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iRobot versus Radio Astronomy

posted by martyb on Friday April 10 2015, @10:22PM   Printer-friendly
from the get-off-my-lawn! dept.

tonyPick writes:

According to IEEE Spectrum a proposed robot lawnmower from iRobot (developers of the Roomba) has astronomers concerned about the proposed design.

In order to provide the robot lawnmower with information about position iRobot are proposing to use wireless beacons in the 6240-6740 MHz range, which covers a region of the radio spectrum the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) uses for observations, and iRobot would like the FCC to allow them to operate in this protected spectrum by issuing a waiver:

As you might expect, the NRAO got a little bit upset that iRobot wanted to set up its beacons to broadcast on a protected frequency, because they're worried that people's lawn mower beacons would start to mess with their radio astronomy data. So, they’ve filed a comment to that effect on iRobot's FCC waiver application, to which iRobot responded, and then NRAO responded to that.

We’ve read through these documents (including iRobot’s waiver application, NRAO’s comments, iRobot’s response, and NRAO’s reply), and they’re full of amusingly passive-aggressive commentary from both sides as they argue back and forth in front of the FCC.

 
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  • (Score: 1) by cwadge on Saturday April 11 2015, @04:13AM

    by cwadge (3324) on Saturday April 11 2015, @04:13AM (#168892) Homepage Journal

    In case you were confused, I meant "infinitely", not "infinitesimally". Whoops. ;)

  • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday April 11 2015, @07:44AM

    by maxwell demon (1608) on Saturday April 11 2015, @07:44AM (#168914) Journal

    Yeah, hyperboles are hard to get right. ;-)

    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.

    • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 11 2015, @06:54PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 11 2015, @06:54PM (#169031)

      Hyperbole is impossibly difficult to get right.

    • (Score: 1) by cwadge on Saturday April 11 2015, @07:16PM

      by cwadge (3324) on Saturday April 11 2015, @07:16PM (#169039) Homepage Journal
      I think I was originally going to write "infinitesimal compared to...", but got my wires crossed someplace. As far as hyperbole goes though, that one isn't much; we're still talking orders of magnitude. Of course, I thought of a dozen better ways of phrasing that sentence after I'd already hit "Submit". Eh, that's life. :P