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A naked skydive inspired a way to keep pilots oriented in flight
- ars 5y agoI thought of this idea years ago, and I never sky dived naked. My idea was to use the soles of the feet instead, since there are a lot of nerves there, enabling very high resolution information. But ideas without execution are useless......
- Graffur 5y agoThe naked sky dive part is a hook to get people who are not interested in planes or military. If the military needed that particular experience to come up with this idea.. well .. that does not suggest good things.
- avnigo 5y agoThis reminds me what the yaw string [0] in effect does for aircraft, but turns that visual cue into a tactile sensation, also because there's no wind drag in the cockpit. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaw_string https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaw_string
- samstave 5y agoGood article. I can't help but wonder why way-finding / path-finding vibrational orienteering vests aren't a thing yet. You could vibratory signal a path in complete darkness, indicate obstacles and threats or directions to supply caches etc.
- shuntress 5y agoThe market for people who need a non-visual device to help them detect obstacles, threats, or supply caches is too small to justify the expense (both per-unit and of development) of such devices.
- dylan604 5y agoJust list military applications of whatever you want developed. They are not concerned with how big of a market it might be. If can give their troops advantages, they are interested.
- giraffe_lady 5y agoI can't really see this having use in a high-tech military. The main differentiator of contemporary technologized militaries is their incredible logistics and coordination capacities, which have a very hard dependency on knowing your own location. They know this obviously and so those systems are robust and redundant already. When those systems and their backups fail you're into like, "hide and wait for help" or even straight up sere training shit, because the entire thing that makes you a powerful force rather than just a guy with a gun is gone. Knowing which way is north is not gonna solve your problem at that point. Knowing "which way to the supply cache" might but if that piece of tech is still working probably so is your normal radio and gps.
- ncmncm 5y agoAnything they have to look at to get informed is a huge burden. Anything that burns up batteries driving a display is a huge burden. Anything that destroys night vision is a huge burden. So, anything that provides them the most essential bits of combat information (e.g. that is the direction back to base) without need to look at it, and using only microwatts, is a huge benefit.
- ncmncm 5y agoHunters complain bitterly about GPS ruining their night vision, and all those gadgets using up heavy batteries. Soldiers have it even worse, carrying, literally, pounds of batteries, sometimes tens of. Anything that works without needing to produce power-burning, night-vision destroying light they have to look at, and weighing them down, is a huge benefit.
- BlueTemplar 5y ago
- krisoft 5y ago> You could vibratory signal a path in complete darkness, indicate obstacles and threats or directions to supply caches etc. What sensors would this vest use to figure out where you are and where the obstacles and threats around you are?
- ncmncm 5y agoIt could get regular situation updates from base, and rely on GPS and compass to relate local position and orientation to interesting points. Just knowing at all times, without need to look at anything, the directions to mission objective and back to base would be useful.
- krisoft 5y ago> Just knowing at all times, without need to look at anything, the directions to mission objective and back to base would be useful. You are not going to get direction from GPS sadly. You could have it from differential GPS but I can’t imagine a way how to do mount a long fixed baseline comfortably on a vest.
- ncmncm 5y agoYou get direction by combining GPS with a compass.
- clort 5y agoI remember reading about an experiment where they gave somebody a belt which would vibrate at the north side and the subjects became very spatially aware would never get lost. Even when they were taken at night, blindfolded and driven around for like half an hour they could point to the way home without really thinking about it. ah seems to be a product now: https://point-iot.eu/success-story/navibelt/ https://point-iot.eu/success-story/navibelt/
- oh_sigh 5y agoThis is a skill you can teach yourself through mindfulness alone. I've never been driven around blindfolded, but I can enter a building, go through a big maze of hallways, and be able to tell you which direction north is.
- ncmncm 5y agoWe probably have a magnetic sense that we lose conscious awareness of through not paying attention. There are cultures whose language grammar depends on all directions being relative to cardinal points. Even three-year-olds never get it wrong.
- Someone 5y agoIn general: battery life, difficulty of fitting, limited usefulness for the costs. Also, for your task, you’d need the precise location of your subject, or highly reliable obstacle detection (including “there’s nothing, not even a good path” obstacles), probably both. The latter sort-of works for self-driving cars, but their computers are rather big to carry around, and they can declare anything “clearly not a road” as “obstacle”. They don’t have to recognize a small footpath across a mountain ridge, or alongside a river.
