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Rats, Robots, And Rescue Follow Up
Dr. Robin Murphy writes "An editorial comparing the proposed roborats with the rescue robots actually used at the WTC response by the Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue appeared last month in
IEEE Intelligent Systems Magazine. A slightly longer version is at
Crasar.org. Note that the rescue robots was in Discover Magazine's Top 100 stories of 2002."
for the article
and
for the main page
try to go easy on poor old google.
Seems to me that the "law enforcement" community
would embrace this new tool as a way to check up on citizens. These machines have huge potential in domestic military and political survelliance applications. I'm sure Mr. Poindexter is just drooling all over himself at the possibilities.
Damn, your system is slow this morning...
Stupid Humans.....
Rats!
Yay! Now we can play Lemmings for real!
Fabulous. There's an old saying referring to flowers, something about them being weeds until someone's found a use for them.
I'm not saying rats or weeds are useless, of course... but I can already hear the massive campaign platforms and court cases.
----- Wtcher Dragon, UDIC
I believe the Lego robots are $200, not $20...
Independent musicians and registration-free net radio at EmergentSound
His article is one giant dismissal of the recently invented "roborat" technology, with a conspicuous emphasis on funding guidelines. I'm no expert and I won't pretend to be able to comment with authority on whether "rescue rats" have any merit, but I believe there is a clear conflict of interest when a robot-rescue researcher who lives off robot-rescue grant money dismisses an alternative approach to assisted search and rescue.
All this aside I'd rather send rats, robots, snakes, worms, or whatever into a flaming nuclear reactor before I'd send people. But that's just me.
Kill Trolls Dead. Here's
The thought of robotically controlled rats scares me somewhat...
Although, this has been happening for a long time...
That's basically what congress is, right, a bunch of rats controlled remotely by lobbyists, right? Of course that group of remotely controlled rats scares me too. I'm just gonna go hide in a cave with some real rats... I feel much safer there.
...it's the robots who get rescued (after they break down).
OK, roborats may have disadvantages, but is it just me, or this guy sounds amazingly derisive of the technology? Sounds to me like a cat defending his turf. I'm all for alternatives.
Plus, he never makes an attempt to see the other side. Rats have advantages too; off the top of my head, (obviously) price. No matter how fine a rat it is, one rat will always cost on millionth (or less) of the cost of a robot. Also, they don't need to be rats; you could derive the technology to use, say, hummingbirds. I don't see a robot duplicating a hummingbird's flight capability and size, not to mention maneuverability. And, as I say, that's off the top of my head.
I have a great respect for scientists, but it's really sad to see them involved in turf wars instead of seeking to increase cooperation. They're only humans, I guess. That's something robots would probably be better at.
We are not lazy, we are more creative. And since there are more rats than humans, the exploration (unlaziness) can be taken to newer levels.
;-)
Btw.. there are many places where humans cant go, but we are not lazy, we are not pleased with not going there. Instead we create new technology that allows us to go even further. How can that be a sin ?
btw.. i think your find out that lazy human scientists have decided to enslave an entire species of animal (the common sewer rat) is highly inaccurate. There are way too many rats out there
Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.
Aristotele
Um, rats are cheap. Not only are rats cheap, they can easlily be mass produced. Not only can they be easily mass produced, but they have something that AI god of yours doesn't have-- Instinct and Common Sense, which is far more valuble in the situations they're putting the rats. Not only do they have instinct and common sense, they're less likely to break or suffer a software crash.
Sloth? Troll.
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So if I get trapped underground, I won't know if the horde of rats that just found me are there to gnaw me to death, or are advance scouts for a rescue team? Or both?
Karma: Excellent^(-t/Tau), Tau=Wittiness/Trollishness
>> I've spent years ... years ... working on highly-customized and amazingly intelligent (in an A.I. sense) software that runs on multiple platforms and computer architectures.
uh-huh
"The critters just aren't as lively as they used to be," said a resident of the 34th street station who declined to give his name. It's about time they found some replacements.
A spokesman for the MTA said that if the robotic rats were proven successful in the testing stages, other metropolitan areas would make the switch in the year to come.
