Slashdot Mirror


Linux-Based Robot To Explore The Forest

crashoverride025 contributes this link to a BBC story about Treebot, "A Linux-based mobile robot equipped with a webcam and sensors swings into action to help monitor forests." Despite the Tarzan reference, it looks like this robot moves along a cable, rather than swinging from place to place.

6 of 84 comments (clear)

  1. Re:what leads to... by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · · Score: 4, Informative

    probes sent to mars should've been run by linux

    Are you kidding? what do you think they run, Windows?

    Linux is great, but nowhere near the level of certification required for software that runs on space probes. The latter, as well as software running on airplane computers, space shuttles, etc ... are so strictly checked that many parts of them are proven mathematically, with great care, at great expenses.

    Just propose NASA or ESA to power their stuff with Linux and they'll probably look at you with a thin smile and the kind of condescending look one makes while shooing a slightly annoying retarded child.

    --
    "A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
  2. What this article doesn't touch upon: NIMS AI. by SexyKellyOsbourne · · Score: 2, Informative

    What this article really doens't say much about is that NIMS isn't just an open source program for controlling robots, it's a program developed by grants given to UCLA to develop AI, or Ambient Intelligence in this isntance. This robot isn't entirely remote controlled, and though the article touches on continual monitoring, it doesn't say that it's using open source robot AI developed by UCLA.

    For more info about NIMS:

    UCLA doc in PDF

    Google HTML Cache

  3. Routing to a mobile wireless sensor network node by dtmos · · Score: 2, Informative

    As the article says, the treebot is part of a "Networked Infomechanical System", a type of wireless sensor network, developed by the UCLA Center for Embedded Networked Sensing. The forest network is used to develop practical wireless sensing technology while simultaneously providing an example of its utility. The use of a mobile network node in a wireless sensor network requires some engineering of the multihop message routing protocol, since such networks are usually assumed to have stationary nodes. I don't know what they've done to address this; it could be anything from MANET-style routing (e.g., AODV, in which they accept the resulting increase in route establishment overhead), to a quasi-static approach in which the treebot reassociates to the network every time it stops.

  4. You mean like this ? by ErrorBase · · Score: 2, Informative
  5. Re:stealth by aXis100 · · Score: 2, Informative

    WiFi and tres dont mux well.

    1) Trees contain water. Water attentuates microwaves really well.

    2) Microwaves have a similar waevlength to leaves - lots of diffraction/

  6. Re:what leads to... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Try again, windows is not a certified OS and is not used for flight critical functions in airplanes. VxWorks, VRTX and QNX are currently the main certified OS's used aboard aircraft. Of course the TV screen support might be run by MS