A challenge: build a rainforest canopy exploration system
Hi all,
We've recently been selected by a major funding agency to conduct a project aimed at reducing deforestation in the tropics. Given our first success, we want to participate in the next call for proposals, with an even more ambitious project.
At first, this project may seem impossible, but we're confident that, with the help of people like you, we may pull it off.
The goal is to build a technology that can autonomously explore the rainforest canopy and conduct basic experiments.
We have ran over many options for the different tasks and most of these are too costly: real helicopters, airplanes, airships, existing UAVs, satellites, flux-towers, etc...
So we're looking at designing our own system. Your suggestions are welcome!
1. CAPABILITIES
-the system should be able to make high resolution pics and video of a large area in a short time
-it should be able to land on the canopy and do chemical, meteorogical and physical measurements - so it needs to be able to carry a small lab
-it should be able to transmit data to a remote ground station (either by relaying wirelessly to hubs that have been dropped into the canopy, or via other drones that give the system swarming capacity)
-it should have a very long autonomy, that is, it should be able to have an autonomous energy supply system (that means: solar, because there's not much wind over the canopy)
2. OPTIONS / CONCEPTS
-one option is to design a series of solar powered blimps that can land on the canopy; they would transmit their information by forming a chain of wireless hubs
-another is to use off-the-shelf electric RC helicopters and give them solar recharging capabilities; we would then airdrop inflatable landing pads on the canopy, where they can "tank"; the landing pads could contain a battery recharged by solar panels, and the helicopters would then tap this stored energy in addition to using their own solar panels; the info would be transmitted wirelessly via these landing pads
-a more exotic option is to design a series of robots that can crawl over the canopy, autonomously; may seem far-fetched, but it might be possible to design this using inflatables
-a last option is to have a very cheap system of air-dropped inflatable labs that are dropped onto the canopy; such a lab would be solar powered and launch a small tethered helium balloon with instruments (camera)
I know this all sounds a bit ambitious, but the potential funding is there (we're talking about several hundred k).
My question to you: do you have any ideas, suggestions? Feel free to give us your opinion.
I will soon start posting some 3D drawings of the different concepts.
We've recently been selected by a major funding agency to conduct a project aimed at reducing deforestation in the tropics. Given our first success, we want to participate in the next call for proposals, with an even more ambitious project.
At first, this project may seem impossible, but we're confident that, with the help of people like you, we may pull it off.
The goal is to build a technology that can autonomously explore the rainforest canopy and conduct basic experiments.
We have ran over many options for the different tasks and most of these are too costly: real helicopters, airplanes, airships, existing UAVs, satellites, flux-towers, etc...
So we're looking at designing our own system. Your suggestions are welcome!
1. CAPABILITIES
-the system should be able to make high resolution pics and video of a large area in a short time
-it should be able to land on the canopy and do chemical, meteorogical and physical measurements - so it needs to be able to carry a small lab
-it should be able to transmit data to a remote ground station (either by relaying wirelessly to hubs that have been dropped into the canopy, or via other drones that give the system swarming capacity)
-it should have a very long autonomy, that is, it should be able to have an autonomous energy supply system (that means: solar, because there's not much wind over the canopy)
2. OPTIONS / CONCEPTS
-one option is to design a series of solar powered blimps that can land on the canopy; they would transmit their information by forming a chain of wireless hubs
-another is to use off-the-shelf electric RC helicopters and give them solar recharging capabilities; we would then airdrop inflatable landing pads on the canopy, where they can "tank"; the landing pads could contain a battery recharged by solar panels, and the helicopters would then tap this stored energy in addition to using their own solar panels; the info would be transmitted wirelessly via these landing pads
-a more exotic option is to design a series of robots that can crawl over the canopy, autonomously; may seem far-fetched, but it might be possible to design this using inflatables
-a last option is to have a very cheap system of air-dropped inflatable labs that are dropped onto the canopy; such a lab would be solar powered and launch a small tethered helium balloon with instruments (camera)
I know this all sounds a bit ambitious, but the potential funding is there (we're talking about several hundred k).
My question to you: do you have any ideas, suggestions? Feel free to give us your opinion.
I will soon start posting some 3D drawings of the different concepts.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Lorenzo on -
Quick nuance: "autonomous" should not be taken too strictly. There can be control by the ground station, but the range should be very large and there should at least be a basic level of autonomy (flight and energy).
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ModeratorPermalink Reply by Gary Mortimer on -
I think you will have to share tasks between vehicles.
Relaying communications would be relatively easy with aircraft on task.
You would certainly be looking at $15-20000 per unit doing things so you will need the several hundred k!!