"We really expect these robotic rats to perform." he said. "They don't produce as much waste, and can draw power directly from the third rail."
When asked about the comparatively high price of the robotic rats as compared to the freely available conventional ones, the official claimed that while the organic rats were free to aquire, the Total Cost of Onership was much higher, given the cleanup and maintenance costs.
"You know, these robotic rats, they will never unionize, and we will not have any unrest among their ranks. Overall, we think this switch will reduce our rat-related expenditures by up to 40% over the next few years."
Ñ'
We just need to make cyborg snakes and cyborg nazis, and then all of Indiana Jones' worst fears will be made real. I don't know whether or not Indiana Jones will have to be made into a cyborg too though.
Karma: Excellent^(-t/Tau), Tau=Wittiness/Trollishness
Just because animals can't speak up (with language, that is, I'm sure the rats made their displease known in many other universal ways that were ignored) this doesn't mean that we're free to mutilate them as we see fit. I applaud the fact that we're using technology to aid in disaster situations, but I just find it really twisted that we're forcing all these animals to suffer for it. Say what you will about rats being cheap, they're still living, intelligent beings that don't deserve to be fitted with skull caps and have their brains shocked. If you don't see any problem with the rats, how far away are we from doing this with cute, cuddly puppies or kittens?
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
And imagine what combining THIS technology to others will results in... like the work being done on presthetic eyes. Instead of having a huge battery pack and camera and other electrical equipent strapped to a rodent's back, in the near future, this will all be miniaturized (of course) and the camera can actually BE the rodent's eyes, so all that may need to be external would be a powersource.
A seemingly regular-looking rodent (of any other animal for that matter!) may in-fact be a secret agent!
Ain't technology cool?!
Karma: NaN
http://www.crasarhq.org
http://www.inuktun.com
Human Rescue : Have you located the victim ?
Rat Rescue : munch munch, eh no, munch, not yet.
Human Rescue : Whats that gnawing sound ?
Rat Rescue : Gnawing sound ? What gnawing sound ? I dont hear anything.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
He does make a rather good case for why robots are better than rats though. I think the original reference to rescue rats was a stunt to get funding/publicity (practically the same thing).
Some of the problem is that any press other than journals and a few science magazines won't report any basic research without having some gee whizz possible applications.
"Um, rats are cheap. Not only are rats cheap, they can easlily be mass produced."
To be fair, the same can be said about people...
Slave comes from the european word for the Slavs, who of course were enslaved by other groups. The Slavs enslaved other people too. And their word for slaves? Robot.
We should replace the scientists by robots instead! Or by rats?
(And I have a feeling that's how they handled this in Soviet Russia...)
Just because you disagree with a poster's comment doesnt mean you moderate it down. seems Insightful, or if not that, at least Interesting.
Scientist 1:
Ok see we get these rats but they are not just any old rats.
They are robo-controlled rats, see.
We use them in rescue missions and other noble pursuits.
Scientist 2:
Do you think they will figure we just glued lego blocks to the heads of trained rats?
Scientist 1:
Nah, they are too dumb to check.
Yeah, something like that..
ACK
From the article:
search-and-rescue robots did perform tasks at the WTC disaster site and were successful by any reasonable performance metric
Number of lives saved?
Ummm... I think getting a person to the level where they can perform this sort of task requires much more time and resources than it takes to provide a rat with a fish tank, roller cage and feed. Comparitively speaking, of course.
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Rats are probably the most ideal animals for rescuing people from collapsed buildings -- they find you through the smallest cracks and the bonus is that you can eat them while waiting for the rescue crew dig you up.
Only thing you'd need to check is whether the victims are allergic. While I kind of like waking up in middle of night because a rat is sitting on my head (has happened more than once), I and quite many other people would choke to death quite quickly if forced to live with a fat furry rat in a small cavity for a prolonged time.
Cherish your rat.
NASA can build robots and send them many, many, many, ..., many lightyears away to distance planets. They can then remotely control them and obtain rock samples, pH test data, and brightness/contrast/luminosity metrics. They can use them to search as well, locating various pools of high-resource lime and calcium areas. Why can't we do this in this instance? A $20 Lego robot kit could almost get the job done if you just throw in a camera that can sense photons. But no, let's just electrocute rats' brains with RF signals because it's "cool".
