RE: [rp-ml] Slow growth

Marshall et al.

Another person who might like to contribute to this discussion would
be Scott Howe. He did his PhD under my supervision at HKU and is now
working at JPL (I think) and has also been working with groups at
NASA. The theme of his work for some time now has been
self-constructing, off-world habitats.

 From what I know there have been people thinking and working on this
subject for many years, with well-defined hierarchies for off-world
habitats. These range from the static vehicle-cum-dwelling (caravan?)
style of the first lunar modules, through to the expandable (space
station) principle, and finally to mobile, automated, modular systems
that have a high degree of redundancy, use the native regolith and
adapt to the local conditions (like the environmental conditions and
the terrain).

Scott has PhDs in both architecture and engineering but he is not a
regular monitor of rp-ml. I have therefore cc'd him in this email for
those who might like to communicate with him.

IG

At 11:04 PM 4/29/2008, you wrote:

>Hi Dawn and others who pointed this out,
>
> Yes, thank you for that. It was Rupert Soar I was talking about.
>Great project.
>
>Marshall
>
>
>
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Dawn White [mailto:Dawn.White@solidica.com]
>Sent: Tuesday, April 29, 2008 09:41
>To: Marshall Burns; 'Brock Hinzmann'; 'Adrian Bowyer'
>Cc: rp-ml@rapid.lpt.fi
>Subject: RE: [rp-ml] Slow growth
>
>List, Marshall is talking Rupert Soar, a professor at Loughborough
>University.
>
>
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: owner-rp-ml@rapid.lpt.fi [mailto:owner-rp-ml@rapid.lpt.fi] On Behalf
>Of Marshall Burns
>Sent: Tuesday, April 29, 2008 8:45 AM
>To: 'Brock Hinzmann'; 'Adrian Bowyer'
>Cc: rp-ml@rapid.lpt.fi
>Subject: RE: [rp-ml] Slow growth
>
>Hi Brock, Adrian, Stewart,
>
> Yes, this is really interesting stuff. Several years ago I talked
>with some robotics folks at UC Berkeley about a proposed project on what we
>called "synthetic termites." Termites are amazing critters. They chew up
>wood and, coordinating the work of thousands of them simultaneously, spew
>clumps of it semi-digested in patterns to build structures that are awesome
>for both their size and complexity. African termite mounds can be up to 30
>feet tall. The walls are semi-permeable, so that the mound functions as a
>huge, communal lung, extracting oxygen from passing wind and exhaling carbon
>dioxide. The structures have rooms to accommodate the queen and thousands of
>drones. The termite mound is a marvel of natural fabrication.
>
> There's a guy from this RP community at a UK university whose name
>escapes me at the moment who did a project in an African desert some years
>ago where they encapsulated and physically sliced a termite mound to
>digitize its structure.
>
> The idea of coordinating the actions of thousands or millions of
>autonomous microrobots to pick up tiny pieces of some raw material and
>deposit it in patterns to build up predetermined structures is one of the
>ultimate concepts in digital fabrication. I look forward to seeing some
>people pick up and implement this idea.
>
>Regards,
>Marshall Burns
>www.fabbers.com <<< Warning: Severely outdated site,
> but with some cool old stuff.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: owner-rp-ml@rapid.lpt.fi [mailto:owner-rp-ml@rapid.lpt.fi] On Behalf
>Of Brock Hinzmann
>Sent: Tuesday, April 29, 2008 01:53
>To: Adrian Bowyer
>Cc: rp-ml@rapid.lpt.fi
>Subject: Re: [rp-ml] Slow growth
>
>Dear Adrian,
>
>Yours is not an inconceivable application of existing and relatively
>near-term technologies. A number of robot art projects exist that do
>essentially what you propose. I only wish I had a paying client to put
>it all together.
>
>First of all, your idea to combine it with Marshall's Moon concept is
>brilliant. A robot that has all of the time in the world to trek across
>a planet (Mars and Venus also come to mind), powered by very low levels
>of solar radiation, able to work slowly, tediously, but predictably, in
>a space and time that no human would or could tolerate, has tremendous
>economical advantages. We can also imagine applications here on Earth.
>
>I have even seen concepts where a living plant shifts its weight in
>response to the position of the sun, in order to create enough pressure
>for a pedal, like a footfall on a bicycle, to move a robot forward. We
>are talking really slow progress here, a foot a day, but a robot doesn't
>care.
>
>If we are talking about preparing a far-off planet for some eventual
>human occupation, then we may not care about slowly the robots work to
>prepare an infrastructure, such as a solar-powered communications
>network, as long as it progresses at a predictable rate. If the space
>agencies could send robots well in advance, such a network could have a
>variety of scientific research and environmental evaluation applications
>that would be valuable, whether or not a human team is eventually sent
>to live there.
>
>Vast sections of Earth, deserts, outbacks, etc., could serve as testing
>grounds of more immediate value. While many of these might be of social
>benefit, the money to pay for them is limited. I have had some thoughts
>recently that alternative financing methods are possible, such as
>environmentally-concerned individuals willing to pay money to support
>poor remote rural individuals to install and monitor [robots, in this
>case, and] networks or the use of carbon credits or other alternative
>currency/money systems to trade service for service or other values.
>Perhaps Adrian has other contacts in the open-source world that are more
>creative than I am in this regard.
>
>Brock Hinzmann
>Technology Navigator
>
>
>
>
>
>
>Adrian Bowyer wrote:
> > Quoting Stewart Dickson <mathart@emsh.calarts.edu>:
> >
> >> Back in the old days, Marshall Burns wrote essays proposing SLS
> >> machines which ran on sand.
> >> A new way to build a pyramid.
> >> If it would work on Mars, it would work in Africa.
> >
> > I have thought for some time that it would be fun to build a robot
> > that crawled very very slowly across sand, digging it up, refining it,
> > extracting trace elements, and using the results to make PV cells
> > inefficiently and badly.
> >
> > These it would leave connected up in a trail behind it as it moved
> > forward a few meters per day. The cells would provide all the power
> > it needed, of course.
> >
> > But what on Earth could we do with all the spare power that would be
> > available after it had been left to wander about in a desert for a few
> > years? There must be some use for it...
> >
> > Best wishes
> >
> > Adrian
> >
> > Dr Adrian Bowyer
> > http://staff.bath.ac.uk/ensab
> > http://reprap.org
> >

Associate Professor Ian Gibson
Department of Mechanical Engineering
National University of Singapore

Tel: +65 92777343

Don't look around to find the sound that's right beneath your feet
Received on Wed Apr 30 05:18:54 2008