Things To Do In SW Florida

UCF’s robot looked the part but couldn’t do the job in the end.

The Lunar Knights robotics club was one of 43 university teams taking part in NASA’s 2024 Lunabotics Challenge on Tuesday on the final day of the first round of competition at the UCF’s Exolith Lab near the Orlando campus.

“The first time I walked in here, it was like a kid in a candy store. It was just like Disney World,” said UCF’s Samentha Simmons, 30, a computer science major and software engineer ahead of her teammates’ attempt. “I’ve always wanted to be in robotics and aerospace, so the second I walked in here, seeing all the teams and seeing all the different designs, and knowing it was all part of NASA too, it was the most amazing feeling in the world.”

The goal for each team was to have its robotic rover navigate the obstacles of simulated moon terrain cooked up by the lab and create a berm of lunar regolith. In other words, dig up moon dirt and build a pile.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Members of the University of Central Florida’s robotics team carry their entry out of the competition court after it failed to start in the national NASA Lunabotics Challenge, at the UCF Exolith Lab, Tuesday, May 14, 2024. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel)Four members of each team donned white scrubs with booties on their feet and masks to enter the arena, a giant sandbox made up of the course rocky grains designed to mirror the lunar south pole. read more

Seminole County commissioners took the first step Tuesday toward building a large indoor complex for sports tournaments and other events estimated to cost more than $65 million.

Commissioners approved forming a tourism improvement district (TID) which allows hotels with more than 65 rooms to tack on an extra fee to a guest’s bill for each room night’s stay.

County officials and hoteliers have long said Seminole needs an indoor venue for events that attract visitors and fill hotel rooms.

“We need to continue to build tourism here and this is the next step,” said Bruce Skwarlo, general manager of the Orlando Marriott Lake Mary and chair of Seminole’s Tourist Development Council. “This is going to drive room nights. … This is going to be wonderful for our citizens.”

The TID assessment would be set and collected by hoteliers. The revenue would fund building and maintaining the indoor facility — proposed for a 28-acre site near the Boombah Sports Complex and Orlando Sanford International Airport. read more

By Isabel Contreras | NerdWallet

A recent New York Times investigation revealed some automakers sell data on driving behavior, like speeding, hard breaking and late night driving, which can then be purchased by car insurers. This data, known as “telematics” data, could be used to price already high auto insurance rates for the drivers of those vehicle models.

Car insurance companies already use telematics data in their pay-per-mile and telematics programs. Good driving behavior can result in discounts and perks, while bad driving behavior can mean increased rates or even dropped coverage. Customers sign up for these programs likely with the understanding that they are giving up their driving data, since they must either download an app or install a telematics device in their car in order to participate.

But the New York Times investigation found instances where drivers were unknowingly tracked by their car, and their driving behavior was sold and led to increases in their auto insurance premiums. Here’s what to know. read more

Paul Sisson | The San Diego Union-Tribune

Doctors traditionally use a finger to gauge how well a baby suckles, but researchers at UC San Diego have come up with a new way to more precisely measure just how well each child gets the job done.

Led by engineer James Friend, a team in the university’s Medically Advanced Devices Laboratory rigged up a “non-nutritive suckling system” by connecting a digital vacuum sensor to an ordinary disposable pacifier, allowing for 60 seconds of real-time continuous measurement.

“We establish normative data for the mean suck vacuum, maximum suck vacuum, suckling frequency, burst duration, sucks per burst, and vacuum signal shape,” the authors said, noting that sophisticated statistical analysis and even machine learning, a fundamental method of what many call artificial intelligence, was brought to bear to sift patterns from the analysis of 91 babies measured with the device.

Some might wonder, what’s the point? Why so much focus on measuring and analyzing the most basic of human reflexes? read more

The first crewed flight for Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner will have to wait a little bit longer but is still targeting a May launch. The mission is now slated for no earlier than May 21 at 4:43 p.m, NASA revealed Tuesday.

NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams were sitting in the capsule last week atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 41 with just two hours to go before launch.

Issues with a valve on the ULA rocket forced a scrub of that launch attempt and a rollback of the rocket from the pad to change the valve, pushing the launch date to what was supposed to be as early as this Friday.

NASA said the valve issue on the ULA rocket’s upper Centaur stage was resolved, but Boeing teams found a new issue on the Starliner spacecraft itself.

“Starliner teams are working to resolve a small helium leak detected in the spacecraft’s service module traced to a flange on a single reaction control system thruster,” according to a NASA press release. “Helium is used in spacecraft thruster systems to allow the thrusters to fire and is not combustible or toxic.” read more