[ExI] super soldier ants and the tata nano

Kelly Anderson kellycoinguy at gmail.com
Fri Jan 20 17:45:11 UTC 2012


On Wed, Jan 18, 2012 at 5:47 AM, Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 18, 2012 at 12:46:08AM -0700, Kelly Anderson wrote:
>
>> I don't know if this specific thing is possible, but it sure SEEMS
>> possible. Has anyone seen any work on Secure Foam in the real world?
>> The specs are pretty simple. Foam up and harden to Styrofoam
>> consistency in a few hundred milliseconds, then disintegrate within 30
>> seconds after that (to allow said ape to breathe again)...
>
> Doesn't help with twisting brainstem injury, though of couse immobilizing
> the head will eliminate whiplash motion.

No, I would not suppose that it would protect against every type of
injury. The new racing equipment added after the death of Dale
Earnhart actually accomplishes something like what Secure Foam is
supposed to do, and I guess it protects you somewhat better than
before. You can only get incremental safety improvement. Secure Foam
might also reduce the incursion of foreign objects into the passenger
compartment. If you look at the mess inside the smart car on that
video, that's a lot of sharp edges flying around in there... Sure
would be nice not to have that slicing on you.

The question for this group is whether you think it is possible from a
chemical standpoint. Is there something that would expand fast enough
and harden quickly enough to do the job? That would not then be so
hard that you couldn't get out of it pretty easily afterwards.
Although I suppose you could come up with other solutions if it stayed
hard... I would expect that if you were embedded in today's
construction foams, you wouldn't be able to move, kind of like when
you are stuck in an avalanche of snow... but if a robot or something
could dig you out fast... that might not be a terrible problem.

> Better solution: let the photons do the traveling. Packet collisions cause
> few casualties.

ROFLMAO! Of course that's the best solution. Better still is remote
presence with a mobile robot, which is already being done on a limited
commercial basis.
http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/industrial-robots/051810-anybots-qb-new-telepresence-robot
The only problem at this point is that they are pretty expensive, but
I would suppose that will come down. Also, I would guess these guys
don't do stairs yet... lol.

-Kelly



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