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A Robot To Follow "Mother" And Another To Block Her

Posted by timothy on from the unless-these-are-fake dept.

fireflash writes: "Some folks at MIT have had a bit of fun with robots. 'Mr. Mallard' and 'Roboguard' are robots that follow a homing beacon and guard hallways, respectively. Wouldn't you like to be followed around by a mess of wires and boards whilst attempting to pass through a hallway guarded by another? Sounds like the ultimate in home security to me :-)."

4 of 109 comments (clear)

  1. Mirror by Erasei · · Score: 4, Informative

    This is probably going to be needed real soon.. google mirror

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    visit my free wallpaper collection, wp.erasei.com
  2. Re:Finally! by jandrese · · Score: 3, Informative

    You play on a simple field (often times an 80x25 terminal window). Your intreped hero has no weapons (sometimes he has a single shot sonic screwdriver) and if any robot touches him he dies. You can only kill the robots by making them run into each other (where they'll leave piles of debris behind--and running into debris is also deadly for the robots!). The robots are very stupid, they always head in a bee-line to the player (at least as much as they can being constrained to moving in ordinal directions). Your hero's primary weapon is a teleporter that randomly teleports him to somewhere else in the playing field (including occasionally next to a robot). The game is over when a robot touches the player (usually when you teleport in right next to a robot). A somewhat feature lacking version can be compiled from here:
    Hpux

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    I read the internet for the articles.
  3. Big File Warning by shut_up_man · · Score: 3, Informative

    Holy crap, that Roboguard demo is... 173MB? Maybe they should put a size warning on that one, although my work's currently paying for my bandwidth, meh.

    shut up man

  4. Roboguard, slasdotting, comments from inside by angio · · Score: 3, Informative
    Some comments from another student in Nick and Jaeyoun's group:
    • Sorry about the slashdotting. Small server configuration error that's been fixed now. Browse away.
    • Roboguard and friends were a class project; it wasn't DARPA or NSF funded, it was all for fun and a good grade. :) Our research group does networks and mobile systems research for our day jobs...
    • The Cricket Project that was used in the "Mother" robot is part of our real research.
    • Much of the robotics research at MIT happens in the AI Lab, so if you're curious about robotics, browse over there and see the things that the Humanoid Robotics Group is doing. Very cool stuff.
    -Dave