Fishing Sea

Developing automated inspection; Teufelberger resists rotation; Defeating ... Hoist

Konstantin Kuehner, a research fellow at the University of Stuttgart’s Institute of Mechanical Handling and Logistics explains: “Cables of passenger transportation installations have to be checked visually at specific intervals by law. In Germany, for example, the rules for monocable gondolas demand monthly inspections of the cable.

“Up to now, this is conventionally done by two employees watching the cable at maximum 0.5m/s. This job is dangerous as the rope moves close to one’s face and exhausting as inspecting the periodic pattern of a wire cable requires high concentration.

“In addition, it takes hours and a lot of man power to run the visual inspection. Now, the Institute of Mechanical Handling and Logistics of the University of Stuttgart [IFT, from the German Institut für Fördertechnik und Logistik] has developed a technical support system for visual inspections of aerial tramway strand and spiral cables.

“A camera device of only 15kg containing four line scan cameras catches the black and white image data of the running cable at a maximum speed of 3m/s while the scene is illuminated at low energy by high-power LEDs.

Source:

spooling up...

It occurred to me this morning that if I spent as much time knitting as I do talking about these socks, I'd be halfway finished by now.

I went out for supper with some friends tonight. We were going to go see Jonathon Goldstein do a reading at the Rivoli, so we decided to go early, have a burger, drink a pint and blow off some steam before the show. When we arrived, the restaurant had people sitting at two tables and reserved signs on the other twelve; they directed us upstairs to the pool hall and said we could eat up there before the show. Our waiter was out of it - maybe he was high, maybe he was just shocked to see so many people in the pool hall who *hadn't* brought their own pool cues, although it seemed that every other person through the door knew him by name and was carrying a cue. He gave us menus, then came back to take them away as the other tables filled up - he only had three, he said, and the other people were hungry too. He spilled my drink all over the table, forgot our food orders (twice) and then took more than half an hour to tally our bill (including a five minute errand in search of more cash register tape). By the time we got downstairs there were a dozen people waiting outside a closed door, hoping that someone would leave to answer a phone call and forfeit their seat. We left.

Oh well. Strangely, perhaps, I wasn't really disappointed. I walked up Queen Street to the subway station, and soon I was nearly home. Off the train, two blocks to go, I was walking just as darkness fell. The sky was deep cobalt blue and the bright white fingernail moon hung directly overhead. It was quiet and soft, the only sounds the distant murmur of cars, of television...

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