It has been proposed the NASA build planetary exploration robotic swarm beach balls, which can bounce along the surface of a planet and roll as they collect data. Could something like this actually work? One online think tank member believes so. But how much power does this "design" take? Approximately 180 Watts to 300 watts ought to do the trick. How much does the "design" weigh? A Beach Ball times three plus electronics, Estimate 5-12 Lbs. How does this "design" go up small inclines? It pushes out the skin on the ball as it moves. It uses forward momentum plus pushing out bumps for propulsion. Would this design be remote controlled, or are you saying that a bouncing ball can self-navigate in real time, despite the disorienting effects of rolling and bouncing? It would use net-centric swarming techniques and the nodes or motes used in such technologies to communicate with the other balls and move together. The sensors in side would stay stationary the ball moves the core does not, but can when it bounces. There are tumblers used in aircraft gyros and such to help with that problem. You know one think tanker stated; A lot of the early airplane "designs" looked good and worked - on paper. When "reduced to practice" (i.e. actually built and tested), well...., maybe not so good. Indeed, but why be afraid to try and solve the problems as they come. This idea came from consideration of laser aligning micro-satellites, smart dust communication, MAV optic flow sensors, white papers on the subject, Haptic research at MIT, sea life tracking sensor communication MEMs, net-centric theory, robotic swarming research at Carnegie Mellon. It is merely putting all that technology together, no biggie. All it needs is funding. Quite confident that even if it is well not so good as you indicate at first on the results side that all problems would be conquered to win, that is to say achieve intended and desired if not better than stated goals. Actually I do not see how it could not work and even have some ideas to allow these things to fly with reduced wait via prisms inside and laser powered from afar. Laser shoots beam, heats up prism, that heat super excited gas molecules inside and you can fly them too. Good for many uses especially in less gravity settings like the moon or mars. Looks like the bouncing beach ball has balance and brains to back it up. Consider this in 2006. |
