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<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="assets/xml/rss.xsl" media="all"?><rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><channel><title>MIST Lab</title><link>http://mistlab.ca/</link><description>Making Innovative Space Technologies</description><atom:link href="http://mistlab.ca/rss.xml" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><language>en</language><lastBuildDate>Thu, 29 Sep 2022 17:32:11 GMT</lastBuildDate><generator>Nikola (getnikola.com)</generator><docs>http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss</docs><item><title>2U Incubator Growing Medicago truncatula (Spacebean Project)</title><link>http://mistlab.ca/blog/incubator-exobiologie-spacebean/</link><dc:creator>Christophe Marcel Trouillefou</dc:creator><description>&lt;p&gt;Spacebean project aims to create a model experiment to future autonomous plant cultivation system in microgravity. Its development is a basis that will ultimatly help the next generation of vegetal food production systems in many ways: - use a mini-incubator to perfom several autonomous tests with different species at a very cheap cost - produce food for long intersideral journeys in which no food supply is possible from Earth - produce food before the arrival of astronauts on a place located far away from Earth&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The Spacebean experiment will be held in a 3U CubeSat. It aims to miniaturize a plant production system to allow the plants growing and to assess their development through sensors and analytical instruments embedded into a mini-incubator.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;We developped a 2U incubator that works with a minimal energy consumption (less than 4 watts), that has a total weight below 1.5 kg and is able to remove plants ehylene production thanks to an ethylene scrubber.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The incubator is composed of CO2, O2, Ethylene, Temperature and Humidity sensors. It has an ethylene scrubber that performs photocatalysis with a UV light on TiO2. There are also a camera, a peristaltic pump and a heater. An Arduino Mega contains a PID that helps to control a photoperiod of 20h day/4h night, and the regulation of the temperature and relative humidity inside. A description of the mini-incubator is viewable on this &lt;a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/rb1458sjgffm74p/2U_Incubators_23Feb2019.mp4?dl=0"&gt;video&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Recent tests showed us a normal development of &lt;em&gt;Medicago truncatula&lt;/em&gt; plantlets that germinated and grown until the production of their first leaves in less than one week (photo at left).&lt;br&gt; After two weeks, we observed that they tripled their height and they developped big trifoliate leaves (photo at right).&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="http://mistlab.ca/blog/files/papers/Spacebean/2U_1week_3plants.png" width="555px" align="left"&gt; &lt;img src="http://mistlab.ca/blog/files/papers/Spacebean/2U_2week_3plants.png" width="555px" align="left"&gt; &lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Our latest cultivation tests gave us two adult plants grown well and no contamination were observed. They have long root lentgh (30 to 40 cm). Their leaves are strongly attached to the leafy stem. &lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="http://mistlab.ca/blog/files/papers/Spacebean/2U_3Months.png" width="555px" align="left"&gt; &lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Apical bud is hairy as for the M. truncatulate plants cultivated under strong CO2 concentration. In this assay, no contamination were detected in the dispositive and the incubator remained waterproof under 99% humidity. &lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="http://mistlab.ca/blog/files/papers/Spacebean/2U_CO2.png" width="555px" align="left"&gt; &lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;2019/03/22 Last update&lt;/p&gt;</description><guid>http://mistlab.ca/blog/incubator-exobiologie-spacebean/</guid><pubDate>Fri, 15 Mar 2019 17:00:00 GMT</pubDate></item><item><title>Field mission in Lanzarote (Spain)</title><link>http://mistlab.ca/blog/field-mission-in-lanzarote-spain/</link><dc:creator>Giovanni Beltrame</dc:creator><description>&lt;p&gt;Our field mission with the &lt;a href="https://www.esa.int"&gt;European Space Agency&lt;/a&gt; for the PANGAEA-X experimental campaign was a success! We deployed 6 flying robots, controlled with a single tablet by one of the European astronauts.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;a data-flickr-embed="true" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/europeanastronauttraining/31030614547/in/album-72157700345404104/" title="Drone team"&gt;&lt;img src="https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4843/31030614547_7d7a175ecc_b.jpg" width="1024" height="683" alt="Drone team"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;script async src="//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js" charset="utf-8"&gt;&lt;/script&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Our experiments were also featured on the science show Tomorrow Today - The Science Magazine. You can see the full reportage &lt;a href="https://www.dw.com/en/the-smart-swarm/av-47321115"&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;</description><guid>http://mistlab.ca/blog/field-mission-in-lanzarote-spain/</guid><pubDate>Thu, 14 Mar 2019 03:17:34 GMT</pubDate></item><item><title>Circle Formation using Buzz</title><link>http://mistlab.ca/blog/circle-formation-using-buzz/</link><dc:creator>Giovanni Beltrame</dc:creator><description>&lt;p&gt;When we designed our language &lt;a href="http://the.swarming.buzz"&gt;Buzz&lt;/a&gt;, we wanted to create something that could be ported to any robot. We have made an initial port of Buzz for a popular robotic platform, the &lt;a href="http://www.k-team.com/mobile-robotics-products/khepera-iv"&gt;Khepera IV&lt;/a&gt;. The result of this port is a “glue” library that provides a set of functions for controlling the robot to the Buzz interpreter. As usual, we have released the (still unfinished!) code on &lt;a href="https://github.com/MISTLab/BuzzKH4"&gt;GitHub&lt;/a&gt;. The total integration work was only a couple of days’ work, a testament to the portability of Buzz.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;So we can now proudly show an example of Buzz at work: we programmed the Kheperas with a simple algorithm that, without computation, leads to circle formation. The algorithm itself will be the subject of a future publication. What the video shows is that the robots can be successfully controlled and their sensors used to perform swarming tasks:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/rwNtbAXgJaQ" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen&gt;
&lt;/iframe&gt;
&lt;h2 id="credits"&gt;Credits:&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Programming: &lt;a href="http://mistlab.ca/people/cpinciroli/"&gt;Carlo Pinciroli&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href="http://mistlab.ca/people/dstonge/"&gt;David St-Onge&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Video: &lt;a href="http://mistlab.ca/people/dstonge/"&gt;David St-Onge&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;We would also like to thank NSERC for letting us purchase the Kheperas&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;</description><category>Buzz</category><category>swarming</category><guid>http://mistlab.ca/blog/circle-formation-using-buzz/</guid><pubDate>Wed, 10 Aug 2016 00:52:01 GMT</pubDate></item><item><title>Donation From Altera</title><link>http://mistlab.ca/blog/donation-from-altera/</link><dc:creator>Giovanni Beltrame</dc:creator><description>&lt;p&gt;I would like to thank Altera for the generous donation of their flagship Stratix V board. It will be used for radiation and fault tolerance studies.&lt;/p&gt;</description><guid>http://mistlab.ca/blog/donation-from-altera/</guid><pubDate>Tue, 24 Jun 2014 02:27:35 GMT</pubDate></item></channel></rss>