If you could design your own person robot, what would you ask it to do?
Today I’m here at the MIT Museum in Cambridge, MA, exploring the robotics exhibit. One activity here engages children to think about robots, what they really are (artificial intelligence) and what is the best use for them.
One child has a very practical use for her ideal robot, “It could be used as a pillow and make me macaroni and cheese.”
One child's ideal personal robot would serve as a pillow and make mac-n-cheese
A young boy hopes his robot would “stop mommy and daddy from fighting.”
Another boy hopes robots would “help humans, not replace them.” But his older brother isn’t so idealistic. He’d like his robot to “enslave humanity.”
My ideal service robot would apply sunscreen to my back before I head to Hookipa to surf.
Last night a giant centitpede (about 6 or 7 inches long) slithered out from under a cabinet and across the tile floor, heading for my bare feet. I screamed, but have enough experience with giant centipedes in Hawaii to know what to do: Grab scissors, slice, dice and flush.
I cut like crazy, and after chopping up most of the body, I flushed it. But the truly nasty bit of this creepy crawler, the claws, ended up stuck by oozing goo between the blades of my scissors. The claws are located on the trunk’s first segment, near the head, and are equipped with poison glands and are used to kill or stun prey. Or my feet.
Mauna Kea was selected this week by a board of advisors in charge of deciding where to site the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT), the first of the next generation of giant ground-based telescopes. After a multi-year site review process by the TMT Corporation–including detailed satellite, weather and environmental studies–Hawaii and Chile were to top contenders for locating the TMT, which could be built and operational as soon as 2018. Hawaii won out over Chile as the best site because of slightly better atmospheric conditions, very low humidity and lower temperatures. Existing nearby observatories, such as Keck, Subaru, Gemini and the UH, will be useful for collaborations with TMT and were also an important factor.
In the official statement released today by TMT Corporation, the board of directors who selected Mauna Kea over Chile expressed “a strong commitment to respect the long history and cultural significance of Mauna Kea to the Hawaiian people, and has committed annual funding for local community benefits and education in Hawai‘i.” There has been strong opposition among some groups to any scientific activity at the summit. Exactly how much funding, for what specifically and who will receive was not disclosed.
The Thirty Meter Telescope shown in its enclosure with all vents open. The vents are designed to optimize the air flow over the primary mirror so as to reduce mirror seeing effects. The moving mass of the telescope, optics and instruments will be 1430 metric tons.
Before construction can begin on Mauna Kea, the TMT must submit and have approved an application for a Conservation District Use Permit (CDUP) to the Hawaiian Department of Land and Natural Resources. This will be done through the community-based Office of Mauna Kea Management, which oversees the Mauna Kea summit as part of the University of Hawai’i at Hilo.
In addition to cultural and environmental concerns, weather plays a major role in the success of any observatory. Specifically, lack of it makes for better observing conditions for astronomers. Twinkling stars, a beautiful phenomenon to watch from the backyard, is a problem for astronomers because the twinkle signals humidity in the upper layers of Earth’s atmosphere. Atmospheric humidity interferes with light hitting the reflecting mirrors inside telescopes, causing distortion.
The problem of light distortion gets more detrimental as a telescopes mirror get bigger, a problem that could render data utterly useless from a telescope as big as the TMT will be. Current large telescopes, such as Gemini and Keck, use a method called “adaptive optics” to adjust for twinkle. Engineers for the TMT are developing a special distortion correction system that will cover the TMT’s 492 segmented mirrors.
Local knowledge about the Hawaiian Islands
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