- raisedbyninjas 5y agoI read about a hobby project a while back that used vibrating motors to keep the wearer aware of magnetic north. It supposedly made quite a difference. Here's a project that could be the same thing. https://newatlas.com/north-paw-vibrating-ankle-compass-kit/26459/ https://newatlas.com/north-paw-vibrating-ankle-compass-kit/2...
- ncmncm 5y agoThat was a good idea, but a very stupid execution. All you need is an ear bud that clicks as your head turns past each cardinal point. (The click can vary by which point it is.) You can implement this with 10 grams of microcontroller and a magnetic sensor. Add a couple of grams more for GPS, and you can have it click when your head points to where you parked your jeep or tent. To maintain battery life, you turn on the GPS only once every 5 minutes, and rely on the compass for real-time orientation. (This might not be so useful for soldiers, because they have mostly long since wrecked their hearing. Maybe use barely perceptible electric shocks, for mil application.) After a very short time, the clicks etc. fade from conscious perception, and you just know your directions at all times.
- skykooler 5y agoTo have it be useful for those with hearing loss, it could use a little haptic motor instead to provide a virtual click you feel instead of hear.
- ncmncm 5y agoElectric shock would be more hard-core though. Soldiers who complained about a barely perceptible electric shock would be laughed at.
- LorenPechtel 5y agoThat's not going to save as much power as you think--civilian GPS has to download a message from the satellites that repeats on a 30 second interval before it can give a good answer.
- open-paren 5y agoThere was a Youtuber that made a device like this with the lidar from an iPad and a 3x3 grid of dots to detect obstacles. The problem he ran into was sensory resolution vs. ability to perceive that resolution. (Unsurpisingly) your eyes are unparalleled for picking up visual resolution. https://youtu.be/8Au47gnXs0w https://youtu.be/8Au47gnXs0w
- mprovost 5y ago(Spoiler) Disappointed that they didn't end up with naked pilots. But it reminded me how Polynesian navigators in the Pacific would use their testicles to detect subtle ocean swells. We're used to relying on our eyes but our other senses can be just as useful.
- jpalomaki 5y agoFor more: https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/testicular-navigation https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/testicular-navigation
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- toss1 5y agoA similar striking phenomena happened when I shaved my head instead of haircuts. I was immediately very aware of every slight motion of air even in what seemed like still rooms, or generated by my motion, not even walking. It was like I had a new sensor upgrade. Almost more interesting is that it did not fade or degrade over the months that I kept that (non-)hairstyle. The tactile sense can be a very high-bandwidth information feed.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- dmoy 5y agoSo I actually buzz my hair really short for high power rifle season so I can feel the wind better. I'm also balding, so that helps. It mostly boils down to using it as a "don't pull the trigger, the wind just did something funky" sensor. Granted about half the time I end up throwing a baseball cap on it because not getting sunburn/skin cancer is more important to me than a few points at 600 yards, but it does help.
- throwawayboise 5y agoSunscreen?
- sandworm101 5y ago>> It can take pilots up to 30 seconds to reorient themselves, a long time while behind the stick of a jet aircraft. Their is an old chopper pilot saying: the faster the aircraft the slower the pilot. You think 30 seconds is a long time in a fighter jet at 30,000 feet? Try 30 seconds when trying to land helicopter on the deck of a pitching ship. A 747 flies at basically the same speed as a fighter (~mach 0.8), in many cases actually faster. Nobody talks about those pilots having to think quickly. The time to make decisions is a function of how close you are to the ground, not how fast you are moving.
- oefnak 5y agoYes, but fighter jets often fly closer to the ground and change direction more often (than airliners).
- jameshart 5y agoAt the point of closest approach, airliners fly just as close to the ground as fighter aircraft. Usually twice per flight.
- dspillett 5y agoIn a very straight, guided, line, down an uncluttered path. [usually, weather conditions may make things more difficult of course, and some city airports are dubiously enough placed to put the willies up your average pilot]
- trelane 5y agoFighter jets are also unstable, by design. Commercial aircraft are required to be stable, as they don't need to change direction quickly, but rather be as safe as possible. https://www.boldmethod.com/learn-to-fly/aerodynamics/3-types-of-static-and-dynamic-stability-in-aircraft https://www.boldmethod.com/learn-to-fly/aerodynamics/3-types...
