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SpacePet. An Artificial Pet in Space. An idea that needs to be tested!

1,600 views · Published 17 June 2013 · 2:17 · Indexed 31 October 2026

Channel: Caleb Clark · 2013 · Pets & Animals

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Someone will be first to put artificial pets in space; why not NASA and the US of A? Astronaut health and productivity could benefit from the combined potential benefits of an artificial pet. They can be watchdogs, canaries in the coal mine, and stress reducing cuddly companions all at once. Artificial pets have proven to give some of the positive aspects of a living pet. The time is coming when more and more people will live long-term in places where real pets can not survive. 

I've been passionate about supporting space exploration as long as I can remember. The idea of an artificial pet for zero-g grabbed hold of me when I was in graduate school in 2006. I was inspired by the way the Tribbles on the original Star Trek TV show were so attractive to the crew of the Enterprise - and to the viewers, that that episode became the most popular of the series. At the same time I've always been struck by how the necessarily-cold aesthetic of the International Space Station is in need of humanizing. 

More info is on my portfolio at: http://www.calebclark.org/?page_id=415

Some Resources from that page, and video credits, are below. 

Romibo: http://www.romibo.org/
On the Hi-Seas project: http://hi-seas.org/
Discover Magazine, A Day In the Life of a Fake Astronaut http://youtu.be/vT6hO_U3Z9s?t=2m4s

SPHERES

Main site: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/311.html
Darpa site: http://sphereswg.arc.nasa.gov
MIT site: http://ssl.mit.edu/spheres/
Smartphone usage recently: http://ti.arc.nasa.gov/news/iss-spheres-demo/and
Android Cellbots software: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.cellbots

SELECTED PET RESEARCH

Steve Yohanan's PhD thesis, "The Haptic Creature: Social Human-Robot Interaction through Affective Touch." http://yohanan.org/steve/projects/haptic-creature/

"Simple behaviors elicit complex attachments." Judith Donath, The Encyclopedia of Animal Behavior. http://smg.media.mit.edu/people/judith/jsd.writing.html

Science Explains Wilson the Volleyball. http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/22/science-explains-wilson-the-volleyball/

Polson Enterprises Virtual Pets Research bibliography. http://www.virtualpet.com/vp/research/research.htm

The Center For Disease Control (CDC) pet health benefits brief. http://www.cdc.gov/healthypets/health_benefits.htm

Pet Therapy article at the Mayo Clinic. http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/pet-therapy/MY02122

PROTOTYPE DESIGN IDEAS

I built a few prototypes in 2006 through 2008 while in graduate school at NYU. During that research I learned that MIT and NASA had built the SPHERES and my project went cold as I researched I how much time and energy that SPHERES took, and how well it was already being done. Every year though, I'd do a bit more research of ways to build a prototype because I love imagineering the idea of an artificial pet.. I spent a lot of time imagineering a prototype that could be tested on a "vomit comet" plane http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reduced_gravity_aircraft during bouts of reduced gravity, specifically the Zero Gravity Corporation's research flights costing about $7000.00 http://www.gozerog.com/.

I spec'ed out everything from ducted fan jets in RC planes embedded in styrofoam spheres to Arduino-powered hexacopter platforms put onto a sphere http://www.diydrones.com and http://code.google.com/p/arducopter/ to repurposing DIY blimp kits http://www.instructables.com/id/Sub-Micro-Blimp/. But fans spin, and in zero gravity, that will also spin the machine holding the fan.

I also thought of using Piezo fans as tiny thrusters, because they don't spin. http://www.piezo.com/prodfan0nav.html, http://www.engadget.com/2012/12/12/ge-dual-piezo-jets/

My favorite wacky idea was using three gyroscopes to stabilize a sphere and control its orientation, and then have a few thrusters to move it. I was inspired by a Stanford University project that is exploring what they call Exploration Hedgehogs that use three internal gyros http://www.stanford.edu/~pavone/niac.html. There exists a three-gyro experiment on the ISS using three CD players http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdAmEEAiJWo.

VIDEO CREDITS

Cat test in space: National Archives and Records Administration Record #68700, BIOASTRONAUTICS RESEARCH. 09/26/1947. http://archive.org/details/gov.archives.arc.68700

SPHERE Videos at above links. 

ISS. http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogallery/index.html?media_id=155875341

To make this video I bought a Mega Ice Cream ball from LLBean and covered it with some green fur called Green Eyed Monster from Etsy. I suspended the ball on a bungy cord and fishing line, and then masked out the fishing lines in Final Cut X. The rest, I hope, is some kind of small blip in history.

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