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Robots to Rid Us of Cockroaches?
unassimilatible writes "It behaves like a cockroach. It smells like a cockroach. It is accepted by other cockroaches. But it is not a cockroach. It is a robot and scientists say its invention is a breakthrough in mankind's struggle to control the animal kingdom. The Sunday Times is reporting on a cool form of robotics, impersonating (inanimalnating?) animals. Leurre is a project on building and controlling mixed societies composed of animals and artificial agents. Within a decade, its inventors believe, it will be leading the unwanted pests out of dark kitchen corners, to where they can be eliminated. Additionally, they say they will soon be using robots to stop sheep jumping off cliffs and to encourage chickens to take exercise. Schematics, tools, and pictures here. Apparently, cockroaches do not wear tinfoil hats, as they are not smart enough to be suspicious of box-shaped circuit boards with an antennae sticking out."
FTA: It is a robot and scientists say its invention is a breakthrough in mankind's struggle to control the animal kingdom.
I would like to see a little drosophila robot lead all of the confounded fruit flies out of my kitchen and into the wild! (although I'm not sure where they'll put the batteries for that one)
If I could control the little robot, I might be tempted to send them right down the drain into my neighbour's place!
I see this as an excellent way to control animals, keep them off of roads and away from harm, but if I have to buy a robot dog to control my real dog, I might just buy a robot dog and leave it at that!
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
...who will rid us of the robots?
New market opportunity:
In this context... the correct word is "antenna", not antennae.
But can it survive a nuclear attack?
no.
score one for mother nature.
-Teiresias
What happens when the robot that vaccums your floor sucks up your cockroach robot? Do they fight to the death?
cleverly disguised as a responsible adult ||
How about "imcreaturating" or "imthingy-ating?"
But then I saw the boxy green things, and it occured to me, if the roaches are fscking stupid enough to accept it as one of their own, they deserve to be exterminated by it.
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
they say they will soon be using robots to stop sheep jumping off cliffs
Or a... fence.
Hokey statistics and ancient misconceptions are no match for a good thought in your head, kid!
Just what we need...fake cockroaches to do a better job annoying us than real ones do...
Mmm...how I love the artificial smell of cockroach in the morning...
They say they will soon be using robots to stop sheep jumping off cliffs and to encourage chickens to take exercise.
First I wish I had an Aibo, now I wanna my Lemming bot!
This roach bot should be called the CyberDyne Systems T-1. The First Terminator, a robot designed to infiltrate a population and eliminate it.
Human models should be available in a few decades.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
"and to encourage chickens to take exercise"
...Please leave the chickens alone, they have enough of a problem running from the farmer when his wife is out of town.
Let's get one thing perfectly clear, I did not vote for George W Bush, and I do not endorse what he does or says.
"
...when these robots are so effective, the male roaches will mount them, and get their little roach members snipped off.
"And then the Cyborgs came."
While I hate the little buggers as much as anyone else - shouldn't we be careful of technology designed to eliminate a creature...cockroaches do eat things and they are eaten by other things. If they die, it will have harmful effects like hurting the food chain. Then again, they are insects and it is really really hard to make an insect species go extinct...
I do like the fact this can be used to do things like teach chickens to exercise (I hate my KFC being fatty), and sheep to jump off cliffs (do they do this? Shouldn't we get them like psycho-therapy?)
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
Guess the roaches will have to get them some dogs to spot those robotic infiltrators...
...news...
Bottom of the main page: "Last Update 20/10/03 14:37"
My big point, though; the site provides specs, images, everything one might need to actually build one; I wonder how complicated it would be..
Informatus Technologicus
And then, soon, the only cockroaches who survive will be those who can tell the difference between a robot and a real roach.
In other words, the smart ones.
Great idea, guys.
How long until cockroaches adapt and stop following the robot? I bet it won't take very long. A cockroach can yield thousands of offspring every year.
See charts for twitter trends on Trendistic
Geez, what an anthropocentric and judeo-christian thing to say.
What doesn't kill you only delays the inevitable
Howabout instead of calling it "inanimalnating-ing..ing" animals, we call it "roboticizing" animals
You have to replace step 5. with "???".
Sigged!
..and it has four legs and barks *woof woof*. ;-)
If there is one that will lead the box elder bugs from my house and yard and take them somewhere else then please, please tell me about it!
Lasers Controlled Games!
It behaves like a cockroach, i bet it don`t. It smells like a cockroach, come on dude. It is accepted by other cockroaches, now you having a laugh, is it allowed to the secret cockroach raves, i don`t think so. But it is not a cockroach, well your right there. Let be honest we don`t want to control the animal kingdom we either want to kill the animal for either food or clothes or such.
welcome our bug-stomping terminator overlords /had to be done......
