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A naked skydive inspired a way to keep pilots oriented in flight

military.com

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Re: A naked skydive inspired a way to keep pilots oriented in flight

#21

Post by dylan604 »

sandworm101 wrote: post #4

>> It can take pilots up to 30 seconds to reorient themselves, a long time while behind the stick of a jet aircraft. Their is an old chopper pilot saying: the faster the aircraft the slower the pilot. You think 30 seconds is a long time in a fighter jet at 30,000 feet? Try 30 seconds when trying to land helicopter on the deck of a pitching ship. A 747 flies at basically the same speed as a fighter (~mach 0.8), in man…

By design, a 747 pilot is a glorified bus driver that flys in a fairly straight path. Nobody talks about quick thinking until they do. Captain Sully ring any bells? That wasn't a 30k feet either. When an airliner has something go wrong, it's hundreds of people that are affected and will always make the news.

By design, a fighter pilot does a heck of a lot more than a airline pilot. When a pilot does something wrong, we rarely hear about it.

Comparing them in this manner is just disenginuous.

Re: A naked skydive inspired a way to keep pilots oriented in flight

#22

Post by f0e4c2f7 »

tqi wrote: post #13

> The estimated damages caused by spatial disorientation cost the U.S. military an estimated $300 million every year, along with the lives of around 30 pilots. Can that be right? 30 pilots a year sounds really high.

I thought the same thing. I wondered if perhaps they meant $300 Million per year annualized and also a total of 30 pilots over some number of years.

Re: A naked skydive inspired a way to keep pilots oriented in flight

#23

Post by Someone »

samstave wrote: post #2

Good article. I can't help but wonder why way-finding / path-finding vibrational orienteering vests aren't a thing yet. You could vibratory signal a path in complete darkness, indicate obstacles and threats or directions to supply caches etc.

In general: battery life, difficulty of fitting, limited usefulness for the costs.

Also, for your task, you’d need the precise location of your subject, or highly reliable obstacle detection (including “there’s nothing, not even a good path” obstacles), probably both. The latter sort-of works for self-driving cars, but their computers are rather big to carry around, and they can declare anything “clearly not a road” as “obstacle”. They don’t have to recognize a small footpath across a mountain ridge, or alongside a river.

Re: A naked skydive inspired a way to keep pilots oriented in flight

#24

Post by [deleted] »

toss1 wrote: post #17
mprovost wrote: post #3

(Spoiler) Disappointed that they didn't end up with naked pilots. But it reminded me how Polynesian navigators in the Pacific would use their testicles to detect subtle ocean swells. We're used to relying on our eyes but our other senses can be just as useful.

A similar striking phenomena happened when I shaved my head instead of haircuts. I was immediately very aware of every slight motion of air even in what seemed like still rooms, or generated by my motion, not even walking. It was like I had a new sensor upgrade. Almost more interesting is that it did not fade or degrade over the months that I kept that (non-)hairstyle. The tactile sense can be a very high-bandwidth i…

[deleted]

Re: A naked skydive inspired a way to keep pilots oriented in flight

#25

Post by dylan604 »

tintor wrote: post #14
nvahalik wrote: post #8

This makes me wonder. I get car-sick when I'm a passenger in a car. Sometimes it takes an hour. Sometimes 10 minutes. However, if I'm riding in a convertible with the top down... I haven't gotten car-sick yet. Is the wind "fixing" the problem with my brain?

Motion sickness is body's way to protect itself against eating hallucinogens by mistake. Large mismatch between what your inner ear is feeling about your motion, and what your eyes perceive as your motion, imply possible hallucinogens, so your body is trying to make you throw them up. Humans haven't evolved riding in vehicles. Interior of car is not moving much relative to you, but your inner ear feels movement.

This seems very odd as by the time you start feeling the effects of an hallucinogen, your body has already absorbed them past the point of expelling them being effective.

Re: A naked skydive inspired a way to keep pilots oriented in flight

#26

Post by raisedbyninjas »

samstave wrote: post #2

Good article. I can't help but wonder why way-finding / path-finding vibrational orienteering vests aren't a thing yet. You could vibratory signal a path in complete darkness, indicate obstacles and threats or directions to supply caches etc.

I read about a hobby project a while back that used vibrating motors to keep the wearer aware of magnetic north. It supposedly made quite a difference. Here's a project that could be the same thing. https://newatlas.com/north-paw-vibrating-ankle-compass-kit/2...

Re: A naked skydive inspired a way to keep pilots oriented in flight

#27

Post by ad404b8a372f2b9 »

One of the surprises I got after being locally anesthetized for a surgery, was that I could no longer localize my arm in space without looking at it. Proprioception is heavily based on the flow of air against our skin and hair.

Some flowmeters are based on that principle, using a tiny mechanical hair that vibrates as air flows over it, and I've always felt robotics should just dump a whole bunch of them on their moving parts rather than rely on a few gyroscopes and servomotors to estimate their position in space.

Re: A naked skydive inspired a way to keep pilots oriented in flight

#28

Post by open-paren »

samstave wrote: post #2

Good article. I can't help but wonder why way-finding / path-finding vibrational orienteering vests aren't a thing yet. You could vibratory signal a path in complete darkness, indicate obstacles and threats or directions to supply caches etc.

There was a Youtuber that made a device like this with the lidar from an iPad and a 3x3 grid of dots to detect obstacles. The problem he ran into was sensory resolution vs. ability to perceive that resolution. (Unsurpisingly) your eyes are unparalleled for picking up visual resolution.

https://youtu.be/8Au47gnXs0w

Re: A naked skydive inspired a way to keep pilots oriented in flight

#29

Post by eadmund »

tqi wrote: post #13

> The estimated damages caused by spatial disorientation cost the U.S. military an estimated $300 million every year, along with the lives of around 30 pilots. Can that be right? 30 pilots a year sounds really high.

https://taskandpurpose.com/news/military-aviation-mishaps-de... indicates that the U.S. have had 224 deaths and lost 186 aircraft over seven years, so roughly thirty airmen a year sounds about right.

I suppose one could be pedantic about pilots rather than aircrew at large, since those 186 aircraft would have had one pilot each, but the larger point still stands. Someone probably just saw the 224 number and thought each indicated a plane manned by a single pilot.

Re: A naked skydive inspired a way to keep pilots oriented in flight

#30

Post by dylan604 »

shuntress wrote: post #6
samstave wrote: post #2

Good article. I can't help but wonder why way-finding / path-finding vibrational orienteering vests aren't a thing yet. You could vibratory signal a path in complete darkness, indicate obstacles and threats or directions to supply caches etc.

The market for people who need a non-visual device to help them detect obstacles, threats, or supply caches is too small to justify the expense (both per-unit and of development) of such devices.

Just list military applications of whatever you want developed. They are not concerned with how big of a market it might be. If can give their troops advantages, they are interested.
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