Self-repairing spacecraft skin
Based, apparently, on ant swarm behavior. How can anyone not love this stuff?
The team at CSIRO, Australia's national research organisation, is working with NASA on the project and has so far created a model skin made up of 192 separate cells. Behind each cell is an impact sensor and a processor equipped with algorithms that allow it to communicate only with its immediate neighbours. Just as ants secrete pheromones to help guide other ants to food, the CSIRO algorithms leave digital messages in cells around the system, indicating for instance the position of the boundary around a damaged region. The cell's processor can use this information to route data around the affected area.
Based, apparently, on ant swarm behavior. How can anyone not love this stuff?
posted by razorsmile at 9/12/2005 05:43:00 PM
3 Comments:
So - are you and Mac working together on these posts? It's odd... like seeing in double.
I delinked him, but still spy now and then... heehee
But, I prefer to read your version!
:)
I won't tell him if you won't :D
Yeah, like he talks to me... uh, not.
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