They could be useful for picking stuff up off of the ground, finding your stash, etc. Kenny P. Visualize Whirled P.'s
Raid®: EMP. Robot Ant and Roach killer.
Put a piece of banana in the bottom of a mason jar, and poke small holes in the lid. They'll find their way in there.
:-)
I'm going to get that jar going right now!
Never thought of that... and yet CHEAPER than a robot!
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
3.5. Develop advanced tinfoil-production methods that reduce costs to 1% of the former foil-making budget, mark up the price of hats 137%
....
and then
8. Lobby Congress to pass legislation granting a legal tinfoil-hat monopoly to prevent piracy of copyrighted hat design
9. Sue cockroaches who buy their tinfoil from "bootleg" foil distributors in Hong Kong or over the internet
10. ???
"Linux doesn't exist. Everyone knows Linux is an unlicensed version of Unix"- Kieren O'Shaughnessy
...so much for the cockroach overlords.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
I'm all for our new robot cockroach overlords, but how about just cleaning your damn house?
Then we can eliminated the cockroaches along with ourselves.
This is my sig.
In Soviet Russia, "I for one welcome..." posts see *you*!
We need robot republicans.
It's not that hard to program, republicans don't believe in moral ambiguity or accountability. So you don't even have to program the fuzzy logic thing.
And make sure to make a Bill Gates Bot. (-;
Microsoft is pure dog-ma. FreeBSD is pure cat-ma.
It smell like a cockroach. It move like a cockroach. But underneath, it's just circuit boards and sensors. It can't be reasoned with, it can't be bargained with...it doesn't feel pity or remorse or fear...
and it absolutely will not stop.
Ever.
Until all cockroaches are dead.
They've outlived almost every other complex organism going, and they're fooled by a silicon box. Cockroaches get what they deserve if they fall for this thing.
"How like you to drag your keyboard to a gun fight." - Aaron Bedard (BANE)
But their robots look like tiny maids
Yes, but do these cockroaches run Linux?
Additionally, they say they will soon be using robots to stop sheep jumping off cliffs [...] I thought sheep were supposed to push back when they are near the edge of a cliff.... oh wait... nevermind
..and if we don't pay off the robot designers they'll lure our kids off, never to be seen again. YAWWWWWWN. Haven't we heard this plot before? No, seriously, the interesting part of this will be to see how quickly cockroaches evolve to counter the robots. And the ensuing arms race twixt nature & engineers will be endlessly amusing.
Actually, I was trying to be Insightful, not Funny.
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=129890 &cid=10832437
"It behaves like a cockroach. It smells like a cockroach. It is accepted by other cockroaches. But it is not a cockroach."
Oh God! I just stomped on my $1,200 Robo-Roach!! Arrrgggghhh!
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Its especially funny that this article is from Australia... the place where they have had more than their share of invading species intended to fix an existing problem.
"I for one welcome our transistor festoned friends".
Seriously, another use for Duct tape.
A/K/A/ household hint #444.
If you lay duct tape around the perimeter of a room before retiring, any cockroaches who attempt to cross will become attached to the aDuct tape and are easily disposed of in the morning.
Now I'm the grandest Tiger in the Jungle!
How do you say "Resistance is futile... You will be assimilated!" in cockroach?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
At first I thought this had to be a joke, because I recently read about an anime in which -- get this -- miniature robots are programmed to kill cockroaches. Of course, the robots in Ichigeki Sacchuu!! Hoi Hoi-san are a bit cuter than these, but it's only a matter of time...
dream of electric sheep?
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
But are there any software bugs?
Imagine a Beowulf cluster...
Robots to Rid of Us Cockroaches?
It has been over a year since this was announced? Bet Brooklyn is filled with them by now, and only NOW do the tell us. Sheesh!
It seems like we have had a robot story every few days recently. Makes me wonder where the robot lobby is getting their money for this advertising campaign.
The best way to get rid of roaches is to get rid of their food and water sources.
This is simply a robotic equivilant of pesticides... you are eliminating a symptom of the problem (Cockroaches) instead of eliminating the actual problem (Food waste, dirty houses).
If you developed little robots to pick up all all those food crumbs and eliminate any spills and puddles, the Cockroaches won't prosper.
I guess in older houses they might still eat wall the wallpaper...
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
So, does it come with a pipe + music so it can hypnotize the other roaches into leaving town with it?
Within a decade, its inventors believe, it will be leading the unwanted pests out of dark kitchen corners, to where they can be eliminated.
