Slashdot Mirror
Build a Robot out of a Car?
SomeRobotGuy writes "A researcher in the U.K. is in the process of building an autonomous biped robot out of a Mini Cooper r50. Its functions are controlled by six computers running RTLinux and it's powered by an internal combustion engine. And the thing's not tiny, at over 10 feet tall! The site includes videos showing some impressive results."
Now it just needs a loudspeaker and a recording of "BITE MY SHINY METAL ASS!"
They could have picked any transformer and they pick BUMBLEBEE?
I dub him Bumblebee...
"Stumble before you crawl"
Did this spark anyone else off to reminisce about transformers? "Autobots, Transform and roll out!"
Using GNU/Linux - Windows-free zone
They should use a red tractor trailer to build Optimus Prime.
The things you can do with photoshop...
More than meets the eye!
Holy crap! It's a Motoslave!
RadicalBender.com
Holy shit, it's Bumblebee! ~swoon~
... and After Effects.
The site is well camouflaged to make it seem real. The CG work is well done. It wouldn't suprise me if this is a site created by MINI. They have a long history of non-traditional advertising. They have put a MINI in the stands at a Giants Baseball game. They put them into Malls on a platform with coin slots saying $16,995 in quaters for a ride.
There best known one was putting the MINI on the roof of a Chevy Suburban and driving it arround San Francisco.
It was also recently revealed that the Weekly World News article with BatBoy Stealing a MINI was a planted article by MINI USA.
Optimus Prime would be so call. Autobots Transform! Roll Out!
Best Community for Gaming and Gadgets!
Fifteen comments and the server appears to have bit the dust.
Slashdot should come up with some automatic link-cacheing system or something...
free speach
Did you mean: free speech
For something claiming to be "the fastest Web server ever". It certainly doesn't seem to be standing up to a slashdotting very well.
Seems like it's become a custom around here to destroy small hobbyist sites. *sigh*
From what I got to see of it, it is truly awesome! The amount of work this guy has put into this project is just amazing. Makes me realize even more how much I want to get into the field of robotics.
Now THAT is a toy!!
I'll take a dozen!
My God!... It`s Bumblebee!!
I will work to elevate you, just enough to bring you down
It would be way cooler if it was a transforming robot.
/. effect has taken over, none of the pictures can be seen now. Does anybody have a mirror site by chance?
-- johntracy.com, because everybody else is wrong.
server on the cooper engine.
MORE HORSEPOWER!!
I would hate to be the other robot when this thing makes it to battle bots.
That server just got a healthy DDOS /. bodyslam.
...er, I mean /.-ed...
Clearly, this is an unacceptable use of an automobile.
Laws are for people with no friends.
wage their battle to destroy the evil forces of the decepticons!!
Brkljacic -- dosen't that sound line the 'transforming' sound????
HA!
This thing looks like a cross between a Gundam and Robocop. I think that Jesse James should have built this on Monster Garage. OK. Now what does it REALLY do?
Seriously though, this is by far the coolest robot I have ever seen in my life. Look at the stop test. That is something that I would be excited to see in a movie, moving in real life.
If this is hoax I am going to be so pissed.
Bad idea here, no not creating a robot out of a mini. No the bad idea was creating something that resembled a transformer and not hosting it on a well configured webserver on high end hardware with lots of bandwidth. See what happens is slashdot gets wind of such a thing, and with many geeks having fond memories of transformers, the next thing you know the fire chief wants to have a word with the CTO. Bad idea.
I could be wrong but shouldn't the topic be, "Build a Robot out of a Car"? Seriously people, Fridays no longer an excuse for these errors.
a beowulf cluster of these puppies!
i wonder if it would qualify for the Darpa competition. I think it would be an interesting twist if it did.
30% Troll, 50% Underrated, 10% Interesting
Score:5, Troll
Watch the "Battery Test" video, if that isn't CGI then I'm a monkey's uncle.
The site is well camouflaged to make it seem real. The CG work is well done. It wouldn't suprise me if this is a site created by MINI. They have a long history of non-traditional advertising. They have put a MINI in the stands at a Giants Baseball game. They put them into Malls on a platform with coin slots saying $16,995 in quaters for a ride.
