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Projectile ReconBots
mtDNA writes " Dr. Dobb's TechNetCast has a feature on ReconBots designed by Nikos Papanikolopoulos's lab. The bots are organized into teams. Each team is led by a large, controlling "Ranger" bot (running Linux) and supported by several tin-can-sized, cylindrical "Scout" bots. The Ranger disperses the scouts with a launcher that can shoot them up to seventy feet. After that, the scouts roam around sending back video, sound and other data. The scouts are 40mm cylinders specifically so they can be launched from a 40mm grenade launcher! The full story, including video of the scouts getting launched, is here." The story is from April 2000 but it doesn't seem that we ran it at the time.
Nikos "Just Call Me Nikos" Papanikolopoulos is an awesome professor. He taught Advanced Algorithms and Data Structures II at the U of MN, and to this day it has been the best CS class I have taken at the U.
He really had a way of coming up with projects to make those boring dyktra's searches seem more interesting...
Anybody else on here have him?
-AP
I agree, I had him for a couple of my classes a couple of years back. One of the best professors I've ever had.
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Things like door would stop them.
That's why they have a cool little "foot" they can use to jump. If they get stuck, they can try to free them selves by jumping away. Of course there isn't much control over the direction and distance they jump, but that's not the point. If they miss, they just try again. And if some of them *still* get stuck, oh well. They are small and cheap, so you send a bunch in and at least a few of them end up being useful.
This would make an interesting Mars exploration tool. And with reduced gravity, the Ranger could shoot the Scouts *really* far!
This project has been discussed on /. before, but it deserves to stay on the radar because it is interesting (not just because they use linux, but also because of the distributed computing aspects). Here's
the research group's website,
and here is an article in the U of MN's CS dept
newsletter about the project.
I graduated in CS from the U, and I used to give departmental tours of various projects, including this one. Nikos & company are doing some good work here.
I think the best open source AI out there is ALICE:
http://www.alicebot.org/
Have fun
~~~Please pass the salt, I hate unsalted MD5s
The quality of AI you can get (for non-trivial tasks) is proportional to the processing power available. So running it in Java is like attaching a trailer to an F1 car...
Grab.
Well the rangers look like they might be able to handle working on many different terrain types, but those scounts are gonn have a tough time on anything other than a smoothe man made surface. I don't think these bots are very practical in anything but a very urban setting.
There are a thousand forms of subversion, but few can equal the convenience and immediacy of a cream pie -Noel Godin
this sounds really good, but with one problem. The progectile is shaped like a can which rolls around. I couldn't get the videos to work, but that sounds like the "scouts" would not be very good for rough terrain, even if the "ranger" is. Also, if they were used indoors, where they could roll much better (i think). Things like door would stop them. It seems to me the best way to use this would be so that after landing, the can unrolls to a (near) flat surface with they monitering and transmission on top (what was the inside when in flight) This way, it would be low enough to slip through door jams, (some of them anyways), and would be able go across country a little easier. I'll try to get the videos again later.
Drummer beat & piper blow,Harper strike & soldier go,Free the flame & sear the grasses,Till the dawning Red
It seems that I was to lazy to elaborate on my previous comment, so here. Imagine these "scouts" as controlers for a certain number of nanobots. each of these controlers has a specific purpose, set to it by the ranger. The ranger is contoled by an adaptive neural net (it can recompile itself)and is given the purpose "better yourself". The scouts, in addition to their minions of nanobots, each have certain sensors or data manipultion/access tools and a means of returning to the ranger, and use the nanobots to aid them in collecting information or resources that the scout, and ultimantly, the ranger, require. Put the whole system into a controled environment, and then see what happens.
"Umk. So maybe it was a stupid plan after all." -God to his angels, just after creating the universe
It looks like Dr. Dobb's is slashdotted already.
There's another movie on Papanikolopoulos's homepage: http://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~npapas
If you watch TV news, you know less about the world than if you just drank gin straight from the bottle.
I've just recently started helping with this research project at the U of MN, and I must say that the little scout robots are pretty damn sweet.
Some other cool things (that you may have read on the various sites, but I thought I'd say them anyway) and notes about them: