#also many robot designs are directly inspired by insects!

[mud--bug]

The robot lover to bug lover pipeline is so real

[kathleenseiber]

Sharp-edged wings cut turbulence for little drones

A new type of wing could make small fixed-wing drones far more stable and efficient, researchers report.

The new wing replaces the smooth contour found on the leading edges of most airplane wings with a thick flat plate and a sharp leading edge. Counterintuitive as it may seem, it turns out that the design has distinct aerodynamic advantages at the scale of small drones.

In a paper in Science Robotics, the researchers show that the new wing is far more stable than standard wings in the face of sudden wind gusts and other types of turbulence, which often wreak havoc on small aircraft. The wing also provides an aerodynamically efficient flight that translates into better battery life and longer flight times.

A new kind of drone wing

“Small drones can be really useful in many applications, including flights in populated areas as they are inherently safer for humans, but there are problems operating aircraft at those small scales,” says senior author Kenny Breuer, a professor in Brown University’s School of Engineering.

“They tend to be inefficient, which limits the battery-powered flight times of most drones to around 30 minutes or so. They also tend to get blown around by puffs of wind and turbulent air coming from obstacles such as buildings and trees. So we’ve been thinking about a wing design that might combat those problems.”

Natural flyers like birds and insects inspired the idea for a wing that dispenses with the smooth contours of a normal wing’s leading edge. A smooth leading edge helps to keep airflow firmly attached to the wing. But bird and insect wings have usually quite rough and sharp leading edges to promote separation of the airflow. Flow separation causes efficiency problems for large aircraft, but it seems to work just fine for birds and insects.

“Animals at small scale don’t try to keep the flow attached,” Breuer says. “They gave up on that 100 million years ago. Once you stop trying to keep the flow constantly attached, it ironically makes some things easier.”

Designing the ‘Separated Flow Airfoil’

Lead author Matteo Di Luca, a graduate student, designed the new wing—dubbed the “Separated Flow Airfoil.” The idea is to intentionally separate the flow at the leading edge, which somewhat counterintuitively causes the flow to reattach more consistently before reaching the trailing edge. A small rounded flap placed near the wing’s trailing edge aids that reattachment. The design enables more efficient, more stable flight at the scale of aircraft with wingspans of about a foot or less.

The new wing design dispenses with the contoured leading edge most wings have in favor of a sharper leading edge. (Credit: Brown)

The reason the design works has to do with the characteristics at small scales of the boundary layer, the thin layer of air that’s directly in contact with the wing. At the scale of passenger planes, the boundary layer is always turbulent—full of tiny swirls and vortices. That turbulence holds the boundary layer against the wing, keeping it firmly attached. At small scales, however, the boundary layer tends to be laminar. A laminar boundary layer separates easily from the wing and often never reattaches, which leads to increased drag and reduced lift.

Further complicating matters is the freestream turbulence—gusts of wind, vortices, and other disturbances in the surrounding air. That freestream turbulence can suddenly induce turbulence in a boundary layer, which attaches the flow and induces a sudden jolt of increased lift. Rapid lift fluctuations can be more than a drone’s control system can handle, leading to unstable flight.

The Separated Flow wing is able to deal with these issues.

“When we purposefully separate the flow at the leading edge, we cause it to immediately become turbulent, which forces it to reattach at a consistent point regardless of atmospheric turbulence” Di Luca says. “That gives us more consistent lift and overall better performance.”

Wind tunnel tests

Testing of the Separated Flow Airfoil in a wind tunnel showed that the design successfully smoothed out lift fluctuations associated with freestream turbulence. The team also performed wind tunnel tests of a small propeller-driven drone equipped with the Separated Flow wing. Those tests showed that the increased aerodynamic efficiency resulted in a decreased minimum cruise power compared to standard miniature drones. That translates into extended battery life.

“With the prototype we have, we’re at a little less than 3 hours of flight time in the wind tunnel,” Di Luca says. “The wind tunnel is an idealized environment, so we don’t expect it would last quite that long for an outdoor flight. But if it lasts half as long as it did in the wind tunnel, it’s still more than twice the flight of commercially available drones.”

There are other benefits to the design in addition to better aerodynamic performance. The Separated Flow wing can be far thicker than wings normally used in small drones. That makes the wings structurally stronger so subsystems like batteries, antennas, or solar panels can be integrated into the wing. That could reduce the size of an aerodynamically cumbersome fuselage—or eliminated the need for one altogether.

The researchers have a patent on their design and plan to continue refining it for even better performance.

Support for the work came from the National Science Foundation and a Brown University Presidential Fellowship.

