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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."

5 of 157 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Damn news sites! by nwanua · · Score: 5, Informative

    Here you go:

    http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/ants/

    I found this a while ago while doing something similar in distributed computing.

  2. Lemelson by quantaman · · Score: 4, Informative

    The Lemelson Foundation was created by Jerome Lemelson, one of the more polarizing figures in modern day patent life. Lemelson obtained more than 500 patents in his life. He did not use these patents to create companies geared toward manufacturing products, however. Instead, he filed lawsuits against a number of companies, including General Motors and Otis Elevator, when elements of his designs allegedly showed up in later products such as bar-code scanners.

    Settlements and verdicts in the more than 135 so-called Lemelson lawsuits led to millions for Lemelson and his allies.

    This could be taken out of context but the sounds suspiciously like this guy was a patent squatter (although I assume these were legitimate as opposed to the ones ignoring prior art we keep hearing about).

    --
    I stole this Sig
  3. military apps by wattersa · · Score: 5, Informative

    Just wait until they turn this into a distribution system for chemical weapons or a way to conduct surveillance in cities. A swarm of the other side's robots coming at you? I'd either be running for cover or pulling out the shotgun, depending on how many there were. Great...

  4. The Lemelson-MIT Student Prize by golo · · Score: 3, Informative
    From the BussinessWeek Article:
    The Lemelson Foundation was created by Jerome Lemelson, one of the more polarizing figures in modern day patent life. Lemelson obtained more than 500 patents in his life. He did not use these patents to create companies geared toward manufacturing products, however. Instead, he filed lawsuits against a number of companies, including General Motors and Otis Elevator, when elements of his designs allegedly showed up in later products such as bar-code scanners.

    This guy made his money from bar-code scanners' patents (and lawsuits). Still his is "one of the larger student grants in the country"
  5. From the MIT News Office... by megazoid81 · · Score: 2, Informative

    Robotic ants inventor James McLurkin wins $30K Lemelson student prize