Rats are REALLY cheap - about $15 before you add a few hundred dollars of hardware to make it RoboRat.
And, rats have built in locomotion that is more advanced than anything NASA or any other robotic creator has ever created. It is the best tool for the job. Best performance for the price. Kinda like an avalanche-dog on a smaller scale.
As opposed to baiting and exterminating rats. And, we pen cattle and chickens for food. They have no freedom and are procreated strickly for our enjoyment. We care not how they suffer.
Give me a break! Stop being so self-righteous. Are zookeepers evil? Are petting zoos evil?
Click here or here.
Is anyone else reminded of the Rat Things from Stephenson's Snow Crash?
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
Well...
Scott Evil wanted to start an petting zoo...
I'm reading Introduction to AI Robotics right now.
Seems good so far, although too many copy editing errors to make me really comfortable with it.
--
Marc A. Lepage
Software Developer
If you start with a dog you have a security robot like the "Rat" Thing from Snow Crash.
Wasn't the spider in Fahrenheit bio-organic too?
This is how Lemmings would look if they were for real (from an article on Politiken.dk about Gamestars, where people dressed up as their favourite gamestars)
Lemming1
Lemming2
Lemming3
Masculine Lara Croft is also a killer!
It's all in danish for your reading pleasure!
..... robots rat on YOU!
I suppose that even with implants, cats are untrainable. Now dogs on the other hand ...
--
But then again I thought VCR+ was a stupid idea and would die a quick death--so what do I know?
Using remote controlled rats reminds me of those controversial military dolphin programmes that both the Soviets, and the Americans seemed to carry out.
:)
;)
Even though I'm not exactly an animal rights activist this still all sounds a bit... unnecessary. Especially when there are alternatives.
I worked briefly in a SAR robot project, while I was at Edinburgh University. Myself and two other MSc students got together and built 2 SAR robots, to participate in the SAR event at Robocup 2001, Seattle. Even though our project wasn't really ready in time (read, the heat-seeking robots rather chase the CNN cameraman than find victims, and didn't report at all to the base station) I did learn a lot from just being there.
For example, I learnt how difficult it is to remote control a robot using only its on-board cameras/sensors. One of Murphy's Urbies was due for repair when its human-operator managed to drive it down a flight of stairs, and I quote Murphy, "without ever touching the stairs".
And this difficulty is ever so larger when the robots go inside rubble, with lack of light, and the well known radio control problems/outages.
Human control also limits the number of robots you can deploy, assuming you need 1 operator per robot.
Autonomous robot swarms are only possible if the robots are small and cheap, so you can deploy dozens or hundreds and accept a number of 'losses'. But this approach has its own disadvantages, such as small size meaning less sensorial capabilities for example. What good are dozens of little crawlers that just step on top of the victim's heads without ever detecting them?
In the event debriefing meeting, where sponsored teams had to make a small presentation, this Few_Big_Expensive vs many_small_cheap issue was debated. I believe there must be a compromise, and whoever finds the right balance will be half-way there.
As far as rats... I'd rather hear about research into fluorescent heat-seeking 'intelligent' jelly, that is poured on top of the rubble, seeks victims, attaches itself around their body keeping them worm (but intelligent enough to stay away from eyes, hears, nose, and mouth) and nutritionally rich so the victim can eat it if required...
What's that, Eeky?
Jimmy fell down the well? Lead the way! Go on, boy. No! Not the cheese! SNAP! Oh, the humanity!
Keep your packets off my GNU/Girlfriend!
Frankly, it terrifies and amazes me how much we'll fiddle with nature(tm). I don't like rats, but I also am strongly opposed to opening their skulls and forcing them to do things against their will via 9v battery. I am strong believer in Karma, and I for one don't want to have some "superior" life-form crack open my skull and use me for a chess piece simply because he communicates more effeciently than I do...
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really
good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they actually change
their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really
do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are
human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot
recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
-- Carl Sagan, 1987 CSICOP keynote address
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