Source: Brown University

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[biofunmy]

Missed Burning Man? Burning Man, or at Least Its Art, Is Coming to You

Ever since 1986, when a small gathering of artists and friends first gathered at San Francisco’s Baker Beach to celebrate the Summer Solstice by igniting an eight-foot male effigy, the art of the Burning Man festival was not meant to be seen by the outside world.

Now held in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert, the event has swelled to some 80,000 people who brave dust storms and furnace-like heat each year to construct, dance and play in a pop up-city of fantastical art installations. This year’s festival featured 408 creations, ranging from a surreal Irish fishing village to a cluttered maze inside a three-story rendering of a human head.

“It was one of the only places you could build these immersive interactive pieces that a few years ago were pooh-poohed by the rest of the art world,” said Michael Christian, a sculptor who has attended 20 festivals. “We never imagined our creations would be seen beyond the playa.”

And off the playa, Burning Man has over the last decade become a major influencer of popular culture, design, music and even business. The most tangible vanguard of that influence are the monumental art pieces, which, instead of disappearing into the playa, have begun to show up in plazas, parks, museums and galleries across the United States and beyond.

Given the rising number of people and art organizations exposed to Burning Man either directly or through the media (all those Instagrammers!), and the rising quality and scope of the artists and art attending the festival, it was inevitable that there would be a buildup of curiosity and funding to give these creations a second life.

“People are now starting to build with the intention of creating pieces that will later be placed out in the world,” said Joe Meschede, civic arts coordinator at Burning Man, who helps artists get their work into public spaces once the festival is over.

Here are a few Burning Man installations to see that won’t require a hard-to-get ticket or camping skills.

Reno, Nev.

“Portal”

If Burning Man is fueling a contemporary art renaissance, then Reno is its Florence. About a 120-mile drive from the Black Rock Desert, Reno has been the staging point for Burning Man’s biggest projects, many of which are exhibited there after the festival. The local airport, Fourth Street and the Riverwalk have been destinations, but the biggest concentration of Burner art is at the Reno Playa Art Park, which hosts a dozen pieces on rotation amid glittering casino signs. Four pieces from this year’s festival are being installed, including David Oliver’s “Portal,” an imposing, multicolored, tiled round gate suspended between two basalt pillars which one steps through, according to Mr. Oliver, “with powerful frequencies.”

This 20-foot tall Afro pick, topped by a hidden platform for a view over the desert, was designed by Hank Willis Thomas, an artist whose work has been shown at the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim.

“Burning Man is a great place to build something big that no one asked you to build,” said Mr. Thomas, who presented the sculpture at last year’s festival. “I was thinking of Claes Oldenburg by blowing up an item that was helpful to me when I was a kid with an Afro, and turning it into something monumental.”

Until July, the comb was sticking out of the pavement in front of the Africa Center in Harlem. Now a replica will be on display until January at the Portland Museum, and will later be exhibited at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Ark., and the Cincinnati Art Museum.

Las Vegas

“Monumental Mammoth”

The scrap-metal “Mammoth,” resembling something Mad Max would have built had he been a zoologist, started out as a Girl Scout project by the 16-year-old Tahoe Mack.

Angered by illegal garbage dumping at the Tule Springs Fossil Beds National Monument, near her home in Las Vegas, Miss Mack came up with a plan to recycle the garbage into a sculpture of a creature once indigenous to the area. Last year she recruited Luis Valera-Rico and Dana Albany, two metal sculptors and veteran Burning Man attendees, to weld together the 16-foot sculpture. (“Who can say no to a 16-year-old Girl Scout with big visions?” said Ms. Albany.)

A steel skeleton covered by discarded car parts, rusting aluminum siding, spinning clock parts and doors that open into secret compartments, the “Mammoth” has been dusted off from its appearance at Burning Man to be permanently installed early next year at Tule Springs.

Arlington, Tex.

“DREAM”

Laura Kimpton has built 17 word sculptures for Burning Man over the past two decades, and many have become some of the festival’s most Instagrammed pieces. Her words, written in what she calls “Playa Font” and stamped out in construction steel and aluminum by her husband, Jeff Schomberg, deal with dyslexia (which she has), aspirations and death symbolized by the bird patterns punched out of the steel that Ms. Kimpton associates with her late father.

This year’s piece, “LOVE,” is, according to Ms. Kimpton, in “final discussions” to be installed at the World Trade Center in New York. In the meantime, her 12-foot sculpture “DREAM” can be visited outside of Levitt Pavilion in Arlington, Tex. “I was inspired to make ‘DREAM’ because, in dream life as in Burning Man, there is no social status beyond what you can create,” said Ms. Kimpton. “But I think the sculpture also fits well into Arlington’s dream of radical transformation.”