- LilDioBrando 5y ago
- cdot2 5y ago"In 1974, the future Dr. Rupert was skydiving naked while he was a student at the University of Illinois. He noticed that the rush of air on so much bare skin kept him oriented, even as he spun and twirled in midair." Where do you sign up for naked skydiving?
- astuyvenberg 5y agoAt basically any local skydiving club.
- blakesmith 5y agoIt's usually tradition that your 100th jump is supposed to be naked, at least amongst the skydiving communities I was a part of.
- gentryb 5y agoCan confirm - did once for my 100th jump, and once on a birthday. Nothing quite like naked skydiving.
- h2odragon 5y agoAt the risk of being pedantic, I assume the parachute and harness are still necessary clothing.
- dtgriscom 5y agoYou start naked, and then put on the parachute on the way down.
- russellbeattie 5y agoI'll see your pedantry and raise it: Is a parachute and harness actually "clothing"?
- autoexec 5y agoI'd guess just about anything can be clothing if you wear it.
- nvahalik 5y agoThis makes me wonder. I get car-sick when I'm a passenger in a car. Sometimes it takes an hour. Sometimes 10 minutes. However, if I'm riding in a convertible with the top down... I haven't gotten car-sick yet. Is the wind "fixing" the problem with my brain?
- tintor 5y agoMotion sickness is body's way to protect itself against eating hallucinogens by mistake. Large mismatch between what your inner ear is feeling about your motion, and what your eyes perceive as your motion, imply possible hallucinogens, so your body is trying to make you throw them up. Humans haven't evolved riding in vehicles. Interior of car is not moving much relative to you, but your inner ear feels movement.
- dylan604 5y agoThis seems very odd as by the time you start feeling the effects of an hallucinogen, your body has already absorbed them past the point of expelling them being effective.
- bee_rider 5y agoIs that always the case? I suspect the hallucinogens that people have selected to intentionally trip on are a bit unusual (intentional dose sizes, presumably they are selected to get the person tripping in some particular timeframe, right? I'm obviously showing some ignorance on this topic).
- tqi 5y ago> The estimated damages caused by spatial disorientation cost the U.S. military an estimated $300 million every year, along with the lives of around 30 pilots. Can that be right? 30 pilots a year sounds really high.
- CardenB 5y agoI read this as 30 pilots over all time, $300 million a year.
- f0e4c2f7 5y agoI thought the same thing. I wondered if perhaps they meant $300 Million per year annualized and also a total of 30 pilots over some number of years.
- eadmund 5y agohttps://taskandpurpose.com/news/military-aviation-mishaps-deaths-cost/ https://taskandpurpose.com/news/military-aviation-mishaps-de... indicates that the U.S. have had 224 deaths and lost 186 aircraft over seven years, so roughly thirty airmen a year sounds about right. I suppose one could be pedantic about pilots rather than aircrew at large, since those 186 aircraft would have had one pilot each, but the larger point still stands. Someone probably just saw the 224 number and thought each indicated a plane manned by a single pilot.
- tqi 5y agoHm that would attribute all accidents to orientation issues, which I guess is possible? It also state the cost as over 11.6B between 2013 and 2020, which would make the cost more like 1.5B per year? Either way though, 224 deaths from accidents in 8ish years is way higher than I had expected. Hopefully with the withdrawal from Afghanistan we will see this number decline.
- goodcanadian 5y agoNot to mention that it is perfectly possible to lose an aircraft without losing the pilot.
- dqpb 5y agoAre vibrators really the best option? I would think small actuators that apply pressure, with a dull point perhaps, would be more energy efficient and could provide higher resolution.
- andylynch 5y agoLooks like the kit discussed here is geared towards emergency use, so vibration makes sense as clear & hard to miss. Power to the haptics is probably insignificant. For more regular uses different concerns would apply!
- LorenPechtel 5y agoAirplanes have big jet engines. The available power isn't going to be of concern.
- ncmncm 5y agoElectric shocks FTW.
