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."

Comments

I just love photoshop...

[Richard N. Bush]

... and After Effects.

OT:Geez.

[Jonah Hex]

That's great. Link to a small site with a bunch of medium mpeg files. Give them no warning. Has slashdot no shame??? Seems like it's become a custom around here to destroy small hobbyist sites. *sigh*

I agree that this might inconvenience many small sites, and in the case of those who (for whatever awful reason) have bandwidth overage charges instead of an auto-cutoff it might even put them in the poor house. However the current /. system works pretty well, especially when a subscriber takes it upon themselves (throwing caution and probably several legalities to the wind) to mirror the content or Google caches the site so we can at least read the text. And for quite some time on the Internet the reality is that any site, on any subject, anywhere geographically, can be /.'ed by MANY different news/aggregator sites if they link to it. And with the high content value on small sites that concentrate on a single subject (esp if it's the original author/design team/etc's site) there is a much higher probablility that it will be selected to be /.'ed by the world at large. Of course hardly anyone at these small sites actually considers that they might get blasted by a "friendly DDOS", and even the ones who think/pray for the attention of a giant like /. probably don't go the extra bit and make sure their sites can either withstand it or fail gracefully (without the aforementioned bandwidth overage charges). Seems to me some of these "build a basic website" primers need to add a section on ALL the various things that can happen to even hobby websites; not only /.'ing but also defacement, etc.

Of course I agree it's a problem, just giving my thoughts on the situation...

Jonah Hex

Re:Standard Bending Unit?

[nomadic]

You know, after all these years you'd think slashdot would have tried to come up with something that wouldn't cripple the web sites they link to, and cost poor unsuspecting people hugely increased bandwidth fees. For a website that always tries to position itself as siding with the independent, pre-commercial spirit of the internet, the Slashdot editors have a really lousy sense of ethics.

Re:Reply From Builder (Colin Mayhew)

[sakusha]

Yep, remember your conservation of momentum, the bot doesn't move when it grabs the car, it should at least absorb part of the kinetic energy and have to push back, or be pulled along with the car a tiny bit. Consider a similar collision on a smaller scale, what would happen if you tried to halt a guy on a bicycle?
And notice the bot casts a shadow but the car doesn't. Totally fake. Also notice all these "tests" are done with a locked-down camera, that's a giveaway of a bad CG producer, anyone with real skills would have used a handheld camera and used move matching.

Re:Standard Bending Unit?

[BLAG-blast]

You know, after all these years you'd think slashdot would have tried to come up with something that wouldn't cripple the web sites they link to, and cost poor unsuspecting people hugely increased bandwidth fees. For a website that always tries to position itself as siding with the independent, pre-commercial spirit of the internet, the Slashdot editors have a really lousy sense of ethics.

Right on!

What makes it even worse is that they have a busines model around fukcing over unsuspecting people. You pay them to see the site before it gets completely crippled (I notice that some times people take down movies and won't put them back up after a slashdotting). Now if it wasn't for the slashdot effect, would so many people pay for slashdot accounts?