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Cyberbees Score MIT Prize

Posted by timothy on from the to-avoid-the-sting dept.

DeAshcroft writes "The Boston Globe has a nice story on the winner of this year's Lemelson-MIT Student Prize. 125 infrared-communicating 4.5-inch swarming bee-like robots. Businessweek even covered this one here. Next year's prize may go to the creator of 4.5-inch long swarming cockroaches."

8 of 157 comments (clear)

  1. Why wait.... by Selfbain · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...for the killer bees to come to us when we can make them ourselves.

    --
    Well, it has never been successfully tested.
  2. 2 words you don't normally hear together by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    "MIT" and "score"

    1. Re:2 words you don't normally hear together by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny
      here are two more:

      "MIT" and "unemployed"

  3. Great...Bees with Wheels by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    "James McLurkin and a few assistants built 125 wheel-footed bugs... The machines measure 4.5 inches on a side and communicate with the same infrared technology used by television remote controls."

    You need a MIT Doctor to figure out the Lego Mindstorm kit?

  4. I am the walrus by porksodas · · Score: 5, Funny

    From the article :
    Sandra Lawson, McLurkin's mother, figured out she had a gifted child at age 2 when her boy stuck a french fry up each nostril during lunch and said, ''Look mom, I'm a walrus.'' Though unimpressed by his nasal hygiene, she was astounded her child knew what a walrus was.

    He then smeared the rest of his food all over his face and listed three more Beatles songs.

    Sandra wept and thought : 'My boy is truly a genius'.

  5. Great minds think alike by scotay · · Score: 5, Funny

    Sandra Lawson, McLurkin's mother, figured out she had a gifted child at age 2 when her boy stuck a french fry up each nostril during lunch and said, ''Look mom, I'm a walrus.''

    I remember when, for some unknown reason, I stuck a little wheel from a Matchbox car up my nose and said "Look mom, I'm a Pep Boys." I didn't really say that. If I was a genius I might have said something like that.

    I do remember that 4 people had to hold me down at the hospital. I screamed at the top of my lungs as the doctor came at me with what seemed like a meter long pair of tweezers. I think I know what people that have gone through an alien abduction might have felt, but from the other end.

    Community college, here I come!

  6. Yay! by Loki_1929 · · Score: 5, Funny

    "A 30-year-old MIT doctoral student won $30,000 yesterday for designing a swarm of little robots..."

    Which covers what, about 1 semester at MIT?

    --
    -- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
  7. Lifetime achievement award goes to ... by captainboogerhead · · Score: 5, Funny
    Next year's prize may go to the creator of 4.5-inch long swarming cockroaches.

    You know it's the Golden Age of awards shows when even God makes an appearance at some b-list event like this.