Roaches have been evolving for millions of years to avoid predation. This is just another johnny-come-lately predator for the humble roach. Give the roaches a few hundred generations and they'll adapt to it.
And the next one we build.
And so on.
Doesn't change the coolness factor one bit though.
3D Printing Tips and Tricks at Zheng3.com
It's to get away from the shepherds. The sheep push back harder the closer they are to a cliff. They still have their limits, though.
These types of robots will create selective pressure against roaches unable to distinguish robots as unfriendly, be it through olfactory, visual or behavioural means. There will be massive positive selection pressure for cockroaches who know their own.
Interestingly while the robots may be scented with roach smell, this puts the manufacturer in the position of a chemical/behavioural arms race with roaches to produce acceptable robots. My money is on the roaches, since they have been around for several hundred million years.
Well, not yet, anyway. This strategy kills cockroaches that trust these devices. Soon, only those cockroaches that don't trust robots will be left to reproduce. My guess is that it takes less than a year for a cockroach population to become immune to such tricks.
That's cause Franz Kafka's don't post to slashdot.
This was already an X-Files episode. Can't science come up with something original?
So all you need to do is incorperate the technology of the fly-eating-robot, but adapt it to eat cockroaches.
Ugh.
On second thought, I find the idea of a critter that eats roaches to somehow be grosser than the roaches themselves. You'd have that unmistakable cruching sound of the roache's shell coming from the corners of your house as this thing feeds.
Maybe not such a great idea.
The last time I tried "I for one, welcome our new robot overlords" thread it was sh1tc4nn3d by the mods.
Even 4n0nym0u5ly.
go figure.
"It is plausible and realistic to imagine that in five or 10 years time, people with a cockroach infestation will be buying robots to get rid of them," Professor Deneubourg said.
... good idea, but we don't want robots that look like cockroaches to get rid of cockroaches. That's *icky.* It won't sell.
My first thought
What we want is bug-killing robots that look like cute little dolls. Now that's marketable.
I remember the robo-bee, that's been around for years and years. So the concept of robot insects isn't -that- new. But is a robo-roach necessary for just killing them? If you're trying to control roach populations, can't you just feed it something to sterilise the males or females like the kind of sticky, sweet drops you give to small, indoor ants?
I read through the list of articles the site linked to, all they talk about mainly is the interaction between robot creatures and real ones and how to blend it "seamlessly". Maybe I missed the bit about killing off anything, because it sounds more like a way to control how they all behave.
"I'd rather stay here with all the madmen, for I'm quite content they're all as sane as me..." ~ David Bowie
InsBot, which is green, the size of a matchbox and equipped with lasers and a light sensor, was developed by Switzerland's Federal Polytechnic School in Lausanne. When it bumps into a cockroach, it does what they do: it stops moving. The more cockroaches that approach it, the longer it remains stationary.
They almost got it right, but instead of remaining "stationary", the robot should wait until alot of cockroaches are around it, then use its "FRICKEN LASERS" at a reasonable level, in relation to roaches, to kill every roach around it.
Now that would be worth buying!!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
... in his 1974 short story That Thou Art Mindful of Him. At the end of it, rather than being forced to stop making robots altogether, US Robotics moves into making robotic animals designed to support and clean up the ecosystem.
That's not much of a spoiler, BTW, so you have no excuse not to track the story down and read it.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
http://www.thaibugs.com/Articles/roach.html
It also deals with the use of robots
Chris Williams clw7500nc@gmail.com
Y'know, that would explain a lot about this administration....
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
First they came for the cockroaches
and I did not speak out
because I was not a cockroach.
Then they came for the sheep
and I did not speak out
because I was not a sheep.
Then they came for the chickens
and I did not speak out
because I was not a chicken.
Then they came for the humans
and there were only robots left
and none would speak out for me.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Bagpipe music provides a simple solution to the problem of areas being infested by roaches.
Play bagpipe music in area.
Humans are repulsed, moving to what is likely a roach-free area.
Roaches stay in human-free area: if they can survive nuclear winter, there is a good chance that they can survive bagpipes too.
Roaches and humans now live happily in separate places.
I for one, welcome our new cockroach robot overlords...
Is that a sort of cockroach with 6 metal tentacles that is always trying to kill Spiderman?
Actually don't bother poking holes in the lid, seal it up. You'll still be able to "catch" plenty of fruit flies. The fruit flies eggs or larvae are in the banana's skin. Thats where they come from in the first place.
help us get rid of lawyers?
Now, someone correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't an easier way to prevent sheep from jumping off cliffs would be to just get a sheep dog to herd them away from the cliff edge? They have sheep dogs already, and I'm sure it's cheaper than having a robot.
