Lifeboat Foundation

A Point too Far to Astronaut
It’s cold out there beyond the blue. Full of radiation. Low on breathable air. Vacuous.
Machines and organic creatures, keeping them functioning and/or alive — it’s hard.
Space to-do lists are full of dangerous, fantastically boring, and super-precise stuff.

We technological mammals assess thusly:
“Robots. Robots should be doing this.”

Enter Team Space Torso
As covered by IEEE a few days ago, the DLR (das German Aerospace Center) released a new video detailing the ins & outs of their tele-operational haptic feedback-capable Justin space robot. It’s a smooth system, and eventually ground-based or orbiting operators will just strap on what look like two extra arms, maybe some VR goggles, and go to work. Justin’s target missions are the risky, tedious, and very precise tasks best undertaken by something human-shaped, but preferably remote-controlled. He’s not a new robot, but Justin’s skillset is growing (video is down at the bottom there).

Now, Meet the Rest of the Gang:
NASA’s Robonaut2 (full coverage), the first and only humanoid robot in space, has of late been focusing on the ferociously mundane tasks of button pushing and knob turning, but hey, WHO’S IN SPACE, HUH? Then you’ve got Russia’s elusive SAR-400, which probably exists, but seems to hide behind… an iron curtain? Rounding out the team is another German, AILA. The nobody-knows-why-it’s-feminized AILA is another DLR-funded project from a university robotics and A.I. lab with a 53-syllable name that takes too long to type but there’s a link down below.

Continue reading “Keeping Humans Safe in Space: Meet Robot Torsos Justin, Robonaut, SAR-400, & AILA” »

With the recent meteor explosion over Russia coincident with the safe-passing of asteroid 2012 DA14, and an expectant spectacular approach by comet ISON due towards the end of 2013, one could suggest that the Year of the Snake is one where we should look to the skies and consider our long term safeguard against rocks from space.

Indeed, following the near ‘double whammy’ last week, where a 15 meter meteor caught us by surprise and caused extensive damage and injury in central Russia, while the larger anticipated 50 meter asteroid swept to within just 27,000 km of Earth, media reported an immediate response from astronomers with plans to create state-of-the-art detection systems to give warning of incoming asteroids and meteoroids. Concerns can be abated.
ATLAS, the Advanced Terrestrial-Impact Last Alert System is due to begin operations in 2015, and expects to give a one-week warning for a small asteroid – called “a city killer” – and three weeks for a larger “county killer” — providing time for evacuation of risk areas.

Deep Space Industries (a US Company), which is preparing to launch a series of small spacecraft later this decade aimed at surveying nearby asteroids for mining opportunities, could also be used to monitor smaller difficult-to-detect objects that threaten to strike Earth.

However — despite ISON doom-merchants — we are already in relatively safe hands. The SENTRY MONITORING SYSTEM maintains a Sentry Risk Table of possible future Earth impact events, typically tracking objects 50 meters or larger — none of which are currently expected to hit Earth. Other sources will tell you that comet ISON is not expected to pass any closer than 0.42 AU (63,000,000 km) from Earth — though it should still provide spectacular viewing in our night skies come December 2013. A recently trending threat, 140-metre wide asteroid AG5 was given just a 1-in-625 chance of hitting Earth in February 2040, though more recent measurements have reduced this risk to almost nil. The Torino Scale is currently used to rate the risk category of asteroid and comet impacts on a scale of 0 (no hazard) to 10 (globally-impacting certain collisions). At present, almost all known asteroids and comets are categorized as level 0 on this scale (AG5 was temporarily categorized at level 1 until recent measurements, and 2007 VK184, a 130 meter asteroid due for approach circa 2048–2057 is the only currently listed one categorized at level 1 or more).

Continue reading “ATLAS — Watchmen To The Hour That The Sky Falls In” »

Humanities wake-up call has been ignored and we are probably doomed.

The Chelyabinsk event is a warning. Unfortunately, it seems to be a non-event in the great scheme of things and that means the human race is probably also a non-starter. For years I have been hoping for such an event- and saw it as the start of a new space age. Just as Sputnik indirectly resulted in a man on the Moon I predicted an event that would launch humankind into deep space.

Now I wait for ISON. Thirteen may be the year of the comet and if that does not impress upon us the vulnerability of Earth to impacts then only an impact will. If the impact throws enough particles into the atmosphere then no food will grow and World War C will begin. The C stands for cannibalism. If the impact hits the ring of fire it may generate volcanic effects that may have the same effect. If whatever hits Earth is big enough it will render all life above the size of microbes extinct. We have spent trillions of dollars on defense- yet we are defenceless.

