Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard
We have a lot of respect for the hackers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). When their stuff has a problem, it is often millions of miles away and yet they often find a way to fix it anyway. Case in point is the Curiosity Mars rover. Back in 2016, the probe's rock drill broke. This is critical because one of the main things the rover does is drill into rock samples, collect the powder and subject it to analysis. JPL announced they had devised a way to successfully drill again.
The drill failed after fifteen uses. It uses two stabilizers to steady itself against the target rock. A failed motor prevents the drill bit from retracting and extending between the stabilizers. Of course, sending a repair tech 60 million miles is not in the budget, so they had to find another way. You can see a video about the way they found, below.
Source: https://hackaday.com/2018/05/25/nasa-remotely-hacks-curiositys-rock-drill/
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Gaaark on Sunday May 27 2018, @05:03PM (1 child)
It would take more communication time, but the debugging would be the same as a remote debug.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 27 2018, @05:43PM
Sounds like it is a hardware issue not a software one.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Sunday May 27 2018, @05:11PM (1 child)
Always trying to make things do what they weren't designed to do. What next, a Rolls Royce dune buggy?
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 27 2018, @07:44PM
https://jalopnik.com/5943777/holy-crap-its-a-baja-rolls-royce [jalopnik.com]
Here you go.
(Score: 5, Informative) by requerdanos on Sunday May 27 2018, @06:13PM (4 children)
FTFS:
I project that there may be one or two people who see TFS and say "Well, I don't especially want to watch a video, which is why I am here and not on VideoTube right now". Most people will, of course, watch the video in its full glory, and I encourage the first person who does that to tell us all about it.
In the interest of serving that limited segment of the public who may eschew videos in the immediate future, I quote below the part from TFA [hackaday.com] wherein they describe the hack.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday May 27 2018, @06:28PM (1 child)
I am an employee of Boston Dynamics, so I know a thing or two about robots, especially gay Jewish ones. The phrase "made to detect if the arm strikes something" is misleading. In robotics all sensors are polled constantly and it's the interrupt handling which "detects" events such as the arm striking something. In cases of extreme force, sometimes the limb's motion control components are de-energized and the limb goes limp (well, depending on the weight of the limb and the holding torque of the servos) as an effort to prevent damage to itself or to nearby humans.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 27 2018, @07:26PM
Thank you captain obvious. Before you stepped in to enlighten us we were all fooled and thought NASA remotely modified the electric properties of the sensor by moving atoms using magic rays and duct tape. But thanks to you, we now know they rewrote a routine.
Keep your sex life to yourself. And tell your little Jewish robo-boyfriend they can do better.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 27 2018, @07:53PM (1 child)
So it's a mechanical penis.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 27 2018, @07:56PM
Otherwise known as a vibrator and preferable to a man in every way.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 27 2018, @07:14PM (6 children)
It's not a hack if something you built breaks and you make do with less.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 27 2018, @07:33PM
It's exactly the kind of fix that would be called a "hack" on Hackaday to justify their stupid site name.
*reads summary*
Well, crap. It is Hackaday.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 27 2018, @07:39PM (4 children)
Exactly.
Nowhere in the linked story from JPL does the word "hack" appear. However, the linked HackADay story uses the term and also claims that JPL called it "MacGyvering," although that term does not appear in either the linked JPL story or in the video.
If I were one of the people at JPL who worked on this problem, I would be insulted at the use of the word "hack."
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 27 2018, @07:46PM (3 children)
Hackaday is a shitty blog for wannabe hardware hackers to read all about projects they are incapable of doing.
You want to read about real hardware hacks, follow the journal of famous transsexual hacker cafebabe right here on soylent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 28 2018, @12:04AM (2 children)
Oh yes they are so much worse than this site that degenerates into arguing about nazis (who are no longer a threat) and trump (who has about 0 effect in your life). Yeah, those scumbags talking about cool projects and making things. Maybe if they had more russian collusion stories the world would be rainbows, lollipops, and sparkly glitter.
We left SD behind because of that sort of shit. Hackaday is banging out what SD *USED* to do. What I thought we were going to do here. Instead Hacker news/hackaday has WAY better discussions and basically is what SD used to be. This site is just a fractured poor mirrored splinter of SD that thinks identity politics is more fun to discuss.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 28 2018, @12:34AM (1 child)
To be fair, Trump's cock up your ass feels fantastic.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 28 2018, @03:54PM
Thank you for making my point.