- quick catch up where I am since last week
- admission that I need to create a plan as discussed last week … sorry!
- latest thoughts
- discuss dates to meet up
- also get some idea on when the intro. seminars for research students are, if I haven’t heard anything from Val D.
August 30, 2006
Meeting agenda, Will & Jon, 31-Aug @11am (TC) …
Weekly summary w/c 28-Aug-2006 ….
This week I’ve been back on the reading:
- started reading papers about drafting
- however, recognise that I’m going forwards in a fairly unstructured fashion
- as such, will be concentrating on creating a plan as previously discussed to illustrate what I’m going to do over the next 4 weeks, and what will be the outcome of this period
Wednesday drafting …
Finished reading the drafting paper I wrote about yesterday, with food for thought: the concept I am working on could be used for robots travelling in “extreme” conditions: e.g. robots that walk along the bottom surface of the ocean, like lobsters, or through tundra, like caribou, packing the snow down for one another, so that it is easier to traverse.
Also read “The Mathematics of breadking away and chasing in cycling” (Eur J Appl Physiol (1998) 77: 492 – 497) today. Interesting, but didn’t really tell me much new, other than the fact that particles may need to be directly behind one another to get drafting benefits … but this begs the questions why do cyclists form a peloton? Tracked down the references for a quick read, but need to start writing, instead of reading more and more!!
August 29, 2006
Tuesday reading …
Back on it following the Bank Holiday. Today I started going through a Comments on Theoretical Biology jounral paper I found (1999, Vol 5., pp. 283 – 304), which appears to be a good overview of how vortex/ices apply to a number of fields: bird formations, fish schools, etc. Still only part way through the paper, as there’s a lot to take in: read the bird piece, but stopped on the fish school page (p293), as my head was swimming … no pun intended! Anyway, I’ve found the following list of things to look up as well once I finish the paper — something to hit Wikipedia for, no doubt:
- vorticity
- flow
- Bernoulli theorem
- drag
- vortex street
- Karmen vortex street
- vortex pattern
- Reynolds number
- Strouhal number
- upwash?
- swept/swept V
- drag-type voretx
- Munk’s stagger theorem
August 24, 2006
Meeting with Will, Thu 24-Aug F2F @ Reading …
Some quick notes:
- look at the Ageia PhysX physics engine
- remember to us BIDS, Citeseer, etc as opposed to just Google Scholar!
- Biomemetics ("engineering stealing ideas from Nature (!)") could be a useful angle to look at
Upcoming actions:
- Jon to write an overview report of drafting, in a similar vein to the flocking report
- Jon to plan out next steps, and send Will a copy when complete
- (NB also look into Jython versions for C/C++)
August 23, 2006
Wednesday’s words …
More reading about racing simulations today. Started off by looking at Brian Beckman’s later chapters on writing a racing robot simulation, which in turn led me to Robot Auto Racing Simulation (RARS), which in turn led me to The Open Racing Car Simulator (TORCS). RARS doesn’t seem to be of much use, and neither does TORCS — they both appear to focus on the car simulation (suspension, etc) as opposed to the aerodynamics. They also both focus on C/C++ code, which I want to try and avoid if possible …
And so, feel myself wandering — we need a plan!! I’m down at Reading tomorrow, so I think I’ll take some time out to work on a plan for the next few months, based on my previous thoughts of what I need to achieve over the next few months.
August 22, 2006
Tuesday: drafting reading …
Today spent some more time reading about drafting. Started off by looking at The Phyics of Racing which I’d seen a link to from another paper: of interest, and maybe a little use. Then started to go through the paper I found yesterday, Effects of drafting during short-track speed skating, which has led to an interesting looking paper in Ergonmics, Reduction of wind resistance and power output of racing cyclists and runners traveling in groups, which I’m going to have a look for at the Reading library on Thursday.
Randomly came across another paper, Energetics of Swimming and Flying in Formation, which will be train reading on Thursday methinks!
Interesting idea in the Praching Physics article above, about having a car analyse a turn, and drive the car through it at the ideal racing line. Interesting thought — could this be done?
August 21, 2006
Go look at this …
Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise: Volume 28(6) June 1996 pp 765-771
Effects of drafting during short-track speed skating
[Special Communications: Technical Note]
RUNDELL, KENNETH W
Monday — back onto reading …
Following some extra coding over the weekend — can get following agents to match the leaders velocity in the sandbox, but not in the full simulation **groan!** — back on the reading tip. I’m pikcing up from where I left off, in starting to look at more scientific papers based on drafting. It looks like a fair bit may have been done in the sports science field, so may need to start there first.
August 18, 2006
Friday’s posting …
Not quite sure when my last posting was, so this could be quite an update: I (finally!) managed to get the following simulation to work — so I believe, anyway. The leader will move in a horizontal line, left to right, and the ducklings will follow it.
I now want to extend this to make the leader behaviour more interesting, to see if the ducks will still follow it or not.
