Pages

▼

Tuesday, 27 December 2011

Then imitate the action of the pigeon

Let slip the birds of war
Cyberneticzoo looks at the ultimate in doomsday weaponry:  The pigeon bomb.
at

3 comments:

  1. SergejTuesday, 27 December 2011 at 12:27:00 GMT-8

    Um..., these pigeon bites I had on Crispin's day?

    ReplyDelete
  2. CthelTuesday, 27 December 2011 at 13:22:00 GMT-8

    I must confess, this system always struck me as a triumph of ingenuity over "common sense", and I mean that in a good way. Rather like the "bat bomb" program, it's a prime example of how valuable an unusual viewpoint on a problem can be.

    Not that the unusual solution is always a good idea, but it generally points you down an line of thought you would never have embarked upon otherwise.

    In this case, I think the important innovation is the idea of redundancy in the guidance system - in this case, using 3 pigeons and averaging out their inputs. Sounds remarkably similar to the way the shuttle's fly-by-wire system uses multiple computers running the same software to generate control commands.

    ReplyDelete
  3. eonWednesday, 28 December 2011 at 03:57:00 GMT-8

    Cthel;

    Absolutely true. Of course, the ORCON system probably had its own version of "software conflicts", since a major problem would be training the pigeons not to peck each other; they get irritable when confined in a harness.

    And of course, the small problem of dealing with the pigeons', err, "exhaust products" in the guidance package.

    ;-)

    cheers

    eon

    ReplyDelete

Rules for submitting comments:

1. No profanity. I maintain the pretense that this is a family-friendly site.

2. Stay on topic. A bit of straying and off-hand commenting is okay, but hijacking the discussion is right out.

3. No ad hominem attacks. Attack the subject, not the other person on the thread and keep the discussion civil.

4. No spamming or commercial endorsements. These get deleted immediately.

Tip: Beware of putting hyperlinks in your comments–especially at the end. For some reason, Blogger interprets these as spam.

Note: Due to the recent spate of anonymous spamming, registration for comments is now required.