Slashdot Mirror
Feral Robot Dogs
stinkypig sent in a blurb about Feral Robot Dogs, assorted modifications of the commercial AIBO dogs to be "more useful". For various definitions of useful. See also a discussion on smartmobs.com.
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
still not usefulful enough to warrent the $1400 price tags...
- colin
Based on this article it would seem that Sony does not people modding thier robot dog. So is that article the latest word or has Sony wisened up?
Since I first heard of nanotechnology, a logical use seemed to be using it to create landfill miners.
Small robotic devices sent into most landfills could harvest bost the useful and the harmful substances from them.
This "robodog" mod is an excellent first step towards this. Well intentioned, but likely doomed to
the humour or "wierd news" fold.
I look forward to following it.
... It's about time someone did something useful with these things.
A local newsagent is selling a series of these horrid mags with a bit of a robot on the cover, collect them all and build it, sort of a thing. I can just imagine how proud I'd be to watch my lad's robot savage the postie ...
"By Grabthar's Hammer, what a savings."
eating-steaks-that-grow-on-trees dept?? Comon Micheal, We know its early but this title is ++ungood.
--sig fault--
I'm just wondering the about the legal issues surrounding the release of a 'feral' robot..
When you release your feral robot to freely wander about, would you have any legal right of ownership over it, if, say, someone else took it into their own possession ?
On the converse, could you be held responsible for it's actions ?
Are there any legal precendents around for any of this stuff ?
$ strings FTP.EXE | grep Copyright
@(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.
How about frigging feral robot dogs with frigging laser beams on their heads?
Yeah baby!
Alan.
Under poop and scoop laws would you have to follow around one of these with an anti-static baggie?
On a more serious note - it's always interesting to see explorations of behaviour in robotics (since future robots used for autonomous exploration of planetary surfaces and such will likely need different programming than the traditional robot (many of which would actually be closer to teleoperated machines than robots as they rely on human instruction for just about everything.
It reminds me to some degree of some sci-fi stories exploring AI and von neumann type machines interacting in such a way to create robotic "evolution". Which makes you further wonder - one day could obsolete robots be considered endangered species? (Look over there... it's one of the last VIC-20's left in the wild!)
You don't put the laser on the robot dogs head.
You put the laser in the dog's nose.
www.eFax.com are spammers
It's a 600MHz Celeron with 60MB RAM. I was surprised I didn't see any smoke when I went to reboot it.
I just throttled back MaxClients in httpd.conf. You'll be able to get in a little bit easier now, for a little while at least.
And no, I have no control over the content or the hardware.
In a related vein, I'm working on Angry Fish. In addition to the first fish that cries out in pain, I am working on a school of seven Linux-controlled fish, which will soon be decrying their position in life.
Programming it to hump the legs of attractive women?
1. Wild dogs evolve
2. Humans domesticate wild dogs.
3. Humans create domesticated robotic dogs
4. Robotic dogs go wild
5. Wild robotic dogs tame humans???
Whats it gonna do? Lick its electric nuts?
-Y.T., Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson
This project made its debut at the 2003 Florida Film Festival here in Orlando about a month or so ago. I worked on the dogs for a day, helping assemble some of the first prototypes. The dog platform they used was initially a cheap toy (Mega-Byte) that they purchased for about $10. Then, they added particulate sensors which were sensitive to Co2 and other things like gasoline, etc. A new stepper motor assembly replaced the front legs, and a single tail wheel carried the rear. This is the bot you see at the top of the "Smart Mobs" link. The system basically got a variable voltage reading off the particulate sensors, then fed that to a PIC which did a linear variable speed control to the drive motors in the front. Ex: gasoline vapor on the left of the bot would drive the bot forward and to the left.
;^)
Modding a single dog took about 2-3hrs per dog, if you count in the soldering and layout of the PCB and the modification of the dog shell.
The purpose of the exhibit was to create a mediagenic event around coordinated releases of the dogs. There's a development here in Orlando called Baldwin Park, which has a bit of notoriety around it for being build on the site of an old Army base. They wanted to draw attention to the repurposing of these dogs and the fact that they could be used to make a statement, rather than trying to expose specific polluters, etc
It was kind of fun working on the dogs, and to see them run. We sent a team out into the field to videotape the dogs in action - supposedly they took it to a Burger King and it just ran into a corner. On a construction work site, one dog caught a whiff of a truck and went rolling after it.
We had fun working on the dogs, but weren't able to spend much time discussion the potential for this kind of renegade modding - in that sense I was a bit disappointed. But the whole sense of modding these dogs is what Slashdot is all about! Unfortunately, they don't run Linux yet...