Or, even cheaper would be to build a fence.
Live forever, or die trying.
The server with the pictures seems to be slashdotted.. Can someone put up a mirror please?
Wasn't this in an episode of the X-Files a few years ago?
I knew it! Tyra Banks is a fembot. No actual human could look that good! I look forward to the future decade when actual flesh versions of such are available.
The cockroach robot will lead to the death of all trusting cockroaches.
Distrustful cockroaches will multiply to fill the void.
Then what?
--
Toby
Reese Roach: The 600 series had rubber skin. We spotted them easy. But these are new. They look roach. Sweat, bad breath, everything. Very hard to spot. I had to wait 'til he moved on you before I could zero him.
Sarah Roach: Hey, I'm not stupid, y'know. They can't build anything like that yet.
Reese Roach: No. Not yet. Not for about forty years.
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
Well, you can always count on the minds of the Japanese to already have come up with an anime about bug killing robots....
Ichigeki Sacchuu!! Hoihoi-san (a.k.a. One-Shot Bug Killer!! Interceptor Doll Hoihoi-san)
http://www.tenshi-no-tsubasa.com/
--Chris ^_^
This is old news to us mMagic the Gathering players. We've known about the Robo-Roach for a while now.
Technology, the cause of and solution to all of life's problems.
I mean, cockroaches ARE animals. Right?
So you can trap roaches by using a piece of paper, or by making them use AppleWorks? What is exactly that does it? Do they hop on the keyboard like Archy of "Archy and Mehitabel" forever in a futile attempt to press a Shift-P formating shortcut key?
I used to work for a mosquito control company. While the place was pretty low-tech, we were apparently advanced enough that WHO was looking at us for ideas for THEIR program.
heh.
We keep trying to use chemicals to control animals. The potential for genetic manipulation is much more powerful. Animals rapidly evolve resistance to things that kill them outright. But since male mosquitos don't bite (only females) and breeding and releasing male mosquitos doesn't pose a health risk imagine if we bread mosquitos for the following characteristics and then only released the male varieties (sex could be altered by viruses, as currently happens in nature)
1. Mosquitos which prefer nectar to animals. Couple this with poorer versions of the genes which sense CO2 and heat.
2. Breed mosquitos to avoid the human scent. You could do this by exposing mosquitos to a scent with a food source, and killing those which migrated towards it first. Instead of selling mosquito repellants, breed mosquitos which are naturally repeled by people.
3. Perfect viruses which alter the mosquito's sex, making all mosquitos male. It could be distributed in the same way that BT toxin is currently used, and could be made not to jump species barriers. ( I know of worries with calissa virus etc. but those were mammals. These are cold blooded insects )
4. Use devices to interfere with mosquito's mating communication - chemicals, sounds, etc. Like those bug zappers. They can be targeted to mosquitos sufficiently that they wouldn't hurt people.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
The law of unintended consequences has not been repealed, as far as I know.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
One possibility is to target mice or rats. They're prolific, but being mammals are less so than roaches. Unfortunately, they're pretty damn smart and might be able to foil or avoid these robots (finding particular crannies in the wall it can't reach, for example). Also, from a public relations standpoint, a robot that snuffs fur covered rodents would probably spill enough blood to freak out a homeowner. And if the thing botched the job and only maimed the little guys, you'd be stuck with a thousand grossed out homeowners complaining about mice with partially amputated limbs crawling across their new carpet.
Ironically, one of the best choices might be the pests that act more like robots than any other: ants. The tough part of taking them out is tracing them all the way back to the nest, which might be inside a wall or foundation crack. A robot that could track them inside walls, etc. and then do a quick one shot of poison spray to get the queen would be perfect. Ants may be as prolific as roaches, but the queen is the only fertile one in the nest. Get her and it's "game over, man!"
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
Lisa: "But isn't that a bit shortsited? What happens when we're overrun by lizards?"
Skinner: "No problem. We simply release wave after wave of Chinese needle snakes. They'll wipe out the lizards."
Lisa: "But aren't the snakes even worse?"
Skinner: "Yes, but we're prepared for that. We've lined up a fabulous type of gorilla that thrives on snake meat."
Lisa: "But then we're stuck with gorillas!"
Skinner: "No, that's the beautiful part. When wintertime rolls around, the gorillas simply freeze to death."
----------------
Create a WAP server
I have my own observations about roaches: in apartment buildings they usually live/breed in the elevator shaft, or the garbage disposal system. Dark, warm, and generally dirty enough to feed them. In urban houses, they find their way from the sewer system.
Now, three questions:
1) How will the "Terminator Roach" deal with the vertical dimension (the shaft) and with water and human dejects (the sewer) ?