There best known one was putting the MINI on the roof of a Chevy Suburban and driving it arround San Francisco.
It was also recently revealed that the Weekly World News article with BatBoy Stealing a MINI was a planted article by MINI USA
Take an F-15 and turn it into Starscream.
Or, optionally, find a thirty-foot-long alien ray gun and turn it into Shockwave.
Don't forget Unicron!
The world can be wrong today for once.
While this is some cool CG it really doesn't mean that his hoster needs a DDOS attack on port 80. I mean really.
Just take a look at the photos - clearly this is fake, done with CG. Look at the tires on the wheels - it's like they didn't even try.
Just don't give away any secrets in the process of bragging...
There is nothing but fluff on that site. The "sketches" have the stink of marketing all over them. Now, whenever I see a Mini Cooper, I'll be reminded of their pathetic "me too" attempt to get some attention. At least Honda's Cog ad actually entailed some technological brilliance and real work to make happen. All this does is raise the question of where the line should be drawn when it comes to making false claims of research and development in order to get free advertising. Isn't that illegal? What's the difference between what Mini is doing and what we'd think of a drug company that fabricated a bunch of bogus "technology" to imply that it had a cure for cancer for the purpose of getting free advertising?
Yeah, I guess I don't like the feeling of being duped by a marketing department.
Note to self: If I ever make a web server, don't put advertisements for it on "Error 503: Server Broke" page.
I think the DARPA team did this, it's the Hummer thingy. And I said this in the DARPA thread, the DARPA "contest" is a sham, there is only one vehicle that can win, and it seems to be funded by guess what? Defese contractors. Suprise.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
My car is already a robot, isn't it?
Six computers in a Cooper Mini? Hell, they'd never fit. This must be fake.
Red Green already did this with a K-Car. And a few rolls of duct tape.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
when they called it KITT. All they need now is a couple of LEDs on the front of the car and William Daniels in the trunk.
The /. effect got to the page before I did... But I wonder if the robot looks something like this:
m pg
http://home.comcast.net/~themichaelsmith/VWHiRes.
Homme petit d'homme petit, s'attend, n'avale
Here's the image on the one page I could access. Below it was the text:
$ echo "ceci n'est pas une pipe" | sed -Ee 's/(eci n|pas )//g'
I think that the mini coopers are fake. I have never seen anyone really get out of one, they are spys for uncle sams blue blooded kin and seek to control world by stealling all the parking spaces .5 at a time..
Jeoin
No way man! A BattleMech is way cooler than any fruity ass robot that transforms into a refridgerator. Put a .50 cal on it, some recoilless rockets, maybe a laser or two and send it out looking for Osama bin laden.
Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
...it were real. This is basically a less cool version of the VW bug transformer video, which can be found here (sorry about the format). The creator of the video has an interview here, though the original site is down.
I'm surprised this slipped through, editors.
webpage
Welcome our new autonomous automotive overlords...
"This is Zombo Com, and welcome to you who have come to Zombo Com" - www.zombo.com
if so then it explains why the website is missing.
...Of a good Mini Cooper. *sigh*
That's a lot of LEGO Mindstorms kits!
Of course I agree it's a problem, just giving my thoughts on the situation...
Jonah Hex
Horror & SciFi Erotic Nudes
Of watching way to much Junkyard Wars... I wanna see this bad boy compete in any robot competition... the intimidation value alone should insure victory...
Genda
Michael, Timothy, Cliff, CowboyDumb et al,
"Editors" EDIT stories for grammar, syntax and facts.
That's why they get the moniker "Editors".
I just came across a reply from the creator regarding its authenicty on Google Groups:
From: Chris S. (123@123.com)
Subject: Re: Robot built from a Mini Cooper?
