Faranak Davoodi, Ali Hajimiri, Neil Murphy, Michael Mischna, Issa Nesnas, Shouleh Nikzad
We propose a revolutionary way of studying the surface of Mars using a
wind-driven network of mobile sensors- Gone with the Wind ON_Mars (GOWON).
GOWON is a scalable architecture that will allow in-situ mapping of a wide
range of phenomena, exploiting existing capabilities, but radically improving
our ability to study Mars. GOWON has the following characteristics: 1.it
consists of a dynamic wireless network of many compact mobile sensors. 2.the
mobile sensors (called moballs) are spherically-shaped and wind-driven; they
are lightweight and bouncy. 3. moballs communicate with each other and earth
through a satellite system orbiting Mars. There is also peer-to-peer
communication between the moballs, creating a network of shared data,
computing, and tasks.
Motivation and Rationale Thanks to earlier exploration missions to Mars we
now have a much better understanding of many of the natural characteristics of
the red planet. We now know that there is an abundance of wind (with average
speeds of 10 m/s and much higher maximum speeds [1]), dust storms, high levels
of saltation [2], crustal magnetic fields generated by an abundance of
ferromagnetic minerals and rocks [3], etc. Future Mars missions must therefore
attempt to leverage these characteristics, and must do so by exploiting recent
advances in low power micro-devices using MEMS (Micro-Electro-Mechanical
Systems that harvest vibration and other movement into energy) technologies and
others, miniature cameras, miniature wet chemistry labs, integrated circuits,
low power wireless devices, etc. We believe the system proposed here addresses
this opportunity heads on. Our proposed system is much more than a collection
of sensors; the system is larger than the sum of its parts. In addition to
communicating with the satellite, the moballs can communicate with each other
and therefore distribute tasks, data, computations, etc.
View original:
http://arxiv.org/abs/1202.3847
No comments:
Post a Comment