Transient luminous events and bipedal robots | ICYMI
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Today on In Case You Missed It: We get a much closer look at electrical discharge phenomena courtesy of a video filmed from the International Space Station. Called "Transient Luminous Events", the phenomena are notoriously hard to study as they occur 25-60 miles above thunderstorms. Even satellites have had little luck at capturing images of the upper-atmosphere lighting. However, viewing angles were less of a challenge for ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen who was able to a highly-sensitive camera to snag video footage of 245 flashes of blue lightning while he was stationed on the ISS in 2015.
Meanwhile, Agility Robotics introduced us to Cassie, a bipedal robot that can walk smoothly over pavement, grass and lose soil without issue. The three-month old bot walks much the same way as humans do, which makes it more adept at handling various types of terrain, and has a similar three-planed hip joint movement which makes it more steerable than earlier bipedal models. While Cassie's ultimate goal will be to aid search-and-rescue operations, it will start out by delivering packages.
And one savvy drone owner finally found a clever workaround for rescuing drones that have crashed in unreachable locations: Use a larger drone and a coat hanger for a DIY retrieval operation. (Adding an intense action movie score is optional). As always, please share any interesting tech or science videos you find by using the #ICYMI hashtag on Twitter for @mskerryd.
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