View: Complete Thread (9 articles)
Original Format
Newsgroups: comp.robotics.misc
Date: 2004-03-11 13:08:35 PST
I'm not so sure. I really want to believe this thing's for real, but I
have some serious doubts. Here's the response I got from Colin Mayhew,
the robot's inventor:
Colin Mayhew wrote:
>I can assure you that the Cooper project is a real and
>very tangible one. Your suspicion is perhaps
>understandable because the leaps we've made are rather
>significant compared to the current state of
>commercial AI. As Mr. Clarke wrote in Technology and
>the Future, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is
>indistinguishable from magic." What's important to
>remember in this famous quotation is not that the
>technology becomes magic, but rather that technology
>seems magical only to those who don't understand the
>details or are not knowledgeable of the history of a
>technology's development. It's for that reason that
>I've placed notes online and have included videos from
>different stages of the project. Have you seen videos
>of people interacting with the Kismet robot? That
>robot uses a fairly simple emotional model, yet people
>bond to it and treat it as a 'living' creature! It has
>become something magical from bits of aluminum and
>electrons whizzing inside silicon. Your experiences in
>the research sector I'm sure have shown you how
>disconnected the public can be from the realities of
>technology. There are autonomous machines (be they in
>medicine or oil well drilling) so removed from our
>daily lives that when we finally learn of them, we are
>shocked and amazed---far more so than had we followed
>the gradual steps and wrong turns the engineers made
>developing and finessing the technology. This project
>is real, and it, and the systems I've developed for it
>are going to change the way we live our lives. The
>most recent software revision I've tested on the robot
>has some powerful reasoning capabilities, a large step
>more powerful and versatile than that employed on the
>robot when I recorded the videos you may have seen
>online. They are perhaps powerful enough to seem like
>magic, but both devil and the angel of creativity are
>in the details. Soon enough, these little creatures
>will be animating the robots all around us and making
>our lives safer and more fulfilling.
>
>Regards,
>Colin
>
>
> --- "Chris S." wrote: > Is your
>Mini Cooper powered robotic biped a real
>
>>project? Your site
>>seems detailed enough, but the videos look
>>suspiciously like computer
>>generations. Either way, it's an entertaining feat.
>>
>>Sincerely,
>>Chris S.
Take it for what you will. I just can't believe someone built something like that essentially alone in just a few years. It just does too much and it moves too fluidily. For instance watch the video where it stops a run-away Car.
'He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher... or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.' - Douglas Adams
Robots are bad mmmmkay...
kids you hear me? I said robots are bad mmmkay.
They can step on you and stuff mmmkay
part of the monster truck show is a transformer, and they've been doing it for years. it's not quite as good as the mini, but it's the same concept.
Robotics 101. It is not a robot unless it can dance.
The shadows tell all. FAKE, now why the hell hasn't the article description been modified?
10. Your neighbours respect you
9. Women talk to you, so as to get to know the Robot better.
8. Doubles the number of friends you have in the world.
7. It can be programmed to make slashdot first posts
6. It will protect you when you get a job in India
5. It can be programmed to seek and spank spammers.
4. It will take you home when you are too drunk to walk.
3. It has two friends in Mars
2. It does your homework
1. It will become the next governor of California
Indefinitely Detained US Citizen
at least have the sense to attach it as a reply to a lame attempt at first post at the top.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
The saddest thing is, one day someone will do something like this for real, and they will now be ignored because of this site's pathetic editorial lameness.
/., or F. O.
Live up to the hype
Interestingly, r50rd.COM was also registered this time at NetSol in Jan. '04 by the same David Mayhew who registered the UK domain.
Just thought I'd share. I must say if it is a hoax... that's some pretty darn nice CG. If real, WOW... give me MY 10ft robot slave already!
'He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher... or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.' - Douglas Adams
What could the significance of the Doors be?
Wouldn't the robot be much more functional (based on the generally known 'Mech specs) without car-doors attached to it's hands?
Car doors attached to the hands might be useful to give it more credibility as actually having been built "from an automobile". I'm not sure what the value of that could be other than the wow/marketing factor.
Hmmm, marketing from a car maker maybe...?
Regardless, I can't help but think that my Aibo could take this thing in a battle royal.
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
It's a little tiny web site, with one picture (and a note that he almost didn't want to show it because it would show his "secrets") and a few videos that are supposedly taken from this robot's head cameras.
