Exploration | EPFL Graph Search

L'exploration est le fait de chercher avec l'intention de découvrir, d'étudier quelque chose, un lieu pour agrandir son périmètre habituel et parfois aussi d'agrandir son territoire. Dans l'histoire de l'humanité, la période la plus marquante est sans nul doute le temps des Grandes découvertes, lorsque les explorateurs européens ont entrepris de naviguer et de cartographier le monde pour des raisons scientifiques et commerciales. L'exploration désigne une démarche empirique permettant l'acquisition de nouvelles connaissances par une identité individuelle ou collective. L'exploration n'est d'ailleurs pas le fait unique de l'homme, des espèces animales sont susceptibles de développer un certain sens de la curiosité. L'exploration se distingue de la découverte au sens où la production de connaissance est dépendante du point de vue de l'explorateur. Le terme d'exploration peut aussi être utilisé métaphoriquement , par exemple, une personne peut parler d'explorer Internet. Toutefois, l

Preliminary Design of a Lunar Reconnaissance Drone

Thomas Pfeiffer, Erik Uythoven

In this report, a preliminary design study of a compact lunar reconnaissance drone module which will assist exploration rovers is presented. It is designed to assist future exploratory rover missions in difficult environments such as PSRs or extreme topographies. Although similar concepts have been validated on Mars by NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter, only few such ideas exist for lunar applications. The main challenges of this project lie in the propulsion system to be used, the thermal system of the drone (due to extreme temperatures) and the 3D mapping of the lunar surface using a flash lidar system. These aspects were studied in detail with promising results: For a drone with a weight of 20 kg, 1 kg of green monopropellant is sufficient to cover a distance of a least 1 km before it needs refuelling. In this report, it is assumed that the lightweight flash lidar technology should be developed enough to allow for 10 cm resolution at 50 m flight altitude. This feasibility and initial design study sets a foundation for lunar drones and exploration of the Moon using flying spacecrafts, although many open questions remain to be solved and detailed designs to be performed.

2022

Sequestration, Scholarship, Sentinel: The Post-Politics of Peace (and War)

Nikolas Kosmatopoulos

n Lebanon, diverse sociopolitical projects have sought to mend the wounds, repair the cracks, and overhaul the loss of the devastating civil war (1975–90). Experts and technopolitics have featured centrally in almost all of them. In my anthropological research on expertise on peace and crisis in Lebanon, I explore how, in the decades after the war, an abstract ideal of peace gave way to a distinct space occupied by diverse groups of experts. I analyze how a previously political aim was transformed into a professionalized field around which specialized knowledge domains were developed and technopolitical practices deployed. In this essay I briefly explore this new architecture of expert power based on the technopolitics of peace (and war) in the contemporary Middle East.

Cambridge University Press2014

Policy-based Exploration of Equilibrium Representations (PEER): A topology grammar for generative conceptual structural design

Ioannis Mirtsopoulos

Design exploration is a creative process that consists of the incremental generation of design candidates. Supported by digital means or not, the process handles the ill-structured nature of design and allows creativity to flourish through diversity of design candidates. This research proposes a design framework for the generation of variant bar network topologies in static equi-librium which facilitates the conceptual structural design exploration. Named PEER (Policy-based Exploration of Equilibrium Representations) the framework:(-)incrementally grows and transforms networks of bars within specified geometric do-mains(-)maintains their static equilibrium at every intermediate transformation step(-)is built around a parametric policy - a course of actions - controlled by a choice of four explicit or abstract rules(-)is not constrained to precedent or recursing topologies and/or geometries.Structural design space exploration is achieved through the generation of schematic, early-stage static equilibrium representations which are indicative, but not deemed optimized, force flows. As such, they are valuable as first design inspirations, prior to comprehensive structural analyses and form refinement. The transformation policy operates on given loads, is free from maximum valency limitations and unbound to specific topologies and geometries. On the contrary, the network's topology is not known a priori, but it is defined during the decision-making design process and constitutes the main output of the exploratory process. PEER transforms interim networks of bars, whilst the network maintains static equilibrium at every transformation step. Precisely, each transformation results in the introduction of a new node, some bar elements in tension and/or compression and a few interim internal forces. The number of interim forces decreases while the number of bars increases and the entire process ends when no interim force exists anymore, which is always achievable due to the retention of static equilibrium throughout.Contrary to other approaches and thanks to the incremental growth of topologies, PEER opens the generative design black box. While the process can be fully automated, it also lets the de-signer interrupt, redirect, or backtrack to previous transformations, at every intermediate step of the transformative process. Additional control is granted to the designer through the combinato-rial choice of rules.The genetic algorithm's stochastic nature matches well with the concept of exploration and the provision of multiple design alternatives. The design space exploration capability of the present-ed workflow is therefore further augmented by coupling it with interactive genetic algorithms, operating for the course of a single, or multiple, policy-based transformation(s). Via the interac-tive user interface, the designer selects the mutation and crossover parents based on aesthetic or performance criteria - although optimization is out of the research scope - and steers the explora-tion process according to personal preferences. Policy-based incremental design and interactive genetic algorithms can provide designers with infinite alternative design candidates. Consequently, they efficiently boost design space explora-tion, and their combination ultimately provides a new design workflow for conceptual structural design. Its capacity to unveil numerous, unprecedented, maybe unexpected, but statically valid, forms is illustrated.

EPFL2022

Policy-based Exploration of Equilibrium Representations (PEER): A topology grammar for generative conceptual structural design

Ioannis Mirtsopoulos

EPFL2022