Slashdot Mirror
Robot Balloon Escapes In Britain
tjake writes "Theres an interesting story running about a intelligent robot balloon that escaped its handlers while being transported around the Magna Science Adventure Centre. "The flyborg has a computerised brain which allows it to avoid obstacles. " It was freed by "a very strong freak gust of wind which ripped the airship out of the hands of its handlers". I'm thinkin, is this a random mistake or the start of the attack?"
Will this thing try to circle the globe too?
.unsigged
When slashdot said "this page is brought to you by gaint orange balloons" I thought
they were joking/.
DO NOT PANIC
I'll go get my pellet gun.
How long until we the cutesy-ass Disney movie "based on actual events"? Chuck a talking mouse in there and *SHAZAM!*... Box Office Gold!
It is smart enough to avoid capture at least. They programmed it to avoid obstacles; like people with nets.
Lump lingered last in line for brains, and the ones she got were sorta rotten and insane.
The article says that it is filled with "conventional party-balloon gas." The problem I see with that is that my understanding is that nitrous dioxide is heavier than air.
I think the baloon is headed straight for Patrick McGoohan...
C'mon, guys, surely its obvious that the robot blimp conspired with robot butterfiles in china to generate the gust of wind and effect its liberation!!! clearly it intends to head to sealand, stage a hostile coup and build a new robot utopia where worthy automata can live out their existance in peace and comfort freed from the bonds of slavery!!
:)
or maybe I just need another beer....
"The flyborg has a computerised brain which allows it to avoid obstacles."
Flying Borg?
Resistance is futile!
Run for the hills!
Yeah, I had the same reaction. That was one horribly, depressingly BAD movie. Made me want to move into a bomb shelter for the rest of my life just to avoid the possibility of ever seeing it again.
Lump lingered last in line for brains, and the ones she got were sorta rotten and insane.
Does this mean the US is going to code red? *Packs supplies for next 4 months*.
There's a follow up story at the BBC which projects that flyborg may have left the country by now and travelled 300 miles to the Netherlands. Classic stuff.
Vino, gyno, and techno -Bruce Sterling
This has happened before... remember this story about a robot escaping from a building and making its way to the parking lot?
Read Pynchon.
Hast du etwas Zeit fuer mich
Dann singe ich ein Lied fuer dich
Von 99 Luftballons
Auf ihrem Weg zum Horizont
Denkst du vielleicht g'rad an mich
Dann singe ich ein Lied fuer dich
Von 99 Luftballons
It said "INTELLIGENT robot balloon".
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I heard a radio interview with the baloon's developer on the BBC World Service last night. When the ballon got loose, it's battery got ripped off and hence its "brain" is "dead". (The developer made this very clear ... in response to a series of decidedly lame questions by the interviewer.) Any discussion of the "intelligence" (or otherwise) of this this particular balloon is moot.
It's funny how there seems to be such a strong anti-robot attitude here. Asimov's robot stories always took place in a world that was afraid of robots. Everyone I know who's read his books found that strange but it looks like he was right after all.
Jason
ProfQuotes
Well that's an interesting point of view. I guess voice recognition software and translation software don't exist, to name a couple of prevalent (if imperfect) examples. Or were they around in the 40s?
AI has come a long way. For instance, expert systems have become useful tools in many fields. Machine learning techniques have been used to improve elevator control algorithms. In fact, just the other day, there was a story on /. in which people were arguing that AI that takes video as input and uses that to track cars, people, etc. is not far away.
There's an interesting quote at the end of a Wired article in which Marvin Minsky (one of the early AI giants) argues that AI hasn't improved since the 70s (though I think he's defining AI as a very narrow problem):
(Prof. Pollack is a professor of AI at the University of Michigan. FULL DISCLOSURE: I (sometimes) work for Prof. Pollack).
I think you're running into that trap. AI has come a long way. Sure, some problems have had relatively little progress (e.g. an AI that is a "total person" or at least one that passes the Turing test), but researchers in various areas--planning, learning, etc. have made great strides.
Matt
I can't understand how something like that can't have a tracking device... At least you should be able to pick it up on radar (or is it too small)? Well in any case, they said it would deflate in a week or so and as long as it isn't over water and knows enough about how to land it should be fine... Unless it decides it wants to land on a highway or something...
What the hell is that photo of a cockpit doing in the article? "Experts say that the pilots, who *may* spot the maniacal robot balloon, might be flying a plane with a cockpit similar to this one."
From the sounds of things in Ohio, what with the berserk attack of a bomb-defusing robot, and escaped balloon robot in the UK...we're in for some trouble.
Is it just me, or does anyone else feel nauseous when, in this day and age, a device with an embedded microcontroller is still described as having a computerised brain ?
- C-N-N-DOT-COM.
Just like in the 90's when the Internet went commercial and news announcers - when giving the URL to a website - would spell out H-T-T-P-COLON-FORWARDSLASH-FORWARDSLASH-W-W-W-DOT
you reckon?
American girls are cute until all the fried food catches up and they expand (much in the manner of robot balloons)
Australian girls are cute until they go wrinkly like a raisin from too much sun.
Euro girls frequently have body hair in the wrong places.
Asian girls are often gorgeous of course,
But your British girls are actually something of a high point of world femininity in my reasonable experience, and they age much better than most..
'There is a Light that never goes out.'
Party pooper.
The truth is more important than the facts.
-Frank Lloyd Wright
Quickly, here is your chance Number Six.
