Can drones fly as well as Luke Skywalker?

Fish and Wildlife Service

Researchers are modeling how birds such as the northern goshawk, shown here, zip through the forest without crashing into trees. Such knowledge could lead to drones that fly fast through cluttered environments.

By John Roach

Next-generation drones may fly like Luke Skywalker zipping through the Endor forest on a speeder bike, suggests new research which focuses on how birds such as northern goshawks determine their maximum speed limit.

These birds race after prey through the forest canopy without smacking into tree trunks.

They avoid this fate by observing a theoretical speed limit, according to scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

If researchers can figure out how birds intuit this speed limit, they could use the logic to program drones that race through dense urban cores and other cluttered environments.

State of the art
Most drones today fly at speeds slow enough to stop within the field of view of their sensors.?

"If I can only see up to five meters, I can only go up to a speed that allows me to stop within five meters, which is not very fast," Emilio Frazzoli, an associate professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT, said in a news release.

If the northern goshawks were limited by what they could see, they wouldn't fly nearly as fast as they do, he reckons.

Instead the birds likely gauge the density of trees and speed through the forest knowing that given a certain density they can always find an opening.

This is similar to skiers?who dive into the trees to find powder. These daredevils maneuver through openings in the forest trusting that they'll keep appearing as they head down the slope.?

As long as the skiers obey their intuited speed limit, they should maintain enough control to avoid obstacles such as partially buried stumps.

Speed limit calculus
Frazzoli and his colleagues used a statistical model of a forest and some tricky math to determine the probability that a bird flying through it at a given speed would crash into a tree.

They found that for any given forest density, there's a critical speed above which there is no "infinite collision-free trajectory," MIT explains.

"If I fly slower than that critical speed, then there is a fair possibility that I will actually be able to fly forever, always avoiding the trees," Frazzoli said in the news release.

The research established a theoretical speed limit for any given obstacle-filled environment. Going forward, Frazzoli and colleagues will compare their model results with real-world observations of birds.

They are also creating a video game in which people navigate through a simulated forest at high speeds in order to determine how close humans can come to the theoretical limit.

That sounds a lot like a group of researchers pushing to give real-world drones Luke Skywalker-like abilities.

More on drone technology:

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John Roach is a contributing writer for msnbc.com. To learn more about him, check out his website. For more of our Future of Technology series, watch the featured video below.

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Where nations used to compete to get into space, now the competition focuses on private businesses, pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into next-generation spaceships. Msnbc.com science editor Alan Boyle reports from inside the rocket factories on the future of spaceflight.

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Source: http://futureoftech.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/19/10191739-can-drones-fly-as-well-as-luke-skywalker

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Cruise ship runs aground off Italy; deaths reported

Luca Milano / AFP - Getty Images

Costa Concordia pictured Saturday after the cruise ship with more than 4,000 people on board ran aground and keeled over off the Isola del Giglio, an Italian island Friday.

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By NBC News, msnbc.com staff and news services

Updated at 6:50 a.m. ET: Specialist diving teams are being brought in to search the interior of the cruise ship Costa Concordia after it?ran aground?off the Italian coast, fire services spokesman Luca Cari says. So far three bodies have been recovered; Cari warns, "We don't rule out the possibility that more people will be lost," amid reports of six or eight deaths.

Updated at 4:30 a.m. ET: "It was so unorganized," passenger Melissa Goduti, 28, of Wallingford, Connecticut, tells The Associated Press of the chaos?after a?cruise liner ran aground off Italy, leading to the deaths of at least six people. "We had joked what if something had happened today," Goduti, who had just joined the cruise ship, says.

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Updated at 3:15 a.m. ET: Sky News shows a picture of the Costa Concordia on its side in the water after the cruise ship ran aground off the Italian coast Friday night. The picture, by Giglio News, can be seen here.

Published at 12:30 a.m. ET: A?cruise ship with?4,200 people on board ran aground and?ripped?a 165-foot gash in its hull?off the Tuscan?island of Giglio?on Friday night, and?local officials?reported that at least six people died. Some on the island said eight were dead.

At least three bodies were recovered from the sea, the Italian coast guard reported.

Helicopters were working to pluck to safety some 50 people still trapped aboard the badly listing Costa Concordia on Saturday, said Coast Guard Cmdr. Francesco Paolillo.

Stringer/Italy / Reuters

Passengers arrive at Porto Santo Stefano after a cruise ship ran aground off the west coast of Italy.

Some people were thrown into the sea when the Costa Concordia?started?listing, others jumped to evacuate the ship, officials said.

The ship, which reportedly cost more than $680 million, was three-quarters under water and sinking fast, a Giglio hotel clerk told NBC News on Saturday.

The Telegraph of London said some passengers jumped from the steeply listing ship?and swam a short distance to the island. A photo?showed the brightly lit ship teetering just outside a harbor wall.

One official said that among the dead was a?man around age 65, ?who might have been ill or who might not have withstood the cold of the sea at night, Il Messagero said.

The 950-foot Costa Concordia had left the port of Savona at 7 p.m. local time and was sailing to Civitavecchia, its first port of call, when it ran aground around 9 p.m.

A rocky reef
Costa Cruises said 3,200 passengers were aboard, along with 1,023 crew members. Coast Guard Officials said the liner was listing at?20 degrees but?was not in danger of sinking.

