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

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

#91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sunscreen?

Sunscreen above eye level + sweat = stinging eyes.

Yup pretty much this. I do use sunscreen on ears, neck, right hand, or basically anywhere that can't drip down into my eyes

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

#92

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 movi…

Is that really true? Anecdotally, I have no trouble keeping track of where my arm is when I have a coat and gloves on :) I wonder if there's a side effect of anesthesia that inhibits the body's kinesthetic sense. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proprioception#Proprioception_...

My antipsychotic causes this problem severely enough I have difficulty placing my feet correctly the first few hours after I take it. (Meaning I fall really easily.) I take additional medication (Benadryl, surprisingly) to counteract a lot of neurological side effects like this.

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

#93
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree, I think the destination is "elevator operator" and we are half way there. Automating flight has quite a bit of low hanging fruits and Airbus has become the first harvester out there. The rest opposed at first, but the only logical path forward is automating people out of the systems. Yes, we had the 737MAX thingy but even then arguments for re-humanisation of aircraft controls didn't catch much traction.

737MAX would not have crashed if it were being flown autonomously, as the entire MCAS system would have been unnecessary. It was there to meet regulations regarding control feel for human pilots.

Also because full automation means pilots, so no certifications for any aircraft types, let alone the same one. So there would be no need to force the plane to be a "737".

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

#94
post #12

>> 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…

Yes, but fighter jets often fly closer to the ground and change direction more often (than airliners).

Fighter jets are also unstable, by design. Commercial aircraft are required to be stable, as they don't need to change direction quickly, but rather be as safe as possible.

https://www.boldmethod.com/learn-to-fly/aerodynamics/3-types...

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

#96
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always learned that proprioception is a standalone thing, not based on the air moving over the skin etc, but really just your own nervous system telling you the position of your joints. Which together tells you where your arm is. As far as I know it would theoretically still work in a vacuum with your eyes closed.

Proprioception is the overall sense of knowing where your body parts are. You don’t just have a bunch of ‘proprioceptor’ nerves dedicated solely to that task, you have a whole wealth of signals coming into your brain that it aggregates into that overall sense. Similar to how vision isn’t just the raw signals on your optic nerve, but a whole machinery around filling in the details and blanks and saccades from memory a…

Jup, that’s what I meant. Your nerve cells sensing where things are as opposed to other external senses like skin touch being used to figure it out.

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

#98
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always learned that proprioception is a standalone thing, not based on the air moving over the skin etc, but really just your own nervous system telling you the position of your joints. Which together tells you where your arm is. As far as I know it would theoretically still work in a vacuum with your eyes closed.

Proprioception is the overall sense of knowing where your body parts are. You don’t just have a bunch of ‘proprioceptor’ nerves dedicated solely to that task, you have a whole wealth of signals coming into your brain that it aggregates into that overall sense. Similar to how vision isn’t just the raw signals on your optic nerve, but a whole machinery around filling in the details and blanks and saccades from memory a…

> You don’t just have a bunch of ‘proprioceptor’ nerves dedicated solely to that task,

Actually you do. Most animals have capsule joint receptors which are dedicated to sensing stretching/relaxing of the joint capsule tissue.

This signal is then sent through dedicated nerve paths on the dorsal part of your spine.

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

#99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I can't really see this having use in a high-tech military. The main differentiator of contemporary technologized militaries is their incredible logistics and coordination capacities, which have a very hard dependency on knowing your own location. They know this obviously and so those systems are robust and redundant already. When those systems and their backups fail you're into like, "hide and wait for help" or even…

Anything they have to look at to get informed is a huge burden.

Anything that burns up batteries driving a display is a huge burden.

Anything that destroys night vision is a huge burden.

So, anything that provides them the most essential bits of combat information (e.g. that is the direction back to base) without need to look at it, and using only microwatts, is a huge benefit.

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

#100
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was a good idea, but a very stupid execution. All you need is an ear bud that clicks as your head turns past each cardinal point. (The click can vary by which point it is.) You can implement this with 10 grams of microcontroller and a magnetic sensor. Add a couple of grams more for GPS, and you can have it click when your head points to where you parked your jeep or tent. To maintain battery life, you turn on th…

To have it be useful for those with hearing loss, it could use a little haptic motor instead to provide a virtual click you feel instead of hear.

Electric shock would be more hard-core though. Soldiers who complained about a barely perceptible electric shock would be laughed at.
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