2) How will a little robot, entering into those breeding grounds and coming out with a bunch of his "friends", help me get rid of cockroaches ? It's like, "Hi, I'm back, I look who I brought: This is Joe, this Ramon, this Betsy, this is Dotty and these are their 252 cousins !"
3) Who did such a bad job with pest control for those guys, that made their research goals what they are ? (don't tell me it's a stepping stone to making robot-chickens)
Quem a paca cara compra, paca cara pagará.
...robots will send a sarah-cockroachonnor killer to avoid sarah's son fight them so hard.
Obligatory link to Google Cache of the web site showing the schematics, etc.
DouglasK Do Justly. Love Mercy. Walk humbly with your God.
What if they do this to lead geeks out of dark basements and into the light, where they can trap us ?
They could control the nerd/geek kingdom! Oh, no! where is my tinfoil hat when I need it!
wake up and hold your nose
it's actually really hard to find a cockroach named sarah connor
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Way too much Phillip K. Dick stuff has been coming true, lately. The future is creepy.
How long until cockroaches adapt and stop following the robot? I bet it won't take very long. A cockroach can yield thousands of offspring every year.
I don't know why people assume evolution comes so quickly. Say there was a robot that looked human and killed every human it came in contact with. Do you think humans would suddenly press the "darwin button" and their children would adapt to the killer robots?
...welcome our new cockroach overlords.
I'll buy one when they polish the floors too.
The geek way is to build a robot, yes. The simple way, use the baking soda and sugar method. Make their tummies explode.
I did that, except for the "dump it outside" part. I left it there instead, and trained a web cam on it. For a while, www.deadflycam.com got thousands of hits a day.
The first rule of Robot Fight Club is, you do not talk about Robot Fight Club.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Not to mention a new AG who wrote memos supporting the torture at Abu Ghraib.
It's more likely that you don't understand why you won. Study after study showed just days before the election that the vast majority of Bush voters believed Bush's policies were 180 degrees from what they actually were on a whole range of issues.
Play Command HQ online
Offtopic? Thank you for getting the joke. If there was ever an appropriate time to use the "I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords" line it would be in this story. You know, the one about robotic cockroaches infiltrating the dark places of the world to rid us of the live cockroaches? So inserting a "robotic" into that line would also be appropriate.
You watch. This roach robot will have its day--yes, it'll kill them for a while. But the roaches will figure out a way to load it with explosives and send it back out against us! So not only will we find roach corpses in our food, the food will blow up in our faces!
We can't win against the roaches!!!!11
Just use the Al Gore model and set the evil bit.
doh who else?
My penguin ate my sig
Bill Gates is a Democrat.
The English language already has a word like this. It's the transitive verb "mimic" (mimicked, mimicking). Please don't make up any more new words, or we shall be forced to send a large brutish person over to your house to shove a copy of Webster's 2nd down your throat.
Thank You
Usage Enforcement Agency,
Large Brutish Person Division
just a test
God spoke to me.
There is already SETI, Scientists for the Ethical Treatment of Insects. They have this neat software that is going to discover Insect Aliens one day.
Why bother leading them out? Just kill the roaches, then eat their bodies for fuel please. There's a good robot.
The saying "when you see one, there's a thousand" is pretty damn accurate. Unless you made to robots replicate too (and anyone who has ever seen any late night sci fi movie knows how bad an idea that would be), you couldn't keep up.
Actually, since cockroachs are so social all you need is a robot to get to where the rest of them are and spray them with a poison/growth inhibitor/birth control. The other roaches will infect the others when they socialize/get eaten by them
Why does mankind need to control the animal kingdom? Do they have something we need? Could someone please explain?
"we're trapped in the belly of this horrible machine and the machine is bleeding to death" - gy!be
You can read more about the Cockroach story on RobotHaven.net at this link.
Somebody mentioned upsetting the balance of nature with these things, inadvertantly killing off higher organisms higher up on the food chain. I have to question that, however-- Exactly what higher organism in the city or average household are we worried about killing off through the destruction of cockroaches??? Now if we were talking a totally uncontrolled dispersal in any and every environment, sure, we have a problem. But the same thing can already said about insectisides. In environments where man has already taken over completely, I really don't see these as a problem. I mean, we've already purposely and willingly reformatted the environment to our design, and in most cases, insects are unwelcome in that design anyway. It's not as if they're going to reproduce ala Screamers and spread wildly.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
"You Robotic Cocka-roaches"
Introducing Microsoft Vacuum 1.0 The first Microsoft product that doesn't suck.
