Harvest Zhang

Interesting Autonomous car behavior. You'd think that GNSS would at least inform the car of what lane they are in and direction of traffic, while the camera/lidar would determine that all the other cars are pointed the other direction...

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[Select Committee Hearing on Drones] Edited out the relevant drone bits. I actually like the idea of taxing Chinese drones and using that as a subsidy for American made ones. Why? At least there's still competition and American manufacturers continue to experience innovation from the Chinese which will lead them to improve their own products. Otherwise America risk falling even further behind. One thing I notice is that somehow US government seems to feel public safety is part of national security but regular public officers dont think so. Which is why many of them are very vocal about the ban. Full version here: https://lnkd.in/gPs9qZjp

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The wind blows in 3 dimensions. we mostly only care about 2... it's time to modernize. What opportunities exist when we close knowledge gaps and leverage this immense movement of mass? Some interesting topics NOAA has identified related to nested scales and knowledge gaps. the impact of waves and sea spray (small particles) on the formation and movement of hurricanes ( 500-1000km scale) cloud formation and transitions within the boundary layer. factors affecting the vertical transport of heat and matter during the boundary layer daily cycle. concentration and transport of pollutants in realistically variable boundary layer structures We live and exist in the planetary boundary layer by the way. Early 360 camera the Rylo, that is still my favorite camera. lost in the trees in St. Hilare. This is 120+ flying humans. About to spend 3-5 hours flying over 100km using sunlight and the resulting convective thermodynamic reality. this is already the future. weather matters. VR if you have it... or full resolution at least.

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I have been saying some of this for years. SpaceX customers are subsidizing Starlink. With traditional launch, costs are simple. Fixed costs (infra, labor...) + Cost of rocket / $$$ from the launch. The fixed costs get divided by launch cadence, so they are huge for 1 launch per yr, but not bad for 10/yr. With reuse, your launch cost breakdown gets funkier. You still have the fixed costs, but now you divide those by 100+ instead of 1 or 10. Add in the less quantifiable increase in competence that comes from doing this 2/wk instead of 2/yr. Now, you get to amortize the rocket over its lifetime. With that though, you have to add some stuff back in. You add refurb costs, which include spare parts and labor. Do you get better at that over time? That seems to be the case, and spare parts on a 23X flown bird certainly beats a new bird! So, I can have 1/20 rocket cost + refurb? That's only something knowable after it has been retired. So, 23? 30? We don't know yet! Of course Falcon 9 isn't fully reusable. The upper stage is expended, and I've recently heard that 2/3 of their cost is due to the upper stage expenditures. So, what does a launch cost SpaceX? At this point, it costs something like this: (Fixed costs/100+) + ((booster + fairing/20+) + (Refurb )) + (Expended upper stage) + (Propellant, which is usually 1-2% of launch cost, so it ordinarily doesn't even factor) And here's the kicker. They have no reason to lower price until a second player enters the arena at a similar price point. It would be destructive to their own profits and the absolute razor edge Margin model they are playing with Starlink, but it would also be destructive to any current or future competitors. Of course Starship will be different. The rocket will be cheaper/kg of payload, it will be fully reused and the unit lifetime will be higher.

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How to build an Antikythera Mechanism with ancient Tool Technology Fragment #1 to Fragment #11* (*6 Month ago) Art of Clock and Watchmaking. Hackers discovery changes understanding of the Antikythera Mechanism https://lnkd.in/dSbZjZQX https://lnkd.in/dBd_9ZNZ #Clickspring #youtube #AntikytheraMechanism #Antikythera #Watchmaking #discovery https://lnkd.in/dQkYpujB

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I haven't really drilled down into this one yet, but I gather that the problem is rooted in CFCs, where the news is good and (with a final treaty-based phaseout of the least-bad ozone-eaters) getting better. It seems that aluminum oxides from satellite-reentry incinerations tend to reboost chlorine in the high upper atmosphere, and its the thousands of reactions per chlorine atom that eat ozone. But chlorine is highly reactive. How does it even get up there as individual atoms? Well, CFCs are the transport medium, and once at high-enough altitude, UV chops up the CFCs, liberating chlorine. Still, it's troubling that we could be losing some years of ozone recovery. But I think there's a silver lining in the satellite cloud if people take satellite design sooner in a direction it should probably go anyway. And that direction is to do final assembly of satellites in orbit. The mass savings could be dramatic, because a lot of a satellite is structural mass that's required only to survive the stresses of rocket launch. Once in orbit, you need far less structural mass, which also would save on orbit-adjustment propellant. The satellites need to be carried to orbit on an upper stage anyway. Why not sacrifice a little of the payload volume to robotic assembly equipment? It could easily pay for its own mass by enabling reductions in the mass of the satellites. For that matter, it could more than pay for itself in payload volume. If, for example, structural components could be made of plastic that's fed into injection molders and additive manufacturing systems ("3D printing"), a tub of plastic takes up less payload volume than if the structural components were finished products awaiting orbital assembly. Problems create opportunities. OSAM for preserving the ozone layer could have the pleasing effect of goosing constellation cost-performance to a whole new level.

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Check out our latest blog article by Dann Hayes!