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Permalink Reply by Joseph Glanville on -
Hmm.
All things considered I think the blimps would be your best port of call.
You don't want anything like copter that is basically a mess of moving parts waiting to fall out of the sky.
Blimps are lighter than air, quite literally and have relatively little moving parts.
You can also go to 30ft blimps that can carry immense amounts.
For comms you want satellite.
Iridium is cheap, I would check it out for your project.
Solar blimps are not uncommon, google will give you an idea of how to approach it. you will probably still need a battery bank for operation overnight and burst stuff but in general solar is easy when you have such huge surface area.
Interesting project keep us updated/
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Permalink Reply by Matt on -
I'd also say blimps are the way to go, but you'll have difficulty with them when the wind exceeds 5-10kts unless they can auto tether themselves to the canopy.
Sounds like an interesting project though.
at 30' you can probably take about 5kg of payload... From my experience...
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Permalink Reply by Cody Lewis on
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If you go the blimp route you could probably make an electronic anchor. The anchor would be on ~200ft of cable and would start out as a cylinder. When it's time to stop, the blimp just drops the anchor, and it plunges into the cannopy. When it gets to about ~150 feet out the anchor spreads out (springs maybe?) into a large fish hook design. The blimp then just reels in the cord until the anchor hooks into the brush, and pulls the blimp down.
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Permalink Reply by Henry Brown on
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My son has built blimp sims for years with Maya and Sketchup.
He now is using a blimp simulation in Orbiter.
http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk
Could the health of forests be monitored via canopy blimp?
Attach a cell phone microscope and sample needles/leaves.
Redwoods could be monitored for changes in gene expression? Due to global warming drought, etc.
Arabidopsis plant genome is a model organism. Microarrays exist.
http://biotech.biology.arizona.edu/labs/Arab_micro_sg.html
http://www.arabidopsis.org/tools/bulk/microarray/index.jsp
Could scientists compare Redwoods/Rainforests to Arabidopsis through microarrays? Could they read the microarray in the field using cell phones?
Here is a suggestion for monitoring human health. Could we monitor forests with microarrays in the future?
http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/GeneMachine/389166
http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/GeneMachine/247696
A new cell phone microscope may allow remote diagnostics of rural patients. The cell phone could build a cheap distributed health care system in India. Cell phones are wide spread in India.
Do most Redwoods preserves occur near cell phones corridors?
Aydogan Ozcan of UCLA built cell phone microscope.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/02/03/medical.imaging.device/index.html
A Global Health Profiler (GHP) cell phone can be simulated. A cell phone microscope is simulated reading microarrays to diagnose patients. Trees?
GHP Cartoon in MIT SCRATCH for kids:
http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/GeneMachine/389166
Could Humboldt State work with Dr. Srinivas at IIIT (srinivas@iiit.net ) in India to implement Global Health Profiler (GHP) for forests? IIIT is using cell phone telemedicine in India.
Microsoft is developing a cell phone for telemedicine with IIIT in India.
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/collaboration/papers/hyperbad.pdf
England already uses simulations to train doctors. Conservationists?
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/03/30/doctors.second.life/
Immune Attack simulation teaches kids about immune systems.
http://fas.org/immuneattack/
Could Humboldt and IIIT build a virtual tree health simulation for students? Similar to the Second Life Hospital used in England?
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/03/30/doctors.second.life/
Shows students progression of secondary infections that foresters must look for in a simulated forest.
A cell phone/computer game for students?
Could tree chips build a model for human health?
Show pediatric flu or AIDS cases that are overwhelmed by bacterial superinfection simulated in Second Life? Students interact with virtual patients on Second Life with cell phone/computer? Students save the virtual patient and learn about flu and disease.
http://www.jleukbio.org/cgi/rapidpdf/jlb.1108710v1
Many countries and US States might be interested in a health simulation if they had software to help schools monitor the flu and teach students about health.
Could Humboldt develop a virtual microarray that can be read by a cell phone microscope in schools?
Could Humboldt develop a cell phone that reads virtual disease microarrays? Diagnose disease fast and cheaply in the field.
Could Humboldt build software for cell phone microscope to transmit encrypted microarray analysis?
Field diagnosis of disease through cell phones.
A Global Health Profiler (GHP) cell phone can be simulated for students. A cell phone microscope is simulated reading microarrays.
CELL PHONE Microscope - Image analysis
Could this cell phone microscope be adapted to genomic chips for field sampling?
Cell phone adapted for blood analysis:
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/multimedia/2008/12/gallery...
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08%2F12%2F20%2F2012230&a...
