"I’m ready for our army of Skynet Marshmallow Bumper Bots. "

Originally shared by Urs Hölzle

"I’m ready for our army of Skynet Marshmallow Bumper Bots. "
http://theoatmeal.com/blog/google_self_driving_car

Today we’re unwrapping the best holiday gift we could’ve imagined: the first real build of our self-driving vehicle...

Originally shared by Google self-driving car project

Today we’re unwrapping the best holiday gift we could’ve imagined: the first real build of our self-driving vehicle prototype.  

The vehicle we unveiled in May (goo.gl/qDUtgq) was an early mockup—it didn’t even have real headlights! Since then, we’ve been working on different prototypes-of-prototypes, each designed to test different systems of a self-driving car—for example, the typical “car” parts like steering and braking, as well as the “self-driving” parts like the computer and sensors. We’ve now put all those systems together in this fully functional vehicle—our first complete prototype for fully autonomous driving.

We’re going to be spending the holidays zipping around our test track, and we hope to see you on the streets of Northern California in the new year.  Our safety drivers will continue to oversee the vehicle for a while longer, using temporary manual controls as needed while we continue to test and learn.  Happy holidays!

NASA has reported surprising spikes in methane gas on Mars, raising the possibility of microbial alien life on the...

Originally shared by National Geographic

NASA has reported surprising spikes in methane gas on Mars, raising the possibility of microbial alien life on the red planet.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/12/141216-mars-methane-curiosity-space-science/?utm_source=GooglePlus&utm_medium=Social&utm_content=link_gp20141217news-mars&utm_campaign=Content

Check out Google's Year in Search 2014, starring ESA Rosetta and Philae's #CometLanding !

Originally shared by European Space Agency, ESA

Check out Google's Year in Search 2014, starring ESA Rosetta and Philae's #CometLanding !

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVwHCGAr_OE

#Rosetta   #Philae  
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVwHCGAr_OE

Logbook: L+20, L+21

Originally shared by Samantha Cristoforetti

Logbook:  L+20, L+21

My third weekend on ISS is coming to an end and I find myself being very ambivalent about the passage of time. On the one hand, days have just flown by and it seems like yesterday that we arrived. On the other hand, the time when I used to walk and sleep in a bed almost seem like distant memory and it feels like I’ve always floated, always slept in a sleeping bag, always run on the wall and lifted weights on the ceiling.  In other words, the Space Station is starting to feel like my home and my normal life.

Then I get to fly a huge robotic arm lurking in the darkness outside our  window, with the Earth passing by beneath, and I still wonder if it’s real or if it’s a dream. That’s right, Butch and I spent some time in the Cupola yesterday at the controls of the robotic arm in preparation for Dragon capture next week. After hundreds of hours of simulation, it was my first time moving the actual Station arm!

I have told you in the last logbook about our onboard simulator, Robot. Sim time is good, but it’s important to get a feel for the real arm before capture day. That’s why Saturday afternoon we got to practice so-called “offset grapples”.

Our target was the grapple fixture of Dextre, the multiarm roboto currently living outside on the Lab, and the starting position was a high over about 5 meters above the target. I messed up the alignment for Butch and he got to adjust it on the fly while approaching the grapple fixture, then we swapped roles and I got to do the same.

Of course, we didn’t really grapple Dextre: in fact, triggering closure of the end effector snares was not even enabled on the hand controllers. The purpose was purely to get a feel for how the real arm responds to inputs, especially in terms of oscillations. I was actually surprised by the steadiness of the real arm: it seemed less of a challenge than in the simulator to keep the oscillations under control. I should tell you that oscillations are the big enemy, therefore we train to give very smooth and progressive hand controller inputs. One jerky movement and the arm can start to oscillate more than you like it.

With Dragon arriving next weekend, we have a busy week ahead of us. We’ll get probably half days off on Friday and Saturday and, of course, we’ll have a full working day on Sunday with the arrival of Dragon. In fact, after Capture Dragon will be berthed to the Node 2 Nadir position, so we’ll have it just outside our crew quarters, almost like adding another small room to our living area. And this room will come already full of goodies!

Futura mission website (Italian): Avamposto42
avamposto42.esa.int

#SamLogbook   #Futura42  

(Trad IT)  Traduzione in italiano a cura di AstronautiCAST qui:
http://www.astronautinews.it/tag/logbook

(Trad FR) Traduction en français par Anne Cpamoa ici:
 https://spacetux.org/cpamoa/category/traductions/logbook-samantha

(Trad ES - Currently not updated) Tradducción en español aquí:
http://www.intervidia.com/category/bitacora

Search? On a social network?!?! My mind is blown!

Originally shared by Alida Brandenburg

Search? On a social network?!?! My mind is blown!

What's next, Facebook? FLYING CARS? You crazy!

(God god, finally. Welcome to 2011, Facebook. We Google+ers have been here for quite some time.)


#socialmedia   #socialnetworks   #facebook  
http://bit.ly/1sezy7a

Chromecast, now with guest mode

Originally shared by Google Chrome

Chromecast, now with guest mode

New #Chromecast guest mode feature makes it even easier for your friends with Android devices to cast content to your TV without first needing to connect to your WiFi. Learn how to set it up at chromecast.com/guestmode. 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vJC9p6bzQY