Ice rafts not sails: Floating the rocks at Racetrack Playa, Paper by Ralph Lorenz et. al. |
Ice rafts not sails: Floating the rocks at Racetrack Playa, Paper by Ralph Lorenz et. al. |
Dec 29 2010, 06:04 PM
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 3516 Joined: 4-November 05 From: North Wales Member No.: 542 |
Thanks once again to Jason B for making this intriguing paper accessible to all: http://barnesos.net/publications/papers/20...track.Rafts.pdf
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Dec 31 2010, 01:48 AM
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Merciless Robot Group: Admin Posts: 8783 Joined: 8-December 05 From: Los Angeles Member No.: 602 |
Real blue-sky suggestion here, but would putting little RFID tags on the roving rocks be at all useful? What I'm thinking here is some way to obtain motion measurements (and, ideally, the rate of motion) without continuous human observation. If you had two RFID receivers plus recording and/or a remote telemetry hookup, presumably you could track 2D motion of the rocks 24/7/365.
Downsides: 1. This don't sound cheap (but there might be el cheapo ways to do it. I'm aware of the technology, just not conversant in it, but I do know that there's considerable commercial interest & concurrent development ongoing for logistics applications.) 2. Adding mass to the rocks might affect their behavior, even though this might be as little as a gram. 3. You might need more electrical power than I realize to keep an RFID interrogator running continuously, and it could be a royal (and expensive) pain to do fixes, maintenance, etc. -------------------- A few will take this knowledge and use this power of a dream realized as a force for change, an impetus for further discovery to make less ancient dreams real.
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Dec 31 2010, 04:59 PM
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Member Group: Members Posts: 555 Joined: 27-September 10 Member No.: 5458 |
Real blue-sky suggestion here, but would putting little RFID tags on the roving rocks be at all useful? The issue I would see with RFID is that you would have to triangulate the position to track the motion. I'm not sure how far the stones have gone in a single move but if it is significant enough, it can make it difficult to get a good read on the tags. Usually the range is maxed out at around 9 meters, 20 if you use a parabolic dish on the reader. I would suggest using a micro three axis accelerometer (found commonly in smartphones) with a really small FM transmitter to transmit the output. -------------------- |
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