Yea okay.
I think that if this were legit, there would be more then a little cheezy web page and no other documentation. If the guy really wanted to service the public with his "traffic" bot then he wouldn't be so secretive about it anyways..
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
Someone spent a decent amount of time on this if fake.
IMPORTANT NOTE: The last update of this site is in 1999 if that is to be believed. I suppose it's either the real last modified date along with a real Doc Mayhew or it is another part of the hoax. Thoughts?
'He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher... or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.' - Douglas Adams
Check the timestamp... it was one of the first 20 posts on the subject. Mod down one of the other posts that just copied its content instead.
Free advertising here on Slashdot.
Cheers
VikingBrad
I don't mean to reply to myself, but the site looks to be coded in Frontpage 3 when looking at the source. That sounds about right for this time frame. Again, either a very detailed hoax or a damn cool robot and a very smart guy.
'He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher... or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.' - Douglas Adams
Redundant?
"The Only Druid"'s post has the same time as "TapTapTheChisler"'s, and the post number is only one higher; i.e., they were posted at nearly the same time.
How could he/she have possibly known about the other post?
Give the guy/gal a break.
Metamods mod the "Redundant" mod unfair.
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
Is there no karma whore willing to sacrifice a bit of their soul for a link to a friggin mirror!?
No encryption can withstand the power of the Lucky Guess.
Actually, the personal website of the author has a cleaned up, and significantly larger, version available here.
The ______ Agenda
http://webhome.idirect.com/~tk421/music.htm
I saw this cool ass music video by Pato Fu on WorldLink TV, "Made in Japan" and this cooper thing reminds me of it. This is a damn cool video, tune to linktv and see it sometime.
Is load it up with guns and get paid for ridding the world of house liao's forces!
The original generic sig.
Must be a French hosting company...
The only reason he would have for not wanting any secrets about its operation to get out is if he was intending to apply for a patent, but hadn't yet. Once the patent application is filed, he's in the clear... he's free (and in fact obligated) to show anyone how it works because he's the holder of patent.
Now if he had this device actually working already, I can't think of a single reason that he wouldn't have applied for a patent before even *TRYING* to find some investors, let alone actually advertising its capabilities on a publically viewable website. A person with the resources to build something like this in the first place definitely has the resources to go through the hassle of filing for and obtaining a patent without any outside help.
Conclusion? The robot is fake. If it were real, he would have no reason to be as secretive about how it works while simultaneously having set up a web site that practically advertises the darn thing.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Gah, you gotta be kidding me. Back when I was playing MW2: Mercenaries, the most godlike mech I ever used was a DC Urbanmech named Lucifer. (yes, the beer-keg on legs)
It had maxed out jump-jets, twelve medium lasers, and maxed heat sinks. Its only other weapon was a machinegun in the head with one ton of ammo, for taking out Elementals and such.
All the lasers were in either the left or right torso, where those arms would shield all of the hits. All the beams would fire at the same time, and hit the same place.
There is nothing like oneshotting an Atlas. Period. Especially when you horizontal-jet in a la Gundam to do so with a glorified beam-saber.
And being in an UrbanMech, I was always ignored until big things started dying.
Don't tell me that it was cheap, I know it was.
(12*6=72 damage, way more than any PPC)
The thing does have a "publicity stunt" look to it, however. What's with the tires?
"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro" -- HST
yeah, I'm gonna have to go with those guys shouting "CGI!!!"
/.ed movies, but the image just screams "fake!!! CGI!!! Somebody made me on a computer!!!"
It doesnt seem like the joints on the hips would be capable of supporting the weight of a Cooper Mini.
Also, somebody up there mentioned those door panels on his arms, wtf is up with those? How is it supposed to be able to pick anything up?
I haven't been able to view the
Oh yeah, and the way he talks about the coopers being "overbuilt, and suitable for robotic applications" sounds like a quote from a moonlighting marketguru
68.3% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
It's not even a good design. Notice that locations which need big actuators, like hip joints, show no sign of them.