- ad404b8a372f2b9 5y agoOne of the surprises I got after being locally anesthetized for a surgery, was that I could no longer localize my arm in space without looking at it. Proprioception is heavily based on the flow of air against our skin and hair. Some flowmeters are based on that principle, using a tiny mechanical hair that vibrates as air flows over it, and I've always felt robotics should just dump a whole bunch of them on their moving parts rather than rely on a few gyroscopes and servomotors to estimate their position in space.
- fsckboy 5y ago> Proprioception is heavily based on the flow of air against our skin and hair. feeling sensations on the skin doesn't tell you where the skin is...?
- ad404b8a372f2b9 5y agoIt does, the air flow going downward on your skin tells you your arm went up. I recall my arm being very numb, I had to poke myself strongly to feel it, I could move it but I had no idea where it went without looking at it, multiple times I was surprised to find it in a spot I didn't know it was. As I recovered sensation in my skin I regained proprioception gradually. Really trippy experience.
- jamiek88 5y agoI once woke up, sober, from a night at home alone watching tv, with a strange person in my bed. Their arm was resting on my stomach above the sheets. I could see it. It was terrifying. I freaked out and tried to throw that arm off me when I realized it was my own. I’d slept on it, gone numb and my sleepy brain considered it someone else’s arm.
- t0mas88 5y agoI've always learned that proprioception is a standalone thing, not based on the air moving over the skin etc, but really just your own nervous system telling you the position of your joints. Which together tells you where your arm is. As far as I know it would theoretically still work in a vacuum with your eyes closed.
- xwdv 5y agoThis is also why nudists who spend most of their time naked with air flowing over their bodies as they move have better proprioception than clothed individuals.
- incanus77 5y ago> Rupert's first prototype used a 69-cent toy to provide the necessary tactile stimulation to reorient a pilot. More than 30 years later, vibrations are the main indicators. Nice.
- Errorcod3 5y agoI had a co-worker lose his life to spatial disorientation during a night-training flight in Italy: "Maj. Lucas "Gaza" Gruenther, a pilot assigned 31st Fighter Wing, went missing during a nighttime training mission over the Adriatic Sea Jan. 28. In the days that followed, Italian and U.S. authorities collaborated as part of in an immense search effort to locate Gruenther. The search ended Jan. 31 when Gruenther's body was recovered by an Italian vessel... Gruenther completed more than 2,640 hours of flying time to include 400 combat hours."
- sowbug 5y agoIt's also how John F. Kennedy Jr. died. He was neither trained nor rated for instrument flying, and crashed when his plane flew into fog. This is an all-too-common way for GA pilots to die. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_F._Kennedy_Jr._plane_crash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_F._Kennedy_Jr._plane_cras...
- galaxyLogic 5y ago> The estimated damages caused by spatial disorientation cost the U.S. military an estimated $300 million every year, along with the lives of around 30 pilots. I find it surprising that 30 pilots die every year because of this. I would think every time US loses a military plane there are some news about it on TV. But now 30 pilots dies per year only because of this? What about other causes of death? How many? US is not at war currently. How many US pilots died during Iraq war? I seem to remember (based on TV news) it was about or close to 0.
- Stevvo 5y agoAbout 30 US military pilots a year are killed in all accidents. That propaganda you might have heard on TV nearly 20 years ago is bullshit.
- adewinter 5y ago"Military aviation accidents have killed 224 pilots or aircrew, destroyed 186 aircraft, and cost more than $11.6 billion since 2013"[1] "Combined with information from the Federal Aviation Administration, an average of 383 pilots die every year in the US." [2] [1] https://taskandpurpose.com/news/military-aviation-mishaps-deaths-cost/ https://taskandpurpose.com/news/military-aviation-mishaps-de... [2] https://www.skytough.com/post/how-many-pilots-die-a-year https://www.skytough.com/post/how-many-pilots-die-a-year
- CobrastanJorji 5y agoSo in this case, they are trying to say that this costs the U.S. military an estimated $300 million every year, and also kills 30 (non-military and military combined) pilots?
- trutannus 5y agoI think they're two separate ideas maybe. The "per year" in that sentence is ambiguous. It's unclear if it applies to the $300 million, or both that and the 30 lives.
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- baybal2 5y ago
- beambot 5y agoThis is called a "vibrotactile display", and they've been around for a good, long time.
- amelius 5y agoThat's nice, but aren't military combat pilots about to be replaced by AI, anyway?
- ncmncm 5y agoVR, anyway. VR pilots will have even greater need for haptic clues.