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Here’s something that caught my attention. Now, I’m used to graphical inages not quite getting the engineering correct. The image is of a potential spacewalk on a future SpaceX (non-NASA) mission. It looks like this dude is egressing the spacecraft in their launch-entry pressure suit, which would be a bad idea. Evidently, SpaceX has taken their launch-entry suit and modified them for EVA, with the intention of improving mobility compared with historical EVA suits. I think that endeavor is fine and applaud SpaceX for pushing the envelope. It should be noted, however, that spacewalking suits are rigid for a reason. Take the old “pumpkin suit” that Shuttle astronauts used to wear for launch. Sure, they were designed to hold pressure in the event the crew cabin lost pressure, but they were not designed for EVA. Space walking requires protection from swings of temperature from 250 deg F to -250 def F. They also protect the occupant from radiation. But most importantly, they offer astronauts protection from the myriad of hyper velocity particles zipping around in space. Think about immersing oneself into a barrage of bullets and you get the idea. Mobility is important. Useful work needs to be performed on spacewalks. But survival is important too. Spacesuit are compromises between the two.

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All technology seems like magic once it works. The question is how do we tell if some goals are too outlandish? Here is a simple template: > Does it fall within the bounds of physics? > Will a first principles check show feasibility? - even if the odds seem slim. > Do you have a team from all disciplines needed to solve this? It takes imagination and courage to attempt breaking the norm. SuperHeavy booster catch envisioned in this video (Credit : Space.com & SpaceX) checks all three boxes. Catching the Superheavy booster sounds crazy but, at one point, so did landing a F9 booster after an orbital launch. It will be exciting and rewarding to reach this goal. #Spacex #Spacetechnology #Starship #rockets https://lnkd.in/g7yq_yiV

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What's the best training environment for autonomous vehicles? "Bad driving is probably playing a bigger role in the fatality rate than larger cars and longer journeys." This article from Financial Times and John Burn-Murdoch about the crazy US traffic we've all (?) experienced made me think about the development of autonomous vehicles. Companies like Tesla and Waymo are preferably training their autonomous systems on US roads, and now I understand why! It's because they want their systems to be trained under the most difficult circumstances. or It's because a sub-par autonomous driving system can excel among bad US drivers, and it's the fastest way to market acceptance. Either way, as Europeans, we should be grateful that the systems are trained on US roads, where many distracted drivers create fringe situations that would never happen in other parts of the world. Car manufacturers send their development teams to the Nordics to test winter behavior before sending them to the US to get road rage training data... #autonomuscars #fsd #ai #automotive https://lnkd.in/dU7MqW2y

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Developing robotics systems to intuitively navigate unstructured environments for tasks that were not long ago classified as “not automation-worthy” are the challenges worth solving. Once upon a time, these tasks were just “too hard” because you couldn’t draw a polygon over an area on a screen and hit GO. This is changing fast and man, it’s fun. #justgettingstarted #robotics

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This is a great tool for getting to grips with the potential costs of debris remediation. Mitigation of debris is a major part of tackling this tragedy of the commons but until we begin to remediate legacy debris we will not be able to declare ourselves net zero debris. We're working on the means to collectively fund remediation as an industry. A lot of money is made in space and to clean it up will be a fraction of the profits people make but there is still hesitancy. https://kmi.privateer.com/

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How it feels when everything goes wrong: (The hardships of hardware development) [𝗽𝗮𝗿𝘁 5] I have to rewind from the spring of 2023 to the fall 2022. We hired an agent to help us fundraise in the fall of 2022. The agreement was the first part of the money on our account in February. When they failed to do that, our own investors pulled the bridge financing. Now we had 3 months before we ran out of money. It was fair enough. We had struggled with motor problems for 6 months. The progress on the flying prototype seemed very little. In the end, we found out there were manufacturing errors on them. The countdown timer is 3 months now. Fugg!! Well, Travis James Mathers and I were not ready to give up. We geared up, prepared ourselves for war. I had to fire the whole team due to Danish rules around responsibility. Here is the status at this point: - A fired team with 3 months of resignation, - A prototype with motors that had been causing problems - There is no regulatory approval to fly outside. Okay, here we go! We put in all our efforts to get regulatory approval so we could fly outside and do a demonstration for a potential customer, which would probably get us our bridge financing back. 1.5 months later, we got our regulatory approval as the only ones in Europe able to do onshore and offshore operations with this heavy drone for cargo delivery for wind turbines. 2 months later, we fly outside for the second time, and at about 25 meters of height, we have a small glitch on a motor that causes instability that makes the drone crash into the ground. At this point, all the escape hatches are open for us to jump into and give up. Double FUGG!! Follow me for the next part of the story. If you love what you do, fight for it with everything you have. -MK

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A project on : Hypothesis testing - Air Quality Index (AQI) An environmental think tank called Repair Our Air (ROA) is formulating policy recommendations to improve the air quality in America. 1. ROA is considering a metropolitan-focused approach. Within California, they want to know if the mean AQI in Los Angeles County is statistically different from the rest of California? 2. With limited resources, ROA has to choose between New York and Ohio for their next regional office. Does New York have a lower AQI than Ohio? 3. A new policy will affect those states with a mean AQI of 10 or greater. Will Michigan be affected by this new policy?

