[ale] Intelligent Power (was global warming) [OT]

George Allen glallen01 at gmail.com
Mon Mar 3 22:59:56 EST 2008


Yes, I did start a pretty good tangent - but, although 99% off topic,
I did think it'd be pretty cool to have a linux-cluster in the form of a robot 
swarm. ... (which, like the Matrix - the swarm would collect power, except 
these would be friendly robots with penguins on the side moving around 
silicon instead of angry robots incubating humans in pods)

http://www.inl.gov/adaptiverobotics/robotswarm/
In the near future, it may be possible to produce and deploy large numbers of 
inexpensive, disposable, meso-scale robots. Although limited in individual 
capability, such robots deployed in large numbers can represent a strong 
cumulative force similar to a colony of ants or swarm of bees.

>From this article... DARPA has a project using linux-cluster-bots in towards 
the goal of 'urban surveillance,'
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/08/07/BU298221.DTL

Also found a project for a flying swarm of linuxbots that talk bluetooth...
http://cswww.essex.ac.uk/staff/owen/research.htm#The%20Flying%20Gridswarm,
%20and%20the%20UltraSwarm




On Monday 03 March 2008 12:05:32 tom wrote:
> On Mon, 3 Mar 2008, JK wrote:
> > George Allen wrote:
> >> Still off topic but contains oblig. Linux ref.
> >>
> >> Just remembered an idea I had... that's tangentailly related to global
> >> warming.
> >>
> >> Say - as a spin-off to 'The Matrix,' to fulfill our renewable power
> >> needs... we used solar panels....
> >>
> >> Say - layout a grid-array of solar panels over say... most of Nevada...
> >
> > I read somewhere a while back that at current photovoltaic efficiency
> > levels, a 50x50 mile block of panels would supply the US's electricity
> > demand.  So there'd be plenty of headroom with a block the size of
> > Nevada :-)  And there's tons of empty space out here in TX...
> >
> > OTOH I think that scheme comes under the heading of "solving the wrong
> > problem".  Our *use* of energy tends to be pretty inefficient, partially
> > because of the way our society is organized. Someone recently mentioned
> > spending $500/month on gasoline for a 20-mile commute in metro Atlanta,
> > for example; we expend huge amounts of energy just moving stuff around,
> > often for silly reasons.  I work in the transportation industry,
> > incidentally, and I spend a lot of my time trying to make moving-stuff-
> > around more efficient.  But that, too, feels like the wrong problem.
>
> I think you have gotten ahold of a major item, although I'm not quite sure
> what the "right" problem would be. 8-/. After all, organic fossel fuels
> not only supply large portions of our energy supply, but also a large
> portion of the clothes that we wear, and the other products of our lives.
> Plus, our ideas/habits of personal transportation are not only energy
> consumers, but consume other resources, eg. breathing air & land. And so
> forth.
>
> Over all, not just an efficiency engineering problem, but a problem of
> social organization also.
>
> And with that, I should drop out of this fascinating, highly off topic
> subjet.
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