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I visited there a few months ago, and satellites are not a big concern for Rubin in particular. It will visit every part of the sky over 800 times and add all those images together, and since the satellite trails won't cover the same things every time the overall impact on data is minimal. They estimate less than 1%, so the plan is to just run the survey for 1% longer.
I'm the author of this piece, and I'm happy to tell you where it came from.
I was at a robotics conference in Boulder last spring, where some folks from Lely presented a paper on their robotic code of conduct. I hadn't heard of robots for cows before, and thought it was fascinating. I happened to be in Rotterdam last fall for another conference, which was close enough to the Lely headquarters for a visit.
Lely is somewhat unique in that they're a robotics company rather than an agricultural machinery company that also makes some robots. There are a few other companies that make robotic systems like these, but Lely is the largest by a significant margin. Farms will often choose what brand of robot to buy based on what service center is closest to them, in case something goes wrong. I believe that Lely promises that they'll have someone on-site to fix (or, start fixing) a broken robot within about 2 hours.
The majority of farms who switch to these robots keep them- an expert that we talked to said that it's not common to go back, and only a small percentage do.
> Lely is somewhat unique in that they're a robotics company rather than an agricultural machinery company that also makes some robots.
What equipment from the major agricultural manufacturers would you consider to be not robots these days? Even a simple tool like a field cultivator now employs robotics for things like keeping it at a precise depth, never mind the extensive robotics involved in more complex equipment.
There are some smaller companies still producing agricultural equipment that is not recognizable as a robot, but I'd consider that to be the exception rather than the norm.
Personally (and to some extent, professionally) I make a distinction between robotics and automation. In robotics, I look for a distinct, physically embodied system that can make decisions based on its environment and alter that environment by changing its behavior. Automation is much more limited and requires a much more structured environment. But it's all a matter of perspective.
Fair to say that it is a matter of perspective, but by your perspective the cultivator is a robot, right? A field is far less structured than a barn, and the tool makes decisions about how to alter its behaviour and environment in a pretty grand and visible fashion. Lely products are much closer to being automation in comparison.
Perhaps a more pedantic take is that the cultivator is simply attachment for the actual robot, which is the tractor. A cultivator on its own is useless. In that vein, there is seemingly a difference. Each product Lely sells is the full solution. Whereas John Deere gives you a menu and you have to select which "toppings" you want on your robot.
But then that gives nod to Lely products being closer to automation than robotics again. Beyond choosing a product at a high level, you don't have to get into the nitty gritty details because they will always operate in a comparatively strict and consistent environment.
I wrote this story, which originated entirely from a single picture on brr [1], an Antarctica blog that has wonderful, detailed descriptions about how the South Pole station functions.
This paper is based on the performance at the 2022 event, but it took this long to write it up and get it published.
The tracking system was used during all of the races for data collection of both the autonomous and human-piloted drones, which is why the reflective markers are visible.
They did do some demonstrations of the drones controlled with the tracking cameras, and they were significantly faster, but the vision-based drones were definitely able to fly faster than the human pilots in some races.
It's hard to get a good sense of scale from the image, but the solar panel on the concept is about 0.5m in diameter. JPL has run the numbers as part of their engineering study, and MSH would be able to recharge itself in a day.
The most likely way for MSH to get funded in the near term is as part of NASA's sample return goals. 5kg of science payload is not insubstantial, but even if MSH's primary instrument was just a sampling tool, it could still do some unique stuff. It could collect otherwise inaccessible samples from across a very wide area, and then bring them all back to a centralized location, which a rover can't do very well.
I asked Bob about this. There are a bunch of options, but one way to do it is that you use a hollow projectile that takes a core sample, and then you just reel back in the core while the rest of the projectile stays in place.
I interviewed Bob and wrote this article, so I can answer a few of these.
I think JPL's idea is that MSH would be a dedicated helicopter mission, rather than piggybacking on some other mission, so it wouldn't be eating up the mass budget of another lander or rover.
Similar to Ingenuity, the flights would be autonomous but the science wouldn't be. MSH would fly up to a cliff face (or whatever), take pictures, land, ask Earth where to sample, and then make a second flight to do the sampling.
MSH would be able to communicate with orbit directly and would not need rover or lander support.
> MSH would be able to communicate with orbit directly and would not need rover or lander support.
Does that mean it wouldn't be powered by an RTG like the last few missions? Or do you just mean that the MSH will have its own comms independent of a supporting rover/lander?
JPL has run the numbers on this as part of the engineering study. The solar panel shown in the concept image (in the center) charges a battery that gives MSH a 10km range or 5 minutes of hover time after charging for a day. It would have its own comms that could reach orbit.
Ooof that's hard to swallow :(. Would the MSH be so productive that it makes up for the limited operating time? Is mission planning so meticulous that it would be a bottle neck anyway? What about winter?
Whats the power budget for instruments during/after flight?
This is all the next step. If they end up putting together an actual mission proposal, they can factor in power budgets for specific science instruments, sun angles and seasonality at the landing site, etc, but they're not quite there yet.
Not sure what you mean by limited operating time, though- if you mean that MSH has to spend 50% of its time charging, that's true, but relative to a rover, it can travel so much farther and faster that JPL is arguing it more than makes up for it.
The rotors would have to be massive to lift 30kg, that may be a stumbling block as it’ll require folding and so on.
Seems like it would need a lander at least for recharging right?
If you're interested in the details of what goes in to developing rotors for a helicopter for an atmosphere we've never built in before you should check out this talk:
https://doi.org/10.52843/47ly7q
Thanks! In scaling up the fragility of the material seems very likely to be a big factor, cube-square law and so on. I wonder if there’ll be physical testing of proposed designs, are there even near-vacuum wind tunnels?
You can see how the whole thing would fold up in the linked article, there's an image from the white paper that shows MSH fitting into the same size aeroshell Mars Pathfinder used. It would run on solar power and recharge itself, just like Ingenuity.
Also, the rotors would blow away dust on the landing site, which may be a problem if you want to research dust, but may be an opportunity if you want to see what's beneath it.
Hopefully by the time this thing is ready to be built SpaceX have the Starship flying. Getting payload to Mars is going to get a lot cheaper if they hit even half their goals (even if we're just launching the rocket that goes to Mars on top of a Starship).
I just wanted to see the folding concept at the given resolution, just bigger, like God and my pinch gesture intended. No cigar.
Opening the image in another tab then zooming then I suddenly wonder why on Earth this is required. I know it's not malice, but there must millions of people with sub 20:20 vision who don't want to enable the screen magnifier when pinch is ALREADY A THING.
