Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Robot Learning/Using Learning Navigational Skills From Lobsters

Nature has endowed birds, ants,bees, fish, spiders and other animals with a remarkable sense of direction. This allows them to locate their positions from a built in global positioning system(GPS) that's senses the earth's magnetic field with great accuracy, and allows them to travel them in desired directions without getting lost. Lobsters, even when taken 37 kilometers from where they were caught, under the conditions that they would not have orientation clues, can still find their ways back, because of this uncanny ability to sense their position. This stems from their being able to sense local anomalies in the earth;s magnetic field.
This remarkable attribute is now being developed in robots by scientists at the University of North Carolina, USA.

It is known that buildings have distinctive magnetic topography, which can be readily mapped using a magnetometer. Such field variations were measured and then stored in the memory of robot. Using such magnetic maps, the robot was able to find its way about although it did not have a vision system, thereby effectively mimicking the behavior of Lobsters. There is still much to be learned from the birds and the bees.

Saturday, June 5, 2010

The Fifa World Cup 2010: History and Preparations


The festival of Football World Cup is going to start on 11th of June, 2010. There are 32 best teams in this Foot Ball world cup 2010, to compete with each other, and will play vigorously to get the title of this mega event.

Fame of the Game:


In 1930, when Fifa authorities inaugurated the first ever world cup of Football, then they event not think about the fame of this game. This game is the favorite game of all Europe, America, Australia and some countries of Asia. According to an estimate, the last Football world cup final (held in France) between Italy and France has been seen directly by 715m people. That final was won by Italy and we can estimate the fame of this game.

Rules to Get the Hosting of Football World cup:

Football is basically an expensive game. Much money is spend over the stadium and the Football players, and when we talk about the world cup, then the international governing body of Fifa do much care about this. To get the hosting of the Football world cup, any countries have to follow the strict rules by the Fifa. Conditions such as, presence of best stadiums, best residential facilities, best transport facilities, security and other conditions are there.

If we talked about football world cup 2010, then first time any African country is hosting this mega event. If we see the Football record of South Africa, then we will come to know that they are unable to get any noticeable ranking in the game. They even never qualify for the second round, in the past 18 Football world cups. Further More, South Africa is on number 90 in the Football ranking. Then what are the factors through which South Africa got the hosting right of Football world cup 2010. One of the Factors is best Economic condition of this country.

Hurdles in the Preparation for Football World cup 2010:

The preparation for the Football world cup 2010 has been started from the 2006 in the South Africa, and Fifa authorities were noticing all their preparations regarding this event. During these preparations, many bad times come for the South Africans by which there were chances that this hosting will be taken from the South Africa. In July 2009, 70,000 workers who are working for the Football stadiums, they just stop working there and demand that Government is not giving them proper wages. They requested to the Authorities of Fifa that they should charge heavy amount to the organizers of world cup. After this, due to the constructions of five star hotels for the fans of Football, Cape Town Government has exploded almost 20,000 residences to get the land. At this people protest against Football world cup 2010, and argue against the Government that they are not fulfilling the basic responsibilities of Africans, instead of this they are just giving full attention on the preparation of Football world cup 2010, all the developments are regarding this mega event.

Preparation for Football World Cup 2010:


As per the preparation for the football world cup 2010, South African Government has putting its all effort to make this event successful and remarkable. For this purpose the entire infrastructure for the transport has been renewed, in this they available the facility of underground tube, and special bus service for the fans of football world cup 2010.There are fool proof arrangement of security as well. Fifa has admired all these efforts of South Africans Government regarding this event and they hope that everything will be prepared before the starting for this mega event.