Paolillo, the coast guard official, speaking from the port captain's office in the Tuscan port of Livorno, said the vessel "hit an obstacle" -- it wasn't clear if it might have hit a rocky reef in the waters off Giglio -- "ripping a gash 50 meters (165 feet) across" on the left side of the ship, and started taking on water.

The cruise liner's captain, Paolillo said, then tried to steer his ship toward shallow waters, near Giglio's small port, to make evacuation by lifeboat easier. But after the ship started listing badly onto its right side, lifeboat evacuation was no longer feasible, Paolillo said.

By 1:20 a.m. Saturday the evacuation of passengers and crew had been virtually completed. But Il Messaggero said?about 200 remained on board and would have to be airlifted out by helicopters. The ship's worsening position was making it difficult to complete the evacuation, officials said.

Town officials were trying to find places for the evacuees to spend the night.

Stringer/Italy / Reuters

Passengers arrive at Porto Santo Stefano after a cruise ship ran aground off the west coast of Italy at Giglio island Friday.

A clerk at the Bahamas hotel told NBC News?that 1,000 people were sheltering there.?A crew member at the hotel told the clerk he heard two loud noises and the ship started leaning to one side almost immediately.

Some passengers panicked as some jumped into the cold sea to swim ashore, the clerk said.

'Very strange'
The first evacuated passengers were taken to a church for shelter on the tiny island. The church pastor told Il Messagero that women in suits and highheels were camped out in pews with frightened?children.?Other passsengers were taken to schools and hotels on the island, said Italian news agency ANSA.

Sky News quoted passenger Luciano Castro as telling Italian media: ''We were having dinner when all of a sudden the lights went out. It seemed as if the ship struck something and then we heard a loud bang and everything fell to the floor.

''The captain immediately came on the tannoy and said that there had been an electrical fault but it seemed very strange as the ship almost immediately began to list to one side. The glasses just slid off the table."

"It was like a scene from the Titanic," another passenger aboard, journalist Mara Parmegiani, told ANSA.

One woman also?told The Telegraph: "It was just like something out of the Titanic.?You could tell straight away that the ship had hit something and no way was it an electrical fault."

Passengers were first asked to put on life jackets as a precaution, witnesses said, but it soon became clear the situation was more serious when the abandon-ship signal was sounded, ANSA said.

The Costa Concordia, according to a Costa Cruises?statement obtained by NBC News,?was sailing across the Mediterranean Sea, starting from Civitavecchia with scheduled calls to Savona, Marseille, Barcelona, Palma de Mallorca, Cagliari and Palermo. About 1,000 passengers of Italian nationality were aboard, as well as more than?500 Germans, about 160 French and about 1,000 crew members.

The company said it would cooperate with authorities to determine what caused the emergency.

This article includes reporting from NBC'sClaudio Lavanga in Italy and msnbc.com's Jim Gold and Alex Johnson and Reuters.

More from msnbc.com and NBC News:

Source: http://overheadbin.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/13/10152446-cruise-ship-runs-aground-off-italy-deaths-reported

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Bahrain king promises to expand parliament powers (AP)

MANAMA, Bahrain ? Bahrain's king promised Sunday that the strife-wracked Gulf nation will move ahead with political reforms that widen the powers of the elected parliament to oversee governments selected by the ruling monarchy.

The reforms are part of recommendations that emerged last year from talks between various political and civil groups on easing tensions in the Sunni-ruled kingdom, which has faced more than 11 months of protests by the island's Shiite majority.

More than 35 people have died in the unrest, which began as an Arab Spring-inspired uprising for greater rights but has shifted into a challenge against the authority of the 200-year-old ruling Sunni dynasty. Bahrain's leaders and Gulf Arab allies claim that Shiite power Iran has encouraged the violence in the strategic nation, which is home to the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet.

In a nationally televised address, Bahrain's King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa said he would soon issue royal decrees to amend the constitution and grant a greater role to the 40-seat lower house of parliament.

The measures include allowing lawmakers to approve governments proposed by the ruling dynasty and giving greater authority to question and remove Cabinet officials. Parliament would also play a larger role in setting the state budget and proposing laws, he said.

But the changes are unlikely to appease Shiite opposition groups. Bahrain's main Shiite groups have withdrawn from parliament and boycotted the so-called national dialogue reform talks last summer.

Shiites account for about 70 percent of Bahrain's 525,000 citizens, but complain they are effectively excluded from key political and security roles. They have called for a government that reflects election results ? which would bring Shiites into key Cabinet posts ? rather than ministers hand-picked by the monarchy.

Abdul Jalil Khalil, a former parliament member with the main Shiite political group Al Wefaq, dismissed the reforms as "out of touch with reality" after nearly a year of nonstop unrest and protests. Last year, Wefaq's 18 lawmakers resigned from parliament in protest.

"The king lives in another world," said Khalil. "Things have changed. The people want an elected government."

The changes outlined by the king also limit some royal authority.

The king would have to issue more explanations on the selection process for the Shura Council, the 40-member upper house of parliament that is appointed by the monarch. The king also would need wider discussions with political and judicial leaders before any decision to dissolve the elected parliament and call new elections.

In a separate statement, Bahrain's foreign minister, Sheik Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa, pledged to present a proposal for an Arab Court for Human Rights at the next Arab League summit scheduled for March. He made the comments during a news conference with Arab League chief Nabil Elaraby.

Bahrain's king proposed the idea of a pan-Arab body to hear rights-related cases in November after receiving an independent report on Bahrain's unrest.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/mideast/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120115/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_bahrain

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