Matching Items (17)
Description
Trekster is an online outdoor website that provides the tools and information necessary for any person to complete a given outdoor activity that matches his/her ability, age, location, and desires with a focus on United States National Parks and National Monument travel. Over time, Trekster will create a sizable repository of trails and activities that reflect a geographically diverse nation and the equally diverse interests the population of the world seek to enjoy in these awe-inspiring locales. Trekster will focus on content creation and the updating of existing content to continually offer the most precise and voluminous information on a given trail, activity, or news item. Trekster is a Limited Liability Company with roots in Arizona and Colorado. Trekster will be managed by Kurtis Zinger, an outdoorsman and businessman keen on finding solutions to problems he has experienced in his travel planning within the national parks. The idea for Trekster originated with a lack of helpful content available from the National Park Service websites for travel to the United States National Parks and National Monuments. Visitation at parks has continued to increase most years over the past three decades, yet the National Parks Service has not been able to successfully serve the demand of an eager outdoor demographic. Trekster is designed for ease-of-use and its target market ranges from senior citizens and foreign visitors to American citizens that are avid backpackers, hikers, and/or campers. Trekster will provide these markets with the tools needed to improve their outdoor or National Park experience, especially because of the lack of these resources at other websites for a reasonable price. As revenue will be Trekster's primary revenue stream, but by keeping expenses limited to marketing efforts after the first year of operation, Trekster will reach its break-even point by 2017 and will make positive profits that grow exponentially during the years that follow. After 2020, Trekster will have content for all 50 states and will begin exploring unique ways to deliver content and explore other potential revenue sources. Trekster will be the premier online destination for travelers to National Parks and adventurers hoping to find more than a superficial introduction to a complex maze of information. By providing quality content free of charge, Trekster will become a favorite resource of outdoor enthusiasts and a source of community for those who find solace and adventure in the outdoors.
ContributorsZinger, Kurtis (Author) / Koretz, Lora (Thesis director) / Facinelli, Diane (Committee member) / Ehrlich, Susan (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
Social media is shaping a new generation of hikers and adventurers, as more and more millennials are finding themselves out on the trails. Are they doing it all for the 'gram? Are they seeking adventure? Or is it a combination of the two? "Social Parks" follows three millennials through national parks like Zion, The Grand Canyon, and Rocky Mountain in search of an answer.
ContributorsCutlip, Joshua Dean (Author) / Craft, John (Thesis director) / Emmert, Charles (Committee member) / Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication (Contributor) / School of Nutrition and Health Promotion (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-12
Description
With 2016 marking the 100th Anniversary of the National Park Service (NPS), important discussions regarding the future of America's beloved parks and respective government funding must take place. Imagine all the money, including tax revenue, flowing through America's national parks system, and where is that money destined for in the future? National park funding will factor greatly into determining the future of America's NPS and individual parks. Therefore, it is imperative to investigate where and how government funding, for the present and future, is distributed throughout the parks protected under the NPS. Through personal experiences as a child, national parks consistently provide a unique exposure to and an education of the natural world, which are rare finds when growing up in suburban or metropolitan regions. Narrowing down, this analysis will focus on government disbursements to Yellowstone National Park (Yellowstone) and Isle Royale National Park (Isle Royale) with specifics on two budgeted projects crucial to park survival. Yellowstone and Isle Royale each request funding for a project crucial to the park's ecosystem and a project intended to improve guest services for visitors. Closing comments will provide recommendations for Yellowstone, Isle Royale and the NPS, including effects of President Trump's 2018 Government Proposed Budget, in an attempt to offer forward thinking about national parks. The projects and respective funding as detailed in this analysis have a forward-thinking focus as other projects included in the NPS requested funding budgets consider as well. Current actions and efforts are crucial to the long-term life and of this country's national parks for future generations to come.
ContributorsHager, Madeline (Author) / Samuelson, Melissa (Thesis director) / Kenchington, David (Committee member) / Department of Marketing (Contributor) / School of Accountancy (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-12
Description
Unmanned aerial vehicles have received increased attention in the last decade due to their versatility, as well as the availability of inexpensive sensors (e.g. GPS, IMU) for their navigation and control. Multirotor vehicles, specifically quadrotors, have formed a fast growing field in robotics, with the range of applications spanning from surveil- lance and reconnaissance to agriculture and large area mapping. Although in most applications single quadrotors are used, there is an increasing interest in architectures controlling multiple quadrotors executing a collaborative task. This thesis introduces a new concept of control involving more than one quadrotors, according to which two quadrotors can be physically coupled in mid-flight. This concept equips the quadro- tors with new capabilities, e.g. increased payload or pursuit and capturing of other quadrotors. A comprehensive simulation of the approach is built to simulate coupled quadrotors. The dynamics and modeling of the coupled system is presented together with a discussion regarding the coupling mechanism, impact modeling and additional considerations that have been investigated. Simulation results are presented for cases of static coupling as well as enemy quadrotor pursuit and capture, together with an analysis of control methodology and gain tuning. Practical implementations are introduced as results show the feasibility of this design.