Healdsburg, Calif.

“Lord Snort”

Bryan Tedrick welded together this 10-ton, 20-foot sculpture, which swivels on a single axis and has a rotating head, as a tribute to the boars that roam the vineyards of his native Sonoma, Calif.

“It was designed so people could climb all over it,” Mr. Tedrick said. “At Burning Man a few of them were naked and some got pinched pretty badly until they welded the head so it couldn’t move.”

The head rotates once again, but climb at your own risk: “Lord Snort” is now on display at Soda Rock Winery in California’s Anderson Valley.

Toronto

“I.T.”

“‘I.T.’ was born out of love of early childhood sci-fi experiences,” said Michael Christian, about his 40-foot tall alien space insect which Burners (festival attendees) could crawl up, with a ladder into the glowing Cyclops head.

“I constructed it for the playa because I knew it would look amazing in a big flat area,” he said. “When we decided to move it elsewhere I was careful it didn’t just become plop art randomly dropped into a lobby or something.”

The art has found a suitably menacing place — ladder removed — bestriding the central plaza of the Distillery District in Toronto.

Philadelphia

“Bebot”

This 33-foot, cheery, chubby robot sculpture, built out of tubular steel, now waves good-naturedly above Piazza Pod Park in Philadelphia. Though “Bebot” has a prominent copper heart, its devil’s tail, discretely curled out the back, indicates things are not as innocent as they appear.

According to its creator, the London-based artist Andrea Greenlees, Bebot “questions what sort of deliberately engineered high-tech cuteness are we welcoming into our private spaces.”

Wappinger, N.Y.

“Altered State”

From the distance, this installation looks like the iconic dome of the United States Capitol, but as viewers move closer they can see that it is riddled by lacy silhouettes from Pacific Northwest Native American mythology. The two-story steel structure, created by Kate Raudenbush, a longstanding Burner artist, is surmounted by a totemic eagle.

“The eagle for Native Americans Indians wasn’t the raptor bird of our Founding Fathers, but the one that flew closest to God,” said Ms. Raudenbush. Her piece is now installed on the lawn of the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors, an indoor and outdoor public exhibition center.

“Most of us who build at Burning Man do it as a form of self exploration, not to please the art establishment — even though well-established artists are now competing for space out there,” she said. “Sacred Mirrors, like Burning Man, uses art for personal reflection, so it has found a perfect new home.”

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[topsolarpanels]

9 social good innovations that made an impact in August

Image: MINE KAFON DRONE/ KICKSTARTER; BRYCE VICKMARK/ MIT; SMART DIAPHRAGM/ UCSF; Youtube/ American Chemical Society

Socially conscious inventors are the true champions of global advance, though they are rarely recognized.

Their innovations and inventions shake up our world, tackling some of the planet’s biggest problems with bold ingenuity. From tiny contraptions that can cleanse water in a flash to spacecrafts the hell is mapping global poverty in an unprecedented style, innovations are constantly building steps toward solving massive social problems.

SEE ALSO: The 8 most impressive social good inventions from July

These nine innovations sought to tackle global inequality in August.

1. The dres line meant to help curb Zika virus

Design mockups of the repellant-laced clothing line.

Image: Maternova

Designers at Maternova, an innovation hub geared toward the needs of pregnant women, have developed a line of apparel containing insect repellent with intents of protecting expectant moms from Zika virus. The repellant used in the clothing, the designers told TakePart , protect the wearer from more than 40 types of insects and will last up to 50 washes.

The designers also say they are hoping the clothing can provide an additional layer of protection to the existing safety precautions pregnant women take to curb the spread of the virus. The project is currently hosted on crowdfunding site Republic, and it raised more than $25,000 in all regions of the month of August.

2. A minuscule gadget that disinfects water in minutes

Image: Jin Xie/ Stanford University

Harnessing the power of UV lights to kill bacteria, this tiny device many have the major power needed to eventually help clean polluted water in developing nations. A paper in Nature Nanotechnology announced the smaller, inexpensive invention in early August.

Researchers told Fast Company the device which is only half the size of a set of stamps can clean a bottle of water in 20 minutes, increasing the effectiveness of UV lights in decontamination. In comparison, it usually takes one complete day for UV rays alone to kill bacteria in the same quantity of water.

3. AI helping the Blind community identify objects

Image: Aiploy

Aipoly, a free, downloadable app for iPhone users, helps blind and visually impaired people identify everyday objects promptly. Users simply need to point their telephones at an object or coloring, and the app will tell them what it recognizes via text on the screen or its Speaking Voice setting.