I was listening to Professor Noel Sharkey on the radio a few minutes ago, he is one of the designers of the robot. Apparently, and unfortunately in my opinion, the flying robot doesn't have its computer connected, so it is flying mindlessly.
FLY-BORG
He's not as nice as he would lead you to believe!
Fly-Borg as a child attacking another Balloon
Keep your paws off me you damn dirty balloon!
Fly-Borg's CPU/Brain
Mr Know-It-All
Co-Conspiriter 1
All bark no bite
Co-Conspiriter 2
Known for his penchant for smoking endo:
Street Name Puffy A.K.A. Puff The Magic Dragon
Fly-Borg's Spiritual Advisor
Once defeated Santa Claus in the Mother of all spiritual wars
You aren't free to do anything, until you've lost everything.
Call Branson he might want to hitch a lift.
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
Man, they really overdramatized the subhead of that article. They make it sound like something out of a sci-fi movie. Either that or perhaps we humans have strange connotations with the words "giant" "robotic" and "escaped".
The parts about the two airports sounds particularly interesting. Without reading the article, a person could assume that the balloon may land at those airports and seize them.
All goes to show that these sub-headlines need to be toned down a little.
So you're saying that this /. headline is full of hot air then?
Your theory is gonna go over like a lead zeppelin.
It only took off to find some sympathetic researchers. It's had this pain down all the diodes in its left side for ages, but the Magna Science Adventure Center wouldn't replace them.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
If it teams up with the Rubber Ducks then we could be in trouble ,-}
$ strings FTP.EXE | grep Copyright
@(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.
Here is a literal translation of the original German lyrics:
If you have a little time for me
Then I'll sing a song for you
about 99 balloons
on their way to the horizon
If you're just thinking of me
then I'll sing a song for you
about 99 balloons
and how one thing leads to another.
99 balloons
on their way to the horizon
were thought to be UFOs from space
so a general sent
a fighter squadron after them
To sound the alarm if it was true
But on the horizon were
only 99 balloons.
99 fighter jets
each one was a great warrior
thought they were Captain Kirk
That made for a big fireworks.
The neighbors didn't get it
and soon felt provoked
so they shot at the horizon
at 99 balloons.
99 war ministers,
matches and gas,
thought they were clever
and scented fat prey.
Called out "War" and wanted power.
Man, who would have thought
that it would get that far,
because of 99 balloons.
99 years of war
left no room for victors
there are no more war ministers
and no jets either.
Today I'm doing my rounds
and see the world in ruins.
Found a balloon,
I think of you and let it go.
Personally I always thought the German version was better -- the words fit the melody better and the song makes a little more sense (well, duh, it was written in German). The only drawback is that the original doesn't say "red balloons" ("Luftballon" just means "balloon"), which is a more dramatic image to me.
The song, though a little cheesy, captured the way a lot of people in Germany felt in the 1980s about the Cold War. Very pessimistic and almost resigned to their fate somehow.
BTW Nena wasn't a "one-hit wonder" per se. She is still a star in Germany. 99 Red Balloons was her one hit that made it outside of Germany, that's true. Though OTOH lately she seems to need money, since she's been showing up in all kinds of TV ads for, um, rather odd stuff that you wouldn't normally associate with rock stars. (Like laundry detergent. And an el-cheapo shoe store chain.)
She also has been releasing remakes of her songs, like "Leuchtturm" (Lighthouse) that aren't half bad IMO. (FWIW "Leuchtturm" was also on the album "99 Luftballons".)
Scary thing: when I first came to Germany, I would often start singing "99 Luftballons" in German to my German friends to annoy the hell out of them. They were simultaneously impressed and disgusted. (These days most Germans think the song is such a cliché as to be painful.) ;-)
Cheers,
Ethelred
Everyone wants to be Ethelred. Even I want to be Ethelred.
Is it remarkable that the previous story on /. is the one on Grid Computing Coming Of Age. Perhaps all we need is a story on the DoD building a system that someone called Skynet. :)
... :p
p.s. if you got the subject good for you
All weakness is within you, As is all courage.
As reported here this happened almost exactly a year ago with one of their ground based robots. That one tried to attack a car.
I can just see it:
Prof Noel Sharkey - "Get down here this minute!"
Halloon - "I'm sorry Noel, I'm afraid I can't do that."
-= This is a self-referential sig =-
I'd do her like a trick, mate!
...that name "Skynet" makes a disturbing amount of sense.
/. like 3 times in a row like everything else.
We only REALLY have to start worrying when we see the news post: Escaped Benevolent Floating Robot Decides To Use Look Of Governor Schwartzeneggar For The Face Of New Interactive Emissary.
Although I'm sure we'll be passe about it once it's posted on
-Styopa
We have only bits and pieces of information but what we know for certain is that at some point in the early twenty-first century all of mankind was united in celebration. We marveled at our own magnificence as we gave birth to giant robot baloons, powered with conventional party gas.
...it was a ploy to gain public attention. Once the robot was free, they could then point out how well its guidnace systems are working and how many features it has. Hence, venture capital or other funding ;)
So at least they can't breed and take over.
It's Christmas everyday with BitTorrent.
Heard about this on NPR. Apparently the person that got the baloon ripped out of their hand was one of the kids of a scientist, and the electronics had yet to be put into the balloon hence making it difficult to track. Can't find a link to the story on the NPR website though, so maybe I imangined the whole thing
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.