ContributorsLarsson, Daniel (Author) / Artemiadis, Panagiotis (Thesis advisor) / Marvi, Hamidreza (Committee member) / Berman, Spring (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
ContributorsDolan, Robert (Author) / Howard, Alan (Author) / Gallenson, Arthur (Author)
Created1974-07
Description
People of color, and more especially Black Americans, make up a minuscule portion of annual National Park visitation. This podcast is a look into the prejudiced history surrounding the formation of the national parks, the modern theories surrounding continuing lack of park diversity, and personal accounts of where the movement for outdoor equality is going and where your support should go. This all culminates into a project that aims to understand why this statistic exists as it is and present it through podcast.
ContributorsTuft, Rose Elizabeth Lincoln (Author) / Schmidt, Peter (Thesis director) / Voorhees, Matthew (Committee member) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2021-05
Description
People of color, and more especially Black Americans, make up a minuscule portion of annual National Park visitation. This podcast is a look into the prejudiced history surrounding the formation of the national parks, the modern theories surrounding continuing lack of park diversity, and personal accounts of where the movement for outdoor equality is going and where your support should go. This all culminates into a project that aims to understand why this statistic exists as it is and present it through podcast.
ContributorsTuft, Rose Elizabeth Lincoln (Author) / Schmidt, Peter (Thesis director) / Voorhees, Matthew (Committee member) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2021-05
Description
The study of American national parks provides invaluable insights into American intellectual, cultural, and sociopolitical trends. As very popular tourist attractions, parks are also depicted in art, film, television, books, calendars, posters, and a multitude of other print and visual media. National parks therefore exist both physically and in the American imagination. Comparing Yosemite National Park, one of the oldest and most popular national parks, to Mineral King, California, a relatively unknown and far less-visited region in Sequoia National Park, unveils the deep complexity of the national park idea. From the mid-nineteenth to the late twentieth centuries, the visual and written representations of each area, including art, photographs, advertisements, and government publications, evolved and shifted, sometimes rapidly and paradoxically, depending upon the aims and needs of historic societies. The power of imagery and production of knowledge to influence visitation, management, and land designation is revealed through this comparative study. Park representation and interpretation in the cultural consciousness, moreover, uncovers how societies perceive and, thus, will ultimately use certain environments. A place cannot truly become a national space until it is viewed and valued as such in the American imagination. The creation of cultural material, especially visual works, is vital for forming and sustaining national park narratives. Popular parks like Yosemite need to have their legacies reinforced, and lesser-known units, such as Mineral King, deserve the chance to have a cultural legacy created—thereby helping to ensure that both remain for future generations.
ContributorsVicknair, Alexandra Katherine (Author) / Hirt, Paul W (Thesis advisor) / Fixico, Donald L (Committee member) / Jones, Christopher F. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
Description
There has been a vast increase in applications of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in civilian domains. To operate in the civilian airspace, a UAV must be able to sense and avoid both static and moving obstacles for flight safety. While indoor and low-altitude environments are mainly occupied by static obstacles, risks in space of higher altitude primarily come from moving obstacles such as other aircraft or flying vehicles in the airspace. Therefore, the ability to avoid moving obstacles becomes a necessity
for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles.
Towards enabling a UAV to autonomously sense and avoid moving obstacles, this thesis makes the following contributions. Initially, an image-based reactive motion planner is developed for a quadrotor to avoid a fast approaching obstacle. Furthermore, A Dubin’s curve based geometry method is developed as a global path planner for a fixed-wing UAV to avoid collisions with aircraft. The image-based method is unable to produce an optimal path and the geometry method uses a simplified UAV model. To compensate
these two disadvantages, a series of algorithms built upon the Closed-Loop Rapid Exploratory Random Tree are developed as global path planners to generate collision avoidance paths in real time. The algorithms are validated in Software-In-the-Loop (SITL) and Hardware-In-the-Loop (HIL) simulations using a fixed-wing UAV model and in real flight experiments using quadrotors. It is observed that the algorithm enables a UAV to avoid moving obstacles approaching to it with different directions and speeds.
for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles.