Is this a big problem? I've never heard of it but there could be a lot of reasons for sheep cliff divers. They get drunk with their hoodlum buddies and start showing off, I'm not sure. But when you think about it there aren't a lot of sheep singing It's A Wonderful Life. You stand around eating grass all day, constantly on the alert for predators, then once a year you get man handled by some smelly guy who shaves all your fur off. That's all fine and dandy, then one day you get to go for a ride in the trailer that ends up at the slaughter house and you're nothing but mutton chops after that, baby.
Yeah, I think I'd opt for the cliff myself. At least you've got a chance that way. You could wash up on the island of lost sheep. But I guess that's another movie.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Sarah: (disbelieving) Are you saying it's from the future?
Kyle: One possible future. From your point of view. I don't know tech stuff.
Sarah: Then you're from the future too - is that right?
Kyle: Right.
Sarah: Right. (They struggle together and she bites his hand in her attempt to escape.)
Kyle: Roach Bots don't feel pain. I do. Don't do that again.
Sarah: Just let me go!
Kyle: Listen, and understand! That Roachinator is out there! It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.
comment directly in my journal
So it says a single robot has enough influence to drive a colony into light protection.
I wonder what a handful of these guys could do to a single roach. Maybe have all 6 robo roaches walk out in the clear light and see if the other roach follows. I'm sure you could think of more diabolic schemes.
God spoke with me:
www.geocities.com/James_Sager_PA
God spoke to me.
Am I the only person who thinks the title of the parent sounds waaay too much like porn?
Spelling, grammar, punctuation? We need something that checks logic.
Kid: "Mom, I made this great invention that will make us millions! Millions I'm telling ya!"
* Cruunnnccchhhh! *
Mom: "Got it! Now, Son, what is your invention?"
Kid: "Doh! Ah forget it."
Table-ized A.I.
Give a man a fish, he owes you one fish.
He would owe me (one fish)*(1+i)^n, where i is the interest rate and n is the number of compounding periods. Hopefully the man is incorporated in a state where the usury laws are pretty lenient, and i can be something like 2% compunded weekly.
Sign me up when the first mouse robot is available!
Like a cockroach.
Dear Will, the plums were poisoned. -- Cheese Club
"as they are not smart enough to be suspicious of box-shaped circuit boards with an antennae sticking out."
Neither are we.
It's more likely that you don't understand why you won. Study after study showed just days before the election that the vast majority of Bush voters believed Bush's policies were 180 degrees from what they actually were on a whole range of issues.
OMG the only reason you won is because the voters are DUMB! They shouldn't count! But of course in 2000 you were whining that EVERY VOTE SHOULD COUNT. Of course, you don't care about the stupid and uneducated that vote for your party do you? Would you like to look at inner city voting and see how much THEY actually know about the candidates other than "Moma told me to vote line democrat so I do".
If they can mimic cockroaches maybe they can mimic humans, too. I'm looking for a robotic W for home entertainment purposes.
Simpy
How did roaches get started?
Started by dirty people and
They was nasty, sleazy, sloppy
They house they never clean it
Look at all these roaches
Around me everyday
Need somethin' strong
To make 'em go away
Look at all these roaches
I can't take it no more
Get up at night, turn on the light
And see the floor show
Bobby Jimmy and the Critters
1. Buy a bottle of boric acid powder from your local pharmacy (costs about $2 USD).
2. Mix equal parts of the above with sugar, and add a little water to bind them together into a thick paste. Ideally, it should be thick enough to form balls that can be easily cleaned up later if necessary.
3. Place the paste in dark places where you think roaches congregate. Wait 1-2 weeks for all roaches to disappear.
The boric acid is poisonous to both ants and roaches. The beauty of this poison is that the roaches succumb in their hiding places, where other roaches will eat the remains and also subsequently die. It spreads like a virus!
My mom has used this effectively in Western Africa, and it has worked for me in the Deep South.
Boric acid is, from what I've heard, much less toxic to people and pets than the alternative sprays that must be reapplied every few months.
Actually, the same surveys on the exact same issues from the environment to trade to foreign policy showed that Kerry voters had a very good understanding of their candidate's policies.
Play Command HQ online
Is it a sign of too much internet pron viewing when you read a line like "And then the Cyborgs came." and you think the poster meant it the "naughty" way?
I dislike bugs as much as the other guy, but has anyone taken the time to figure out the ramifications to the ecosystem if the bugs were eradicated? They are there for a reason, if they are eliminated there WILL be repercussions in the food chain somewhere..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Give a man a fire, and you keep him warm for a night.
Set a man on fire, and you keep him warm the rest of his life.
