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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."

12 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. metrobots by suhit · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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

  4. 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?

  5. 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'.

  6. 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!

  7. 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.

  8. 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."
  9. 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...

  10. 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.

  11. culture comentary by wornst · · Score: 5, Interesting

    " . . . 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.