Towards enabling a UAV to autonomously sense and avoid moving obstacles, this thesis makes the following contributions. Initially, an image-based reactive motion planner is developed for a quadrotor to avoid a fast approaching obstacle. Furthermore, A Dubin’s curve based geometry method is developed as a global path planner for a fixed-wing UAV to avoid collisions with aircraft. The image-based method is unable to produce an optimal path and the geometry method uses a simplified UAV model. To compensate
these two disadvantages, a series of algorithms built upon the Closed-Loop Rapid Exploratory Random Tree are developed as global path planners to generate collision avoidance paths in real time. The algorithms are validated in Software-In-the-Loop (SITL) and Hardware-In-the-Loop (HIL) simulations using a fixed-wing UAV model and in real flight experiments using quadrotors. It is observed that the algorithm enables a UAV to avoid moving obstacles approaching to it with different directions and speeds.
ContributorsLin, Yucong (Author) / Saripalli, Srikanth (Thesis advisor) / Scowen, Paul (Committee member) / Fainekos, Georgios (Committee member) / Thangavelautham, Jekanthan (Committee member) / Youngbull, Cody (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
For more than 100 years, the Unite States National Park Service (NPS) has been guided by a mandate to preserve parks and their resources for the enjoyment of present and future generations. But all parks are subject to conditions that may frustrate preservation efforts. Climate change is melting the glaciers. Rising seas are sweeping away protected shorelines. Development projects, accompanied by air, water, light, and noise pollution, edge closer to parks and fragment habitats. The number of visitors and vested interests are swelling and diversifying. Resources for preservation, such as funds and staff, seem to be continuously shrinking, at least relative to demand.
Still, the NPS remains committed to the preservation of our natural and cultural heritage. Yet the practice of that promise is evolving, slowly and iteratively, but detectably. Through explorations of legal and scholarly literature, as well as interviews across the government, non-profit, and academic sectors, I’ve tracked the evolution of preservation in parks. How is preservation shifting to address socio-ecological change? How has preservation evolved before? How should the NPS preserve parks moving forward?
The practice of preservation has come to rely on science, including partnerships with academic researchers, as well as inventory and monitoring programs. That shift has in part been guided by goals that have also become more informed by science, like ecological integrity. While some interviewees see science as a solution to the NPS’s challenges, others wonder how applying science can get “gnarly,” due to uncertainty, lack of clear policies, and the diversity of parks and resources. “Gnarly” questions stem in part from the complexity of the NPS as a socio-ecological system, as well as from disputed, normative concepts that underpin the broader philosophy of preservation, including naturalness. What’s natural in the context of pervasive anthropogenic change? Further, I describe how parks hold deep, sometimes conflicting, cultural and symbolic significance for their local and historical communities and for our nation. Understanding and considering those values is part of the gnarly task park managers face in their mission to preserve parks. I explain why this type of conceptual and values-based uncertainty cannot be reduced through science.
Still, the NPS remains committed to the preservation of our natural and cultural heritage. Yet the practice of that promise is evolving, slowly and iteratively, but detectably. Through explorations of legal and scholarly literature, as well as interviews across the government, non-profit, and academic sectors, I’ve tracked the evolution of preservation in parks. How is preservation shifting to address socio-ecological change? How has preservation evolved before? How should the NPS preserve parks moving forward?
The practice of preservation has come to rely on science, including partnerships with academic researchers, as well as inventory and monitoring programs. That shift has in part been guided by goals that have also become more informed by science, like ecological integrity. While some interviewees see science as a solution to the NPS’s challenges, others wonder how applying science can get “gnarly,” due to uncertainty, lack of clear policies, and the diversity of parks and resources. “Gnarly” questions stem in part from the complexity of the NPS as a socio-ecological system, as well as from disputed, normative concepts that underpin the broader philosophy of preservation, including naturalness. What’s natural in the context of pervasive anthropogenic change? Further, I describe how parks hold deep, sometimes conflicting, cultural and symbolic significance for their local and historical communities and for our nation. Understanding and considering those values is part of the gnarly task park managers face in their mission to preserve parks. I explain why this type of conceptual and values-based uncertainty cannot be reduced through science.
ContributorsSullivan Govani, Michelle (Author) / Minteer, Ben A (Thesis advisor) / Budruk, Megha (Committee member) / Sarewitz, Daniel (Committee member) / Theuer, Jason (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019