Our instinctive optimism bias continues to delude us with the idea that we will survive no matter what happens. Beside the impact threat is the threat of an engineered pathogen. While naturally evolved epidemics always leave a percentage of survivors, a bug designed to be 100 percent lethal will leave none alive. And then there is the unknown- Earth changes, including volcanic activity, can also wreck our civilization. We go on as a species the same way we go on with our own lives- ignoring death for the most part. And that is our critical error.

Continue reading “Human Extinction Looms” »

http://news.yahoo.com/meteor-explodes-over-russia-1-100-…38744.html

I have been hoping for exactly this event; now we will see if we are actually an intelligent species and protect the planet from impacts.

The Golden Rule is Not for Toasters
Simplistically nutshelled, talking about machine morality is picking apart whether or not we’ll someday have to be nice to machines or demand that they be nice to us.

Well, it’s always a good time to address human & machine morality vis-à-vis both the engineering and philosophical issues intrinsic to the qualification and validation of non-biological intelligence and/or consciousness that, if manifested, would wholly justify consideration thereof.

Uhh… yep!

But, whether at run-on sentence dorkville or any other tech forum, right from the jump one should know that a single voice rapping about machine morality is bound to get hung up in and blinded by its own perspective, e.g., splitting hairs to decide who or what deserves moral treatment (if a definition of that can even be nailed down), or perhaps yet another justification for the standard intellectual cul de sac:
“Why bother, it’s never going to happen.“
That’s tired and lame.

Continue reading “Machine Morality: a Survey of Thought and a Hint of Harbinger” »

It appears now that intelligence of humans is largely superseeded by robots and artificial singularity agents. Education and technology have no chances to make us far more intelligent. The question is now what is our place in this new world where we are not the topmost intelligent kind of species.

Even if we develop new scientific and technological approaches, it is likely that machines will be far more efficient than us if these approaches are based on rationality.

IMO, in the next future, we will only be able to compete in irrational domains but I am not that sure that irrational domains cannot be also handled by machines.

“Olemach-Theorem”: Angular-momentum Conservation implies a gravitational-redshift proportional Change of Length, Mass and Charge

Otto E. Rossler

Faculty of Natural Sciences, University of Tubingen, Auf der Morgenstelle 8, 72076 Tubingen, Germany

Abstract

Continue reading “‘Olemach Theorem"” »

For those in Colorado who are interested in attending a talk by John Troeltzsch, Sentinel Ball Program Manager, Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. please R.S.V.P Chris Zeller ([email protected]) by Tuesday, 26 February 2013 for badge access. US citizenship required.

6:00 pm Thursday, February 28th 2013
6:00 pm Social, 6:30 pm Program
Ball Aerospace Boulder Campus RA7 Conference Room
1600 Commerce St
Boulder, CO 80301

It will be good to see you there.

About the Talk:
The inner solar system is populated with a half million asteroids larger than the one that struck Tunguska and yet we’ve identified and mapped only about one percent of these asteroids to date.

Continue reading “AIAA Rocky Mountain — Sentinel Program” »

LEFT: Activelink Power Loader Light — RIGHT: The Latest HAL Suit

New Japanese Exoskeleton Pushing into HAL’s (potential) Marketshare
We of the robot/technology nerd demo are well aware of the non-ironically, ironically named HAL (Hybrid Assistive Limb) exoskeletal suit developed by Professor Yoshiyuki Sankai’s also totally not meta-ironically named Cyberdyne, Inc. Since its 2004 founding in Tsukuba City, just north of the Tokyo metro area, Cyberdyne has developed and iteratively refined the force-amplifying exoskeletal suit, and through the HAL FIT venture, they’ve also created a legs-only force resistance rehabilitation & training platform.

Joining HAL and a few similar projects here in Japan (notably Toyota’s & Honda’s) is Kansai based & Panasonic-owned Activelink’s new Power Loader Light (PLL). Activelink has developed various human force amplification systems since 2003, and this latest version of the Loader looks a lot less like its big brother the walking forklift, and a lot more like the bottom half & power pack of a HAL suit. Activelink intends to connect an upper body unit, and if successful, will become HAL’s only real competition here in Japan.
And for what?

Well, along with general human force amplification and/or rehab, this:

Continue reading “Activelink Power Loader Gives HAL Some Competition, but Who's Going to Fukushima?” »