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Contrary to what you may be hearing from other manufacturers and folks on social media, no DJI ban has been enacted by the U.S. government. Congress does, however, have a couple pieces of paper on a desk somewhere that would, if it makes it up the huge hill it would have to climb, prevent new FCC IDs from being issued to new DJI products. The last I heard, it was one of over 1,000 amendments that members of Congress are trying to add to the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2025. Some of those amendments include restrictions on firewalls, modems, routers, and tons of other devices you are using right now. I doubt you're ripping those out and replacing them and there's no need to panic and do the same with your DJI or Chinese-made drones. If you like them, keep using them to make your job, your life, and your neighbor's life safer and better. Let me say again, THERE IS NO DJI BAN. Nothing has been voted on, enacted, signed into law, etc. It's simply been proposed by lawmakers who are clearly misinformed. It is our job, those of us in the industry who use this technology, to educate them on why legislation like the Countering CCP Drones Act would devastate American drone operators and do nothing to help our American drone manufacturers innovate. It stifles the innovation at arguably one of those most innovative eras in our industry. Keep an eye on https://lnkd.in/g7SpvTvN for the very latest information and up-to-date outreach mechanisms related to all anti-Chinese and other country of origin related legislation. Happy Friday Eve! PS. If you are an American drone manufacturer and reading this post makes you think that I don't want you to succeed and that I don't value your products and your mission...we clearly need to sit down and talk. DM me anytime. I'll also be at Commercial UAV Expo in Vegas in September. Let's chat–beverages on me! 🍻☕️

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Is the Mojave the next unmanned Warthhog?.. A few operational questions around CONOPS employments, BLOS (with emphasis on comm delays critical for non-accurate shots) and survivability. But otherwise pretty cool.. General Atomics Aeronautical Systems

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It took me a little bit to go over the paper from anthropic but it completely blew my mind. We need more research in the interpretability/explainability space I encourage you to take a deep dive if you haven't! There are so many good things in here that summarizing doesnt make it justice, but as a summary: Sparse Autoencoders: Trained SAEs to decompose model activations, revealing interpretable features that explain the model's behavior. Feature Analysis: Discovered fascinating features like the Golden Gate Bridge, brain sciences, and even safety-relevant features like bias, sycophancy, and deception. Scalability: Demonstrated that these methods can scale effectively, providing insights into larger models' internal workings. But just read it!

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🤯🔥𝘿𝙊 𝙔𝙊𝙐 𝙒𝘼𝙉𝙏 𝙏𝙊 𝙆𝙉𝙊𝙒 𝙃𝙊𝙒 𝙕𝙄𝙋𝙇𝙄𝙉𝙀 𝙃𝘼𝙎 𝙄𝙉𝙉𝙊𝙑𝘼𝙏𝙀𝘿 𝙏𝙃𝙀 𝙐𝙎𝙀 𝙊𝙁 𝘿𝙀𝙇𝙄𝙑𝙀𝙍𝙔 𝘿𝙍𝙊𝙉𝙀𝙎?🤖✈️ Since 2016, Zipline has made over a million deliveries, and their engineering team has learned valuable lessons about designing drones for professional services. ✅️ Lightweight Structure: The carbon fiber monocoque structure weighs less than six pounds, allowing for efficient transport and greater flight autonomy. ✅️ Structural Efficiency: Carbon fiber distributes forces evenly, reducing wear and extending the drone's lifespan. ✅️ Aerodynamic Design: Carbon fiber enables the creation of complex aerodynamic surfaces, improving the drone's speed and efficiency. ✅️ Reliability and Service: By making drones lighter and more efficient, Zipline can offer reliable, high-quality services tailored to professional needs. These lessons have allowed Zipline to optimize their drones to provide more efficient and reliable professional services. Si quieres saber más de los Delivery Drones lee este artículo de Negocio Aeroespacial 👉https://lnkd.in/dtZwiAwB Credits: Zipline. ------ 📣Remember to follow me Luis L. if you want more content about #Aviation #eVTOL #Drones #Airports #Innovation or #Tech 👉Follow Negocio Aeroespacial , to learn everything about the aerospace and defense sector. 🔥 Re-share and comment, is the only way for me to have feedback from you 📨Contact me if you need any support, I will love to help you. 👏👏👏 ------ 📲Join our WhatsApp channel: https://lnkd.in/d-wHG2D7 🛰Join our telegram channel: https://lnkd.in/d4GuYeBG

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Anzu Robotics hits the street today. I'm sure you'll see several items on this in your feed. 😁 Looking forward to seeing it in action to truly evaluate where it sits in the busy #SUAS market. I will say the business model of partnering with top market mass produced hardware and overseas, non-China manufacturing the topped off with USA made, controlled and tested software all managed and controlled by a USA company has an intriguing potential in todays geo-politically charged competitive environment. The cost is good for the specs provided. The use-ability, workflow and feature sets will be the deciding factor. Curious what your initial thoughts are. Something to keep your eye on for sure! #drone #unmannedsystems

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