Mostly assembled plane.

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Status update pictures of the plane assembly.

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80" wingspan plane.

PhiNR purchased a small plane today that has characteristics that will make it easy to robotify. We are hoping to use this as a test platform for low altitude high resolution push broom photography.

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Sketches from last night's informal UI meeting.

Here are some sketches we put together at last night's user interface meeting. One is a heads up display for our rover, and the other is a concept design for our copter balloon.

Hyperspectral imaging of a redwood forest floor.

It looks like our blimp bot might be used to mount a hyperspectral imaging device being developed by a group at Stanford University. The device needs to be something like 70 meters or so off the forest floor in order to collect the required data. The low density gas/multi fan lift system might be appropriate for this purpose. Here are some new pictures of our ever developing lab space.

Oil, Satellites and Raman Spectroscopy.

Oil

David Lehrberg has succeeded in supplementing our activities with a bio diesel conversion system that turns used fry oil into fuel for a car with the appropriate engine. Mega Bites, the cafe here on base has agreed to supply our group with their used oil.

Satellites

Our group has agreed to support the NEO (Near earth object) android hack satellite group we are going to share OpenLab space with. We will help them design, program and fly a satellite mission using a hacked android handset.

Raman Spectroscopy

We are working with Dr's Bin Chen and Chris Mckay, and a local company named Crystal Research Inc. on a phase II SBIR proposal to mount a microtized Raman Spectrometer to a rover.

Here are some links in case that last was incomprehensible:

http://www.sbir.gov/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raman_spectroscopy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_McKay_(planetary_scientist)

http://www.eocrystal.com/

J.R. filming Michael Lamberty IR enabling a webcam.

J.R. Alfano set up a small film studio in our lab today to film Michael Lamberty giving a tutorial on removing an IR filter on a webcam.