While similar identification apps and technology exist for helping those with low or no vision to differentiate between currency, Aipoly’s wide catalog of various types of objects( like distinguishing between brands of soda) stimulates this tech stand out.

The app was announced as a Clearly Vision Prize semi-finalist in August, and the winners will be named afterward this year.

4. Edible food packaging made with milk

In a world dominated by plastic packaging, we need sustainable alternatives to house and preserve our food. U.S. Department of Agriculture researchers are developing a new biodegradable movie made of a milk protein called casein to assist kerb plastic-related waste and it’s even edible.

The film is also an estimated 500 times better than plastic packaging at maintaining food fresh, by maintaining oxygen away from food more effectively.

The innovative technology gained mass attention in August, and was officially announced at the 252nd American Chemical Society National Meeting& Exposition late last month.

5. An easy style to monitor electricity use in your home

Image: Bryce Vickmark/ MIT

Our tech-loving society uses a lot of energy, but many of us can’t tell for certain how much power we use in a given period of time. A single sensor devised by MIT researchers could change that, by to oversee the energy every device in your home uses.

A paper published on Aug. 1 announced the monitor a small, $30 gadget you place on the main power line of your home with a simple zip tie-in. The device can sense patterns in voltage and currents through the wire, seeing whether energy is powering a illuminate, motor or the other device and documenting when mass amounts of energy is being used.

The sensor empowers homeowners with information on their energy consumption, hopefully inspiring them to cut back to save money and the planet.

6. A drone that safely removes bombs

Image: Mine Kafon Drone/ Kickstarter

Detecting and removing landmines is dangerous and time-intensive, but the Mine Kafon Drone, which was fully funded via Kickstarter in August, is working to change this. It determines landmines and destroys them completely, without humen ever directly interacting with an area of concern.

Here’s how it runs: The droning surveys an area of land and detects landmines with a metal detector, simultaneously mapping the area. Once the ours have been mapped and detected, the drone’s operator falls detonators on top of the landmines with an limb extend from the droning. When the detonators are in place and the area is clear, the operator can blow up the mines from a safe distance using a timer.

The drone is in prototype phase, but inventor Massoud Hassani hopes to start production on the product in the next six months.

7. The diaphragm that detects labor before contractions

Image: Smart Diaphragm/ UCSF

A newly developed diaphragm dubbed the Smart Diaphragm senses changes in the cervix, seeing when a woman is about to go into labor before contractions even start.

Contractions are currently the main indicator for medical professionals to know a woman is about to give birth. But in the case of early labors, this is much too late to do anything to significantly prolong a pregnancy or address an underlying health concern, leading to more premature newborns and more opportunity of health risks for the mother.

Using the Bluetooth-powered Smart Diaphragm, doctors( and expectant mothers) can know if a woman is going to give birth up to two weeks before she actually does.

Detecting when a woman is going to give birth could be life-changing and life-saving for women and newborns, especially those living in remote rural areas who usually lack access to last-minute emergency medical care. Though iterations of the inexpensive invention have been around for years, test trials began in Kenya and South Africa in August.

8. Poverty detection via AI and satellite

A satellite image closeup of the Kiberia Slums in Nairobi, Kenya.

Image: DigitalGlobe/ Getty

Poverty is a systemic global issue, but mapping it to adequately address needs and find trends is not easy work. A new way of mapping poverty via spacecraft and AI, however, could help revolutionize how relief workers distribute aid to different parts of the world, saving the time and fund it takes to conduct on-the-ground surveys of poor regions.

In mid-August, a study published in the publication Science detailed how machine learning and spacecraft imagery are planning to map poverty in Nigeria, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Malawi. While researchers acknowledge the tech won’t be replacing on-the-ground surveys anytime soon, they believe the method could even initially dramatically improve the results of aid run data and support tangible relief efforts.

9. A bot that helps low-income people fight eviction

Image: JOSHUA BROWDER/ DoNotPAy

Lawyers are notoriously expensive. Robot lawyers, however, are free. And, in some cases, these bots acting as stellar legal aids, helping low-income individuals keep their homes by advising them on eviction threats.

Stanford undergrad Joshua Browder first fabricated the bot, called DoNotPay, to opposed parking tickets for any user with a computer and a fine. But Browder released a new bot in August in partnership with Centrepoint, one of the UK’s largest youth homelessness charities to help those unable to afford legal aid fight evictions.

A user has a simple instant message-like dialogue with the bot, and the virtual lawyer then decides how to best help them based on their answers to questions. The bot then usually crafts a claims letter, filling in the information provided and potentially saving hundreds of dollars in legal fees.

Read more:

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