- wespiser_2018 5y agoThere's as similar vibro-tactile device, which is a belt you wear and always vibrates strongest in the direction of north, and over time the user would learn or improve their internal navigation. A quick search reveals a company, feelSpace, tried to bring this idea market for the purposes of navigation: https://newatlas.com/feelspace-navigation-belt/43571/ https://newatlas.com/feelspace-navigation-belt/43571/ If I knew, I probably would have bought the belt for learning better navigation just as a fun little project! Cool stuff! As we start to have more devices constantly around us, it will be interesting to see how haptic feedback can provide a more intuitive to our devices as we move through space.
- Ruthalas 5y agoThere are also some DIY versions of this, often in the form of ankle bracelets. Lehpt Anonym, a 'biohacker' even planned to implant a similar device in their leg[1], though I don't know if they succeeded. [1] https://www.wired.com/2010/12/transcending-the-human-diy-style/ https://www.wired.com/2010/12/transcending-the-human-diy-sty...
- girvo 5y agoThe whole idea reminds me of those people who got magnets inserted underneath their skin on their fingers so the tactile response allowed them to feel magnetic fields. It’s neat how our brains seem to rewire and adapt to new sensory input like that
- AndrewOMartin 5y agoThere's a whole field of related experiments called "sensory substitution", and similar "brain rewiring" experiments that include wearing vision inverting goggles for extended periods. They're all really interesting, but tricky to do controlled experiments with, and impossible to do double blind experiments with. All the papers in this area make for fascinating reading. There's also a cool paper that shows these adaptations happen quicker than can be attributed to "rewiring". (I get that the parent used the term informally in their post, but it's important to me!)
- jkingsman 5y ago
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- rcurry 5y agoI used to be an avid skydiver, this article reminds me of the time my buddy Todd and his friend Jason jumped out of a jet, naked, at the World Freefall Convention in Illinois. They underestimated how bad the spot was going to be and ended up having to walk back like four miles wrapped in nothing but their parachutes. Ha ha. RIP Todd Jacobsen, he died after a bad landing back in 2008.
- throwanem 5y agoI'll admit I expected this to be about the origin of that bit of red yarn you see on gliders and sailplanes as a low-tech, reliable slip indicator. Why I expected this to be about that, I leave to those reading this comment to deduce.
- lesgobrandon 5y ago
- lsh123 5y agoSpatial disorientation occurs in the IMC conditions without visual reference to the natural horizon: inside clouds, pitch black night over the water (e.g. Kennedy 1999), etc. Pilots specifically train to fly in these conditions (IFR rating) and also practice to be proficient. I heard there is a research that a pilot w/o IFR rating or w/o current recurrent training or w/o recent actual experience loses control in less than 60 seconds. The key here is recent experience or training. I fly IFR a lot (I live in Michigan and we have clouds 12 months a year) - I clocked 0.6 hrs instrument time on 1.4 hrs flight today. I always hand fly (w/o autopilot) at least part of the flight and I feel safe doing so. Many (if not all) other pilots who regularly fly on instruments feel the same - when you are proficient, it’s really not a big deal (and honestly kind of boring after a while). Now, I am not surprised that researcher was able to do all these cool tricks with his invention after recent training and experience using this tool. But that would not help with real problem of pilots being out of proficiency. I wonder if this invention will be as effective for a pilot who didn’t fly for a couple weeks or a couple months. Can this pilot do all the same tricks safely? That would be the actual test on the usefulness of this invention. Edit: grammar
- sowbug 5y agoTangent: I find I get less motion sickness with VR goggles if I put a small box fan on the floor in front of me, blowing upward toward my face. If you buy the theory that motion sickness is a physiological response to neurotoxin ingestion, then the breeze is another signal voting for everything being OK.
- sowbug 5y agoIn the late 1960s, Dr. Paul Bach-y-Rita discovered that people can be trained to "see" images represented by electrical impulses on the tongue. I wonder if there is an overlap between these two ideas. https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna12459883 https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna12459883
- gorgoiler 5y agoThe title had me assuming this article would be about using a yaw string. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaw_string https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaw_string Flappy, highly sensitive and a few inches long, it gives you an intuitive feeling of airflow without having to look down at your instrumentation.
- asddubs 5y agoI thought the same thing!