Could Greene/Pathogen chip be adapted to virtual cell phone microscope? Other virtual microarrays?
http://www.mailman.hs.columbia.edu/news/Lipkin_GreeneChip.html
Malaria chip?
Could Cell Profiler be adapted to Cell Phone technology?
http://www.cellprofiler.org/
MATLAB is now being used in Cell Profiler to process images.
http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/9386
http://amath.colorado.edu/courses/4720/2000Spr/Labs/Worksheets/Matl...
http://www.amazon.com/Image-Processing-MATLAB-Applications-Medicine...
http://www.amazon.com/DNA-Array-Image-Analysis-Bolts/dp/0966402758/... (Intro. chap. FREE)
Microarray analysis using cell profiler? Cancer microarray.http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2407/6/250
Los Alamos uses MYCIN for automated DNA diagnostics. Could NM build a student version?
MYCIN blood analysis expert system allows doctors to diagnose disease cooperatively. MYCIN was the combination of thousands of doctor's diagnosis.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycin
This cell phone blood analysis tool should be connected to a MYCIN expert system. My thesis used a MYCIN like AI to reassemble genomes. Eventually a second step would be to use microarrays to analyze the DNA and proteins in the sample. How would microarrays be analyzed via cell phone? A cute SciFi book "Galapagos" by Kurt Vonnegut describes an AI like this. A Dwave Quantum supercomputer could use Grover's Algorithm to analyze all past blood samples to make a match. The phone based health care system could then be used world wide to diagnose disease. Costs for health care would drop quickly as diagnosis became cheap.
We also used genetic algorithms to reassemble contigs at Los Alamos. The MYCIN model was used to allow scientists to collaborate on rule sets for DNA assembly.
However the field of genetic analysis has forged ahead. Craig Venters work with shotgun cloning has largely eclipsed my work. His use of fifteen redundant sequence coverages and computer reassembly of the redundant DNA strings allowed Celera corporation to beat the US Human Genome project. It also made him rich. See how he is now rewriting evolutionary theory by scanning the oceans of the world for genes.
http://collections.plos.org/plosbiology/gos-2007.php
New Genome Analysis tools will revolutionize Medicine.
http://www.pacificbiosciences.com/index.php (view 4 min SMRT Tech video) $100 genomes
Add a quantum computer http://www.dwavesys.com/index.php?page=bioinformatics and Grover's algorithm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grover's_algorithm and we could diagnose disease using the gene universe.
Huntingtons disease proteins discovered with comparative genomics.http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=protein-interaction-huntingtons...
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1088934
Could microarray and genome databases be searched exhaustively using Grover's Algorithm on Dwave systems?
Could a global health care network use cell phone microarrays for automated blood diagnostics?
A simulation could follow a doctor diagnosing a disease using the cell phone and microarray to query an expert system.
Microarrays are DNA or protein chips.
They analyze samples at molecular level. They can be read with optical microscopes.
Many vendors sell the chips but you have to buy optical readers to read the chips.
Examples below are commercial high resolution scanners.
http://www.affymetrix.com/products_services/instruments/specific/sc...
http://www.chem.agilent.com/EN-US/PRODUCTS/INSTRUMENTS/DNAMICROARRA...
While they are useful in drug discovery and research they are too expensive for field sampling.
How to make your own microarrays:
http://genome.cshlp.org/content/10/1/1.full
http://brownlab.stanford.edu/
How to calibrate:
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=2447521
Could Qualcomm/Microsoft build a computer simulation for microarray chips that help to build and calibrate them under field conditions? This is the most difficult part of using microarrays in the field. The biggest barrier to automated remote diagnosis using microarrays is in designing systems to prep and load the samples to the microarray as well as choosing a microarray per client.
The cell phone image analysis and the database search for disease images will be much easier.
But how do microarrays perform under field conditions (heat, moisture,lighting, etc.)?
Can they be designed for unique markets? HIV, Colon cancer, Breast cancer?
Could they be used with other technologies? Proteus ingestible pill/chip? Qualcomm is working on Proteus pill.
http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/GeneMachine/389166
http://www.technologyreview.com/biotech/20434/
http://www.proteusbiomed.com/
Example: Colonoscopy replacement (80 million US baby boomers, 500 mill. China, India?)
Buy pill/chip and microarray at pharmacy.
Take the pill/chip each month.
The pill/chip analyses the colon for blood.
Pill calls the patient via cell phone warning of blood in stool.
A microarray sample is analyzed via cell phone to confirm diagnosis.
Patient gets colonoscopy only if polyps bleed.
The potential is enormous. Only 50% of 50+ age have colonoscopy.
http://www.eng.dieba.unibo.it/DIEBAEN/Research/ProjectsAndActivitie...
