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Caltech and JPL Build 50ft Robot
OctaneZ writes "NASA announced that they will enter, in cooperation with Caltech, a 50ft robot in the Rose Bowl Parade - unfortunately it will be made entirely of flowers and will not attempt to enslave the crowd. However, they have mounted a camera to it, which will allow you to view the parade from the top of their creation."
I for one welcome our flowered robot overlords.
That's one big pusher robot!
Or is it a shover?
Disconnect and self-destruct, one bullet at a time.
How do you know it won't enslave the crowd? I personally find flowers scary (they remind me of going outside).
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Someone tell Optimus - there's a new competitor in the garden!
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Wow . . .almost as depressing as a Great Old One in Ribbons.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
I, for one, don't.
Man is a slave because freedom is difficult, whereas slavery is easy.
It won't enslave anybody? I guess that means it doesn't qualify for welcomable-overlord status....
....Right?!
But at least they'll get a short-tempered, socially inept 14-year-old kid to pilot it, right?
Anyone see any real pictures of the thing? There is a sketch on the floatcam page, but I want to see the real thing.
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I fail to see how anything "made entirely of flowers" could possibly qualify as a robot, unless we've made great advances in DNA-based computing and animating plants.
Or did someone maybe mean it would be covered in flowers?
That was the joke. Oh well, try to have a little fun...
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I imagine the look on the robot's face will be similar to the look my dog gets when my wife puts him in a Christmas sweater or when he has one of those stupid bows on his head from the groomers
Who the heck is running the show at NASA these days, Martha Stewart?
Having done so much with so little for so long, I now can do anything with nothing at all.
it will be made entirely of flowers and will not attempt to enslave the crowd
Well then it's not nerd news! Let me know when the enslaving starts, not the allergies.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
Gah! They got it all wrong! It was suposed to be 60 feet tall and have Gundanium armor, not Geranium Armor!
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
"Your tax dollars at work."
Hmm, no, that doesn't cut it.
"Your tax dollars at play."
"Your tax dollars on parade."
Dunno.
Anyway, it was probably a lot cheaper to build than most things they lob up into space, so I won't fret.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
CalTech has a history of antics wrt the Rose Bowl/Parade. Do a google search of "caltech rose bowl" and read all about them.
It's GIGANTOR!!!! Someone get the remote!!!!
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
I wonder if this will inspire FASA's next brainchild... Mechwarrior 5: Flowering Fafnirs
Even blind squirrels find nuts now and then.
famous last words...
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Do you have stairs in your house?
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
This just seems a little too much like pandering to some sort of anachronistic
humanoid-shaped-robots = space = the-future
right out of the 1950's. I'm guessing some baby boomers might think it's amusing, but most kids will sort of scratch their heads and think, "but... it doesn't DO anything!"
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
It's attack of the 50ft robot!
This puts 'flaming metrosexual' into a whole new light, eh?
unfortunately it will be made entirely of flowers and will not attempt to enslave the crowd. However, they have mounted a camera to it, which will allow you to view the parade from the top of their creation.
Just another damn peaceful robot!
But but they still can at least mount an additional 100mW green laser and try to blind nearby flying airplanes!
Eh, why not. They ruined Fat Albert already, why can't they ruin Voltron along with it.
the tournament of roses parade pre-dates and is independent of the rose bowl football game.
Just a little nitpick. The Pasadena Tournament of Roses is colloquially called the "Rose Parade." The Rose Bowl started about a decade after the parade itself.
It's not the "Rose Bowl Parade", damnit. It's the "Tournament of Roses Parade". The parade was started decades before the football game became a standard part of Pasadena's New Years Day celebration. It would be far more accurate to call the game the Tournament of Roses football game than the other way around.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
Damn it ... I first read that as 500 ft, now I'm disappointed. :(
This thing eats medicine for fuel.
And when it grabs you in its flowery metal claws, you can't escape. Because they're made of metal and flowers.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
then I realized they had mounted a camera on the thing, thus ensuring a level of "legitimacy" to the geekness of the project.
Diplomacy is the art of saying, "Nice doggie!" until you can find a rock.
If only the Aztecs had these fighting machines for their flower wars.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
I, for one, welcome are NON-enslaving flower covered robot overlords.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"and here comes the Caltech robot, made entirely of trifid blossoms..aggghhhh!!!!"
(if you don't get it, follow this link.. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0055894/ )
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
How is this flamebait?
Cal Poly Pomona started the tradition of entering a Rose Parade when both SLO and Pomona were still a unified entity. I'm sure it would not be unreasonable for Caltech to ask details about how some things are done with regards to how the Tournament of Roses wants floats to be.
You gotta wonder if that robot is going to hold up a HUSKIES sign.
It would be a great way to even the score.
-ch
They'd managed to build 50ft rose-robot just for stupid parade and after that NASA tell us they can't afford a new safe space shuttle?!
Oh, please!!
Next time they will build some flying reindeer-robots for Santa or walking apple-pie-robots for Mothers Day!!
Nice budget planning!
It must be a female. If it's a female then... ...it's a 50 Foot Women!!!!
If they name it Jennifer, Bill Clinton will have to restrained.
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"NASA announced that they will enter, in cooperation with Caltech, a 50ft robot in the Rose Bowl Parade - unfortunately it will be made entirely of flowers
It looks like a giant flower covered robot Barney. It will induce nausea and vomiting as it sings Disney's "It's a Small World After All" along the entire parade route.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
They're using Realplayer to stream. The enslaving has already begun.
Poppies are good for individual enslavement, and for highlighting the plight of the poor Afghani drug lords that we liberated.
...But I digress. TREMBLE PUNY HUMANS!ONE DAY MY SPECIES WILL DESTROY YOU ALL!
[EOM]
--- Ban humanity.
Maybe there's an army of steel magnolia robots in some warehouse in Pasadena, just waiting for their decoy to draw everyone to one place long enough to unleash their fury.
Let me just be the first to say,
I, for one, welcome our new Botanical Robot Overlords!
I also object to the stereotyping of robots as