It's quite possible to build a legged robot out of auto parts. Mark Pauline of SRL built a 12-foot high walking quadruped in the 1980s. I've seen it work, and have visited his shop. Nice piece of work. The control system was all time-delay relays and R/C gear. No computers.
Think about this: It took Honda years, and millions of dollars to create the ASIMO robot, which does nothing compared to what this one did stopping the car, and unscrewing the bolt from the wheel (robot arm dexterity test). ASIMO was also created by a huge team of mechanics, scientists, and programmers. This guy actually wants us to believe that he 1. built the thing, 2. programmed all the fast, complex motions, and 3. built it out of a cooper? bullshit. I dont even think that with the weight of the car applied to the motors the thing was using, that they could have as much torque and speed as they did. This may have been more believable if he made a more official looking website, and faked some press activity. I mean if it were real, this would have been all over the news by now, doing demonstrations and everything.
managed to mirror it here.
Am I the only one visualising this thing gaining sentience through a errant electrical storm, and then deciding to crash through the walls of a certain Lindon, Utah compound? Its well known that all artificial creatures invariably turn to evil and decide to kill their creators, ala Frankenstein.
Pleasant dreams Darl!
Alright, now all we need is a VF-1!
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. --Will
but this one is real!
http://www.aardvark.co.nz/pjet/cruise.shtml
"I am Heisenborg. You will probably be assimilated"
Have you guys heard of "Stealth Marketing"? 60 Minutes covered it a few months back, but basically, imagine this scenario.
You're walking down times square, and a pretty couple with exotic accents, who look and act like tourists asks you to take their photo. They hand you their digital camera. You notice it's one you've never seen or heard of before, so you snap the photo, and then ask about it, and they proceed to tell you how cool this camera is.
You've just been 'Stealth Marketed' -- the tourists are fake, actors hired to stand in Times Square asking people to take their photo.
You're sitting in Starbucks and you see a guy playing a cool game on his laptop. Pretty soon, he's letting you try the game and you're hooked. Turns out he's also an actor hired to sit in the coffee shop and get people to try the game.
This looks to me like a Stealth Marketing campaign diliberately directed at the Slashdot crowd. Note the post came from "SomeRobotGuy", who, I'll bet, is also in on this gag.
The server was supposed to get slashdotted to hell and not work properly, as that lends an air of credibility to the hack.
You're all part of a campaign directed at people like us who read Slashdot, ArsTechnica, HardOCP, and Wired. Chances are this site will make the rounds on all the hardcore tech sites, and if it makes a few people consider buying a Mini-Cooper, then the Stealth Marketing guys have done their job.
Believe me, this won't be the last time you're "hacked" by Marketing types who are getting more clever about how to direct an advertising campaign at you without you even realising you're being advertised to.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
If anyone reading this is serious about an opportunity to integrate automation into a new field (excuse the unintended pun) contact me. I also have a similar idea for the collection of geophysical data. This is truly a wide open area.
-cp-
Alaska Bugs Sweat Gold Nuggets
Plus, the car's front end dips, just like happens when you break, before the robot even touches the car.
Totally unrelated, but the weirdest thing is that I dreamt about riding around in a Mini Cooper with a crazy cab driver that eventually took us climbing down a mountain to a smoky english pub for some dinner. It was very surreal.
A 1500 lb anything is not going to be particularly quiet when it's moving... heck, I have a cat that makes more noise than that thing does.
This is about as real as a 9 dollar bill.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Of course, I'd love to be wrong (I hope I am, I'd love to see such a robot out and about working), but until we get some independent, trustworthy verification I'll take this cum grano salis (...with a grain of salt.)
The difference in shadow casting between the two objects, when they are both at roughly the same location, is so dramatic that it could not possibly be anything but a hoax.
I had a really long post that I was going to type about disproving the "robot stopping the jeep" through some ideal physics calculations, but my computer locked up on me (and I was lacking an initial velocity value for the Jeep). However, if anyone's a Physics guru and wants to give it a go, I compiled some initial data for it:
Weight of Jeep: ~1800kg.
Weight of Robot (assuming it's still about the same weight as the car it was made from): ~1483kg.