"Unheard of means only it's undreamed of yet,
Impossible means not yet done." ~~ Julia Ecklar
Additionally, they say they will soon be using robots to stop sheep jumping off cliffs and to encourage chickens to take exercise.
Oh, so the chickens will be going on holiday then? That's nice...
"Anyone that has ever gotten an idea based on any of my work and done something better with it-good for you."--J.Carmack
Is it just me? I prefer my chicken to be fat, juicy and soft, either fried or rotiseried. I, for one, do not want my chicken to have bulging hard muscles a la Ahnold. My teeth aren't sharp enough and my jaw muscles are not strong enough for that.
Besides, do we really want to set up weight rooms and gyms for the chickens?
My son and I were thinking along the lines of a robot to fight fire ants. We thought something like a micro-terminator would be cool.
Then we realized that if it was remotely controllable via wireless connection from your computer, with a camera built in, you could virtually fight the fire ants yourself. Instant coolest video game around.
BUT! What if you had a LAN party, and you and friends (or competitors, whatever) had a whole squad or platoon of these guys in the fire ant mound?
If someone does this, they will get filthy rich. (If you do it, I'd like a little credit for the idea, and maybe a tiny %, or maybe a job there. 8^)
The robots can look and work any way you want, so long as on the screen they look and respond like the character you choose (Terminator, Werewolf, Atom Ant, whatever), and they actually kill the ants.
And, of course, if you just wanted the robot to do the work, the computer could run the program for you.
You could use this for any sort of pest - ants, roaches, termites, mice, spiders, snakes, rats, weiner dogs, smug cats, drug dealers, you name it.
I haven't found a new video game I really, really like in well over 10 years, but I would buy Fire Ant Terminator in a heartbeat! And I'd think really hard about springing for the "Vicious Stray Animal Bot", too.
introduce one that acts like a lawyer?
Nah, forget it. There are some things even a robot won't do.
No no no no... U have it all wrong.. omg.. The lil robotic cockroach should like get the other cockroaches to accept it and, when there's like 50 cockroaches all around it, it pulls out a detonator. :-)
Cockroach #1: OMFG its a terrorist!!!
Cockroach #2: Oh nooo A SPY!!!
Cockroach Robot: Hahahahha too late!
BOOOM!!!!!
Roach problem solved!!
...uh, what the hell does that have to do with robot cockroach moses leading the mass suicidal migration of roaches everywhere to raid's door?
Your post is understood, and well pointed out, though as off-topic as a flying cow with a bucket of KFC for a helmet... now I am hungry.
Off-topic, yes. Flaimbait, possibly. Negative Karma-whore? Yeah, that's me.
"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to govern any other" -John Ada
good one
... that this was some sort of thing to rid our corporations of the excess management infestation.
How about keeping your place clean.. giving them nothing to eat.
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insert sig here,here, and here
Yes - they do it to get exercise.
Squirrel!
Let's ask ourselves when human meddling has ever been a good thing in the long run. Each action has a reaction. If we kill the cockroaches, what are we throwing off balance? For instance, killing spiders around your house isn't always a great idea -- the little bastards tend to eat flies, and the other little critters that are in and around your house.
I wonder what we'll be buggering up if we introduce cockroach killing machines? (haha! Unintentional pun!)
The aliens have been impersonating humans for years, in an effort to guide us into doing what they want. This is hardly anything newsworthy.
"InsBot, which is green, the size of a matchbox and equipped with lasers and a light sensor..."
/dr.evil
Cockroaches with frickin lasers on their heads...
-Coach
"Never upset a goalie, getting hit with a blocker is an unpleasent experience - facemask or not." -Me
the super-intelligent roaches will "scorch the sky" in an attempt to keep the robotic cockroaches from using solar energy. The robotic cockroaches will then have to turn the real roaches into "batteries," and create a virtual reality world for them to live in. The roaches will have to await "the One," that roach who is so hyper-intelligent that he can bend the rules of the virtual world with his mind.
While all of this is playing out, I'll just be searching for a very large shoe.
Cockroach generations are very short indeed. They develop immunity to poisons rather quickly (though not so far, as another poster points out, to boric acid). How long does it take for the cockroaches who don't follow little circuit boards with antennae to repopulate the Earth?
Check out the Apostrophe open-source CMS: http://www.apostrophenow.com/
Oh, good. I thought it was going to be the "insect overlord" gag again...
Oh, damn it.
ALRIGHT, THAT'S IT. C'MERE, SLASHDOT.
1) WELCOME INSECT OVERLORDS TO SOVIET RUSSIA
2) ???
3) PROFIT, MOTHERFUCKER!!
