Aerodynamics and Hydrodynamics of the Marine Life and Uses for AI, UAVs, Robotics, and the Future

Air has 750 times less density as the oceans, yet so many of the same principles apply there as well. We are quite familiar with marine life and the performance abilities of sharks, dolphins, penguins, fish, alligators, etc. Mankind is quite fascinated by marine life and often tries to use these observations to create devices to serve him.

A Great White Shark can swim 7 times as fast as the Olympic swimmers in Athens taking the gold this year, yet it is not even close to being the fastest in the water. Powerful, yes indeed, but the need for speed limits its abilities to catch some of its favorite meals. Luckily humans are not one of them, as much as JAWS I, II and III would have you believe. The Great White Shark swims at about 25 mph. Squids can move through the water at 20 mph. The Blue Shark has been clocked in short bursts at 43 mph yet its average cruising speed in open water is between 17.7 and 24.5 mph. The Make Short Fin can travel at 10 times its body length per second, which is quite fast and amounts to over 46 mph at top speed. It can accelerate at 45 feet per second/ per second, faster than a rock can fall or a human accelerates after he departs a perfectly good airplane in search for an adrenaline rush to achieve sense of purpose. A human can swim at 5.04 mph, but only for short distances and you have to be a Mark Spitz or Michael Phelps to it for very long.

http://www.ncsu.edu/ligon/olympics/Spitz/MarkS.html

As good as these super star athletes are, they are no match for evolution, without modification. You might be happy to know that a barracuda will catch you and nibble before a great white shark will catch you in open water, they can swim at 27 mph, one of the fastest, well and hungriest fish in the water. Mammal Sea Life is quite adapted; Sea Lion 25 mph, Common Dolphin 24.7, Gentoo Penguin 17, Blue Whale 29.76, Bottle Nose Dolphin 17 mph. Many of the fish eaten by the marine life of prey are also quite adapted for instance the Pacific Salmon can swim at 14 mph. Then there are the flying fish, those, which leap out of the water and become airborne, thus proving that there is a similarity between the two realms. The flying fish flies at 35 mph and has been known to fly right into a boat, for an easy catch. The Leaping Albacore Tuna leaps at 40 mph great sushi no doubt, the Yellow Fin Tuna at 46.35, the Sword Fish 60 mph and the Sail Fish at 68 mph. Here is a claim from Barbados that a flying fish was clocked at 55 mph?

Well maybe, but not if Hurricane Ivan has anything to say about it because if that fish pops out of the water it is liable to be doing some 135 mph within a few feet of leaving the waters surface and might be airborne for quite a while too? Now that would certainly be a new record.

Does this mean we might also wish to look at Fish and Sea Life Evolution in the aerodynamic designs of aircraft, UAVs, Blimps and Olympic Swim Gear? Yes, this is one of the points of this dialogue. Does this mean we should look at aviation designs for submarine, AUVs, ship hulls and underwater submersibles? Should we also be designing underwater bases for aircraft, spacecraft and double use vessels? Flying AUVs, which become UAVs? Designing flying torpedoes, Mechanical Fish and MAVs, which look like the flying fish photo too? Yes, it does. If you made a mechanical fish what good would it be? Hunting water mines, data relays, additional net-centric communication unit?

http://worldthinktank.net/wttbbs/index.php?showtopic=218

If nature can do these things, so can we and we have been constantly re-designing and bettering natures methods. If an eagle has 3-4 better times the eye sight and can see, react and adapt while in-flight that quickly, yet has less of a brain to coordinate all the data yet has also developed triple the reflex or response time, should we be looking into how this is done? For instance does an Eagle use some sort of visual frame bursting, for instance it knows the type of fish it likes to eat which tastes good and is the right weight and size and when it sees this it's brain fills in the details and it's eyes only focus on the slight variations of motion and detail so it knows where to pick it up at and how best to snatch it out of the water? We know that our brains use up about 45% of the brain capacity in visual cognition. What does the Eagle do with all the many flights and all that data for it's memory, it cannot possibly store it all, does it have a Random Access Memory Data dump like when you windows computer crashes? Does it only save the frames and basic shapes and let the eyes fill in the rest of the details each time? We should test this as it is important to know.

We know the human brain can be fooled often enough when something appears to be close to something we are familiar with. What can we learn from these birds besides their aerodynamics. Is it possible to play optical tricks on an Eagle? For instance make a small AUV, which mimics a salmon fish? Will the Eagle be fooled by this? Old Eagle eyes, or will the Eagles excellent eye sight trigger another wave in it's brain, as if to ask itself; "Hey something is fishy about that fish?" Would such a thought from an Eagle significantly activate it's brain for a second look, before diving upon it's prey? It appears in humans this does activate an additional brain wave.

Since Eagles do not flock are do they communicate and navigate, migrate using ELF, entangled brains with other eagles? Only their immediate families from the same mother or nest? This too would be of value for determining AI for robotic UAVs as part of the net centric warfare situation.

As we look at Artificial Intelligence models perhaps we should be looking at other species, which seem to be able to do more with less. Less brain capacity, yet still think. Perhaps we ought to dump the ego into thinking that mankind is the only animal which can reason and adapt on this Planet, we have significant proof of other animals here doing quite fine in the thinking region. If we open our minds we may find other species may in fact supercede our abilities in many aspects. Is the future of robotics going to the birds with regards to UAVs and MAVs as the needs of mankind and the competitiveness of the species looks towards innovation as the ultimate contest and in our speed to achieve we find ourselves bettering hundreds of thousands of years of evolution with breakthrough after break through?

Robots to really assist us must have some fuzzy logic capabilities at minimum and to be most effective they must also have some artificial intelligence capabilities to serve our needs, as mankind has no end in sight to the tasks it wishes to assign to robotic apparatuses.

Press-on will solve all that mankind desires. There are clues everywhere and one might ask what is taking us so long anyway, where would you like to go today? We need to ratchet up the thinking here and move forward in this arena.

"Lance Winslow" - If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; www.WorldThinkTank.net/wttbbs