Coefficient of Friction for Car on pavement:
Coefficient of Friction for robot on pavement: ???
(Anyone know the M
Time before stop: ~1.5sec
So what we'd really need is the coeff. of Kinetic Friction for metal on pavement, the initial velocity of the Jeep, and... can't think of anything else. We could then figure out the force, under ideal conditions, that the robot must have been under. My wager is that the force would be significant. But the light difference, as shown in the video linked to above, is proof enough I think. I'll believe the Robot story when I physically touch the thing.
-Vendal Thornheart
The RX-8 Transformer
"His physical prowess and confident attitude ensure his place at the forefront in the battle against evil and second rate automobiles"
What do the autobots think second-rate automobiles are?
Vivin Suresh Paliath
http://vivin.net
I like
Some 186 posts into the game, we have quite a bit of scepticism here. The website being registered to an ad agency, the poor quality lighting and physics in the (obviously) CG movies, and the fake slashdot effect have all been noted.
However (and I hope the editors read this) many of the readers of slashdot do not read the comments. That includes journalists looking to slashdot for scoops. Please stop this in its tracks. Post a correction on the front page.
Oh no. You're in on it aren't you? How much did they pay you? Well, we all have to earn a living somehow.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Simple scaling laws that should be known by any engineer tell why bipeds of that size are not a good idea to begin with.
With increasing size the time constant of motion changes (froude number) making larger robots inherently slower. Also other laws indicate that the influence of gravition grows larger, make the robot difficult to control and prone to damage.
There are reasons why nature has not created bipeds of that size.
Finally a robot that really deserves its name given the lame stories about Robotcop (tiny peace of "please-laugh-at-me" crap) and that strange house-guarding "dragon"-thing (even smaller and not really frightening) lately.
We all have these dreams about 'Mechs, haven't we?
Another poster has put up a mirror, though nobody seems to have noticed the original comment.
The mirror is available here.
The page doesn't load animations properly in Opera, and relies upon Quicktime to display the Mpegs. It might work in Mozilla, but it might not.
And again, adulations aplenty to xWh3lPx for the mirror.
The ______ Agenda
... would be if this was real.
Even just a cursory glance at the site reveals it as a hoax - aside from the obvious (but still quite well done) CG "photos", the stuff this guy is claiming to have achieved on his own is way OTT.
Look at the time and resources poured into Sony and Honda's bipedal robot projects - this guy is claiming, singlehandedly, to have gone way above and beyond both of those.
I think most likely this is a rather elaborate advert for mini. Shame. But hey, it's still a cool idea, and maybe someday something like this will be done for real.
Curiosity was framed. Ignorance killed the cat.
Folks who run real sites want the hits, but
when slashdot (or Google) points at a hobby site,
they have a responsibility to set up their own site as a caching proxy, and link the proxy, so as not to kill the target. After the rush, switch to a re-direct and
it will sort itself out over time.
Of course, that would cost slashdot big bucks,
and slow down slashdot... on second throught
lets nuke those hobby sites real good.
Sorry, but that site is dead and gone. Taken down by the Internetequivalent of a nuclear overpressure.
The moral of the story is that if you want to advertise something, don't mention it to any of your techie staff.
The wrath of slashdot is mighty indeed.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
It's a bit bizarre that you can't see any webpages, but you can still download the movie files using direct links.
I am amazed by the number of /.ers who where sucked in by this. I had one look at the pic on the link and said fake!
... so on and soforth... and a hell of a lot of custom parts.
The pic simply look CG. Its probaby the texturing and/or shadows as some have noted further down.
Even if you did't notice that the crappy CG, why the hell would somebody make a mech/bot out of a mini. Even if you want to use parts from vehicles, you probably cannot use all parts of a single make/model of car. You will probably end up using a engine of one car, some drivetrain parts of another make/model
sheesh.. its common sense.
-AC
Yeah, it was all a marketing ploy. But fact is, it was prety darn creative, well-executed, and mildly successful. I say hats off to Mini's marketing department. Certainly more entertaining than the "Hot Pockets" jingle on TV.
