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?
They should use a red tractor trailer to build Optimus Prime.
The things you can do with photoshop...
Holy crap! It's a Motoslave!
RadicalBender.com
... 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.
Actually he's Bumblebee's British cousin, Nigel. (He visited Cybertron during the short-lived Transformers sitcom.)
For something claiming to be "the fastest Web server ever". It certainly doesn't seem to be standing up to a slashdotting very well.
Now THAT is a toy!!
I'll take a dozen!
server on the cooper engine.
MORE HORSEPOWER!!
I would hate to be the other robot when this thing makes it to battle bots.
...er, I mean /.-ed...
Clearly, this is an unacceptable use of an automobile.
Laws are for people with no friends.
Watch the "Battery Test" video, if that isn't CGI then I'm a monkey's uncle.
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.
I wonder if perhaps that's a sign that the small hobbyist sites are the only ones doing "cool" stuff anymore.
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.
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.
...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
I was lucky enough to get the actual article a second later, too -- link
$ echo "ceci n'est pas une pipe" | sed -Ee 's/(eci n|pas )//g'
Of course I agree it's a problem, just giving my thoughts on the situation...
Jonah Hex
Horror & SciFi Erotic Nudes
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.
Free advertising here on Slashdot.
Cheers
VikingBrad
Actually, the personal website of the author has a cleaned up, and significantly larger, version available here.
The ______ Agenda
managed to mirror it here.
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.
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
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