Sorry. Got a little worked up, there.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
Cockroaches are disgusting, but they're necessary to the ecosystem. Even in cities, where the natural ecosystem has been reduced towards monoculture by human displacement. We'll have as much success in controling the animal kindom as we have in controling any aspect of nature, since the initial success of the enclosed home: cosmetic successes at the price of catastrophic failures.
--
make install -not war
In this episode Mulder catches a cockroach only to discover it has a metal body. He has the cockroach examined by one Dr. Ivanov at the Massachusetts Institute of Robotics. Dr. Ivanov is truly amazed at the complexity of the robot and speculates that it could be a probe sent by aliens to explore the far reaches of space. They would be perfect, self-sufficient, powered by methane gas.
going by this way of thinking, that would mean someone bigger than us is trying to use them to get rid of us!
Are you considered the infestation in some alien kitchen today? ;-)
Or you could just do what everyone else does and poor gasoline down the anthill.
Sheep may seem quite docile and stupid, but it's all an act. See here.
In fact, I'm wondering how long it'll take the crafty buggers to reprogram the electric sheep to do their own bidding.
"cockbots"?
- someone had to say it
It's Hoihoi-san!
Chris Mattern
Who will get rid of the bugs in the robots' software?
I didn't know that sheep were dumb enough to jump off cliffs without robots to keep them from harm. You know, maybe natural selection is a *good* thing, and maybe we'd be better off with less dumb sheep!
Cockroaches, on the other hand, are too smart already. I want a robot armed with a little laser to hunt them down and kill them, not lead them away.
--LWM
I for one welcome our robot cockroach overlords.
I, for one, welcome our new robotic cockroach overlords.
I mean, seriously... aren't the organic suckers bad enough?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
In the Japanese Manga, Video Game, and Anime, the world is already using tiny little robot girls to eliminate the insect population of the world with giant weapons. And you can dress them up in cute doll clothes!
For a laugh on the subject, lookup the bittorrent for "Ichigeki_Sacchuu!!_Hoihoi-san_OVA_-_01" by Death Squad fansubbers. Anti-Bug robots would sell much better if htey were heavily armed cute dolls!
So, after all, the nightmare of Neo will definitely come true!
Amen.
It's a new robot that is powered by fuel cells that are "roach powered".
Who will rid us of the Governor of California?
When she was in technical college, one of my old girlfriends used to hang out with a couple of our fellow students who lived in a big, dirty, old, run-down apartment block that was absolutely infested with cockroaches.
Well, one day the microwave stopped working. This was a blow to these poor popcorn-fed students. Since they knew what Ohm's Law was and could identify a capacitor from a resistor, they decided to open the microwave up and fix it themselves.
They were not prepared for what they saw: All the open spaces inside the microwave where choked with cockroaches. Some were dead. Some were alive.
Worst of all, some cockroaches were three times larger than any of the openings they could find.
Although it's possible that they grew this big because of the relative safety and ample supply of dead cockroaches for food, I like to think that the radiation addled their DNA somehow.
to my plan for world domination involving hoards of robotic insects! WiiGii!
[signature]
Security! Keep a close watch on that scientist will you. Don't let him get in touch with anyone! Especially time-travelling venture capitalists from the future!
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
From the article:
... becoming inactive in the dark.
The second stage of the 2 million ($3.3 million) program, called Leurre, was to build a robot capable of
I'm not sure if the robotics world is ready for such a stupendous leap forward.
"Robots today have the collective knowledge and wisdom of a cockroach... a retarded cockroach... a lobotomized, retarded cockroach." -Dr. Michio Kaku
mirrors anyone on the pictures site?
Now if they could build a robot to get rid of Fascist, Socialist, and Communists. While bringing me back the spoils of victory.
Wow...the roaches are getting the "Terminator" treatment!
[Not to be confused with Gov. Schwarzenegger is now an Ex-Terminator.]
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
it's a duck.
http://www.animenfo.com/animetitle,1468,ebqyou,ich igeki_satchu.html
I guess this anime was based on real research, or was telling of the real future. In any case, it would be more entertaining to have bugs killed by small robots that look like housemaids, wielding small automatic assault weapons.
This article made me think of a good movie, based on one of Philip K Dick's books, called Screamers, where they initially build underground burrowing attackbots to defend the place, but then the bots evolve to mimic human form. That's when the real trouble starts....
Here's a link to the IMDB entry:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114367/
Visceral Psyche Films
I've always found fire to be a good solution for pest problems. And a lot of other problems.
Now if it weren't for those pesky laws and such.
how do you get rid of the rats? :)
This game, series, anime is utterly brilliant, please check it up. You will love her booties, ties ... and machinegun!