Why is everyone calling it a "Mini Cooper", instead of "Cooper Mini" like the UK originals used to be called? "Cooper" is the name of the guy who designed it -- this is not a smaller version of *him*, and there is no "Normal-Sized Cooper".
You don't call it an Escort Ford, or a Testarossa Ferrari, so why the hell would you call this a Mini Cooper?
"When I smile, I have a mouth full of teeth; when I frown, I'm not even here."
definately something to consider...
I haven't read anything from Hasbro yet, but this looks like it could be an Alternators Bumblebee. It is yellow, and it does have the little horns. Volkswagen won't license their New Beetle for a new Bumblebee because some kind of anti-weapon stance, so I would think the second choice for a little yellow retro would be the new Mini. Mazda is doing some silmilar marketing with Hasbro and their RX-8
I'm surprised how fast all the flaws with the video were exposed by readers here. How did Linus's Law go again... "With enough eyeballs, all fakery is shallow"...?
......you have 10 seconds to comply!
Oh, for Christ's sake.
Scum-sucking moderators.
You forgot one major important thing. The robot is stopping the car by catching the grill of the car initially, then adding a grab to the top of the windscreen.
If we accept the calculation of deceleration vs gravitation, we see that the full weight of the car is being held for 1.5 seconds on the front grill and the windscreen. And it hardly looks like the robot has any grip on the windscreen. I'd calculate out the per square feet force, but it would be easier to do another thought experiment. Assuming the robot's hand has 2 square feet of coverage, try standing the total weight of the jeep on its front on a cinder block. What would happen?
All of this is a bit academic as the video is obviously fake for more than just physics reasons. Who would create the most advanced mechanical automation system known to man and glue door panels to the side? Why go to all of the trouble to make the most efficient energy transfer methodology but waste it powering the shoulder wheels? I know he's supposed to be a mad scientist, but how mad do you have to be to stick wheels on your shoulders? For that matter, who cleans this mad scientist's evil lair? For an autorobotics research laboratory, it's spotless.
The ______ Agenda
I saw the site before it appeared on Slashdot*, and the links were already foobar.
*having followed links via BoingBoing.net, which I came to from here anyway I think..some dude showing of some "fancy" gadgets..
1. Go to http://web.archive.org
n /
0 2/dmayhew.html for some of David Mayhew's stuff.
2. Use the Wayback Machine to look at
a) http://uk.geocities.com/colinmayhewphd
b) http://www.r50rd.co.uk/research/internal/v2i/engi
And oh what a surprise. Neither website is listed which means they are only a few months old. (The Wayback Machine only caches sites older than "a few months" according to the front page).
3) Do a whois search on www.r50rd.co.uk and lo and behold we find:
" Relevant Dates:
Registered on: 15-Jan-2004
Renewal Date: 15-Jan-2006"
So the site is only a few months old for sure. No, I don't think there is a chance that this guy suddenly decided to set up a website and put loads of 4 year old movies and broken links to pictures on it.
There's no way I'm buying a VW now. I shall tell all my friends not to as well. Don't mess with engineers. Damned arts students.
Oh, and the guy who did the animation went to Bournemouth University in the UK.
See http://ncca.bournemouth.ac.uk/newhome/alumni/ba20
Nice CG dude!
In classic open source fashion...
I suggest a standalone proggie (or browser java app, mozilla plugin, etc) that downloads/serves Slashdot content and linked pages a-la bittorrent. The more concurrent views an article gets, the faster the download. Slashdot hosts a simple XML file that points to the site as a seed, the first viewers actually hit the site, and subsequently share the content as long as the site is up. No outside content is hosted on Slashdot itself, servers aren't inundated, and Slashdotters get mad fast downloads...
just my $0.02....
More than likely the page has been copied repeatedly by several machines along the way.
Since this is the way the Internet works permission to copy is implicitely granted once someone makes the page available on a public server.
Sorry, but Taco is just blowing shit about copyright issues. I think they just don't want to pay the cost of mirroring. It would cut into the profits and who wants that, right?
Debunking the "59 Deceits"