Control Engineering

Paul Grayson

MORE MOON
January 18, 2008

http://en.wikipedia.org:80/wiki/Selenographic_coordinates

NAVIGATION ON THE MOON
As with navigation anywhere a set of coordinates need to be used.  Luckily people have already been working out the details for the Moon.  Selenographic Coordinates seem pretty tame and uninteresting compared to some of the exotic coordinate systems proposed for work on Mars, but maybe that is a good thing.  For many practical reasons most of the activity for the near future is going to be on the side of the moon visible from Earth.  Communication and visibility from Earth are all best done on the Earth side of the moon.  An international race to claim resources on the moon by the vairous countries on Earth is in progress.  A proxy fight is being reported in the news as the countries of the Earth seek to claim unclamed portions of the Earth as their own.  This is said by some to be just a warm up for claiming chunks of the moon.  This may be a few years off in the future while at the moment how to get around on the moon once you get there needs to be worked out now.

MOON MAPS
Good maps are key to getting around efficiently. Google has taken the NASA data from the Apollo Missions and created a moon map data base accessible by clicking on the moom maps link.  Much like Google Earth maps, this one is Google Moon.   Andrew Peterson, the PR person I spoke with at Google was very helpful to me in getting a feel for what the Google culture is like.  It certainly sounds to me like a great place to work and with the companies focus on leading technology it makes sense that they would be the ones to provide access to the NASA moon data base for free on the internet and to be involved in the Google Lunar X-Prize race to the moon.

IVTT - 3rd JOINT MILITARY/CIVILIAN SEMINAR ON INTELLIGENT VEHICLE TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER 
"The objective of this Seminar is to continue developing the foundation and framework for establishing a technology transfer process that will be useful for the development of intelligent vehicles for military and civilian applications and markets."

ORGANIZATIONS INVOLVED IN INTELLIGENT VEHICLE TECHNOLOGY

Department of Defense:
„« JRP - Joint Robotics Program; Robotic Systems Joint Project Office
„« Robotics Group - Air Force Research Laboratory 
„« Program Management Office for EOD (Navy)
„« TARDEC - US Army Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center ()
„« SPAWAR - Department Of Defense Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command  
„« Air Armament Center Agile Combat Support (AAC/YBC) Program Office
„« Product Manager, Force Protection Systems
„« Aviation and Missile Research, Development & Engineering Center (AMRDEC)
„« DARPA - Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency 
„« Product Manager, Robotic and Unmanned Sensors
„« ARL - Army Research Laboratory 
„« FCS - Future Combat System Program

NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration 

DOC - Department of Commerce 
„« ISD NIST - Intelligent Systems Division of the National Institute of Standards and Technology 

DOE - Department of Energy 

DOT ITS JPO - Department of Transportation Intelligent Transportation Systems Joint Program Office 

AUVSI - Association for Unmanned Vehicles International 
ITS America - Intelligent Transportation Society of America 
Robotic Technology Inc.

2007 DARPA URBAN CHALLENGE




Photos by AIM Team members Linda and Tom Graham

GO ROBOTS !

Paul F. Grayson - Chief Engineer
AMERICAN INDUSTRIAL MAGIC, LLC
Racing to build technology that saves soldier's lives.
390 4-Mile Rd. S.
Traverse City, MI 49686-8411
(231) 946-0187, (231) 883-4463 Cell
pgrayson@aimagic.org
http://aimagic.org
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/robotcluboftraversecitymi/
http://www.controleng.com/index.asp?layout=blog&blog_id=1180000318

Posted by Paul Grayson on January 18, 2008 | Comments (0)