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Cyberbees Score MIT Prize
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."
...for the killer bees to come to us when we can make them ourselves.
Well, it has never been successfully tested.
he uses the robot fleet for good. for example sending the fleet over a city and have them steal every Microsoft cd in sight, replacing them with Debian GNU/Linux cd's.
"MIT" and "score"
How about the Metrobots that are Sony AIBO robots used as embodied multi-agent systems that play robotic soccer too.
They are planning to enter the RoboCup American Open at CMU in Spring of 2003 and hoping to participate in RoboCup 2003 in Padua Italy.
Suhit
"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?
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'.
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.''
That's weird. When I see a kid with something stuck up his nose, 'gifted' isn't exactly the word that comes to mind. It's more like 'doofus'. The only sign of genius would be that he didn't eat the fries afterward.
Those damn news sites! Why don't they ever have pictures of cool stuff?????? Man, I want to see these little guys zipping around, maybe an avi =)))))) Sounds like the ultimate geek toy.
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!
Half a robot bee, philosophically,
Must, ipso facto, half not be. But half the robot bee has got to be Vis a vis, its entity. D'you see?But can a robot bee be said to be
Or not to be an entire robot bee When half the bee is not a robot bee Due to some ancient injury?La dee dee, one two three,
Eric the half a robot bee. A B C D E F G, Eric the half a robot bee.Is this wretched demi-robot bee,
Half-asleep upon my knee, Some freak from a menagerie? No! It's Eric the half a robot bee!Fiddle de dum, Fiddle de dee,
Eric the half a robot bee. Ho ho ho, tee hee hee, Eric the half a robot bee.I love this hive, employee-ee,
Bisected accidentally, One summer afternoon by me, I love him carnally.He loves him carnally,
Semi-carnally."Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
"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."
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
The idea of complex adaptive systems composed of a swarm of simple nodes with very simple rules is neither new or interesting in and of itself. The fact that this garnered a prestigious award and some press is made all the more disturbing because I've seen more than one software proof-of-concept for this idea in the past five years.
My favorite was a Java-based applet called "Ants" where each entity only 3 rules...
1. where home was
2. what it "liked" (food)
3. communicate food locations to peers when contact was made
Within 20 seconds, the entire "colony" had been notified of the food location and the ants were swarming in a straight line between the colony location and the "food."
I hate it when something that is neither novel nor compelling wins a prize like this...
Hell, my father-in-law thought of this idea for a lawnmower grid, even...
"... but you can love completely without complete understanding." - Norman Maclean, "A River Runs Through It"
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...
You know it's the Golden Age of awards shows when even God makes an appearance at some b-list event like this.
This guy made his money from bar-code scanners' patents (and lawsuits). Still his is "one of the larger student grants in the country"
" . . . making him, he says, the neighborhood geek in a black culture where adolescents rewarded only athletes and tough guys."
I don't know how to respond from this observation in the article. On one hand being a "geek" in middle/high school really sucks. On the other hand, is it "black culture" that doesn't like geeks, or "white" culture that has traditionally railroaded blacks into those two categories? I definitely don't want to play the race card here. I just thought the observation in the article was interesting.
KLAATU, BORADA, NIh*ahem*
First, I read the post, which talked about 'Bee-like robots', and was impressed. Making anything that flies under its own power and contains some kind of logic is pretty clever, and incorporating swarming algorithms is even better. Then I read the article (yes, I know this is /., I'm sorry, it won't happen again). I don't know about the US, but in the UK bees have wings, and fly. These were just ground crawlers. About 3 years ago, I saw something similar at Oxford Uuniversity, I think it was an undergrad's final year project. They used slightly bigger robots, but the principle is the same. This really isn't a new idea, and does not merit a prize. Flocking algorithms have been around for ages (we had to study them as part of a second year course) and small robots can by bought in Toys 'R' Us. Combining the two would be a good high-school project, but there's nothing particularly original in this work (at least as portrayed by the article).
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Those aren't bugs... they're features!
Learn to Play Go
Hardly a waste. This man has his masters degree, and is on his way to getting his doctorate, from MIT no less. Far more than your average 30 year old.
Im not sure where you came up with 26 years for how long his peers have been working in "the real world", but Ill go with it. So, 30k * 40 = 1.2mil...spread that out over 26 years, and thats only a little over 46k a year.
Meanwhile, by the time this man has 26 years of "real world" work experience, he will be pulling in well over 46k a year with his masters, let alone a doctorate. As the article indicates, he has already taught civil engineering at MIT, is the lead scientist at iRobot, and winning this award will only give the company better recognition.
As for it being a hobby type robot, that would only make it all the better. Noone would turn down 30k for something they put together as a hobby, let alone thier doctoral thesis.
You also indicate he does not like to be social, and is not married, neither of which are addressed in either article.
At least you got one thing right, his mommy sure can be proud.