Other examples would include monitoring AIDS patients for secondary infections (TB),T Cell treatments, etc.
http://www.finddiagnostics.org
http://www.dfadx.org/
I have attached some sample processing software I created for students.
Teenage girls were fascinated in how a cell phone/microarray could help women with health issues.
Could Unicef build a simulation game of rural hospitals in the third world? Level 4 Virus Hunters has good examples.
http://www.amazon.com/Level-4-Virus-Hunters-CDC/dp/1570362777
Students in the US and other developed countries could try and manage the virtual hospital in Pakistan, Africa, etc.
This rural hospital could also be used to train Volunteers headed to underdeveloped countries?
Second Life could provide a build it yourself model Unicef volunteers could update after returning from duty.
Example:
Food Aid is rushed to developing area in Africa to prevent starvation.
Bags of food wait in tents as Lassa virus infected rats crawl and urinate on rice and corn.
Urine then enters food supply starting a Lassa epidemic.
The rural hospital has only a few syringes. The doctor uses them to treat patients and does not clean them.
He inadvertently spreads Lassa, Hepatitis, HIV.
The student must diagnose using the GreeneChip microarray and triage patients while using proper disease barriers to survive. The student/volunteer will learn proper rural medicine techniques. Developed kids gain interest in problems for other kids.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/03/30/doctors.second.life/
This simulation could educate donors and unicef volunteers.
How about a cell phone that reads pap smears in the field? Cell Profiler via phone.
http://www.groundsforhealth.org/
http://www.threecupsoftea.com/
info@ikat.org (Central Asia Institute - Greg Mortenson (Nurse/Author))
I recently used the attached software for an High School AP biology class in Santa Fe, NM.
Building Microarray Simulations - Shows how to build a simple Microarray animation. See attached word document.
Excellent breast cancer microarray web/video tutorial:
http://gcat.davidson.edu/Pirelli/index.htm
Cervical cancer is now now being diagnosed with microarrays.
http://clincancerres.aacrjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/9/15/5486
I also am using valence like genomics relationship diagrams to represent cancer gene networks.
http://benfry.com/valence
http://benfry.com/genomevalence
http://vis.cs.ucdavis.edu/~ogawa/codeswarm/
Building Flu Simulator, see attached word document.
Download original model, Relationship Visualizer, processing code here.
http://alignedleft.com/projects/2008/Relationship_Visualizer/applet/
Let me know if you need more sample code.
Example:
The question? Does the patient have Malaria, Flu, HIV? A common problem in Africa.
Here are a set of links discussing these.
DNA Microarrays for Detection of Viruses in Acute Respiratory Tract Infections in Children
http://derisilab.ucsf.edu/pdfs/Chiu_PEDS.pdf
Flu Chips
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/05/02/swine_flu_chip/
http://www.combimatrix.com/
http://www.colorado.edu/news/releases/2003/434.html
Flu seems to allow bacteria to kill kids. A chip to detect bacteria superinfections in children?
http://www.jleukbio.org/cgi/rapidpdf/jlb.1108710v1
Could Greene/Pathogen chip be adapted to cell phone microscope? Other microarrays?
http://www.mailman.hs.columbia.edu/news/Lipkin_GreeneChip.html
Malaria chip? (see below)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/glasgow_and_west/801524...
Excellent description of diagnosing disease in Africa and Pakistan:
http://www.amazon.com/Level-4-Virus-Hunters-CDC/dp/1570362777
Could Unicef build a simulation game of rural hospitals in the third world? Level 4 Virus Hunters has good examples.
http://www.amazon.com/Level-4-Virus-Hunters-CDC/dp/1570362777
Students in the US and other developed countries could try and manage the virtual hospital in Pakistan, Africa, etc.
This rural hospital could also be used to train Volunteers headed to underdeveloped countries?
Second Life could provide a build it yourself model Unicef volunteers could update after returning form duty.
Example:
Food Aid is rushed to developing area in Africa to prevent starvation.
Bags of food wait in tents as Lassa virus infected rats crawl and urinate on rice and corn.
Urine then enters food supply starting a Lassa epidemic.
The rural hospital has only a few syringes. The doctor uses them to treat patients and does not clean them.
He inadvertently spreads Lassa, Hepatitis, HIV.
The student must diagnose using the GreeneChip microarray and triage patients while using proper disease barriers to survive. The student/volunteer will learn proper rural medicine techniques. Developed kids gain interest in problems for other kids.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/03/30/doctors.second.life/
Henry Brown
hbrown@sisna.com
505 795-3680
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