation could give the robot a sense of artificial self acknowledgment, only seen in animals. I think that all microscopic life forms are a kind of machine which is pre downloaded with code, however when self acknowledgment comes in to play such as in larger animals, the animal can learn. Seeing its own arm and moving it is a very premature intelligence, however it would be the first step to creating an intelligent and learning robot. Going back to the actual hardware, the robot's limbs move fluidly, and precisely. Making effective legs that can run and jump do not appear very far off in the future. 

Just this year, I joined the robotics club in Homestead High School. Over the past two months, I have learned some things about the robots that we build, however I quickly found that my technical knowledge on the subject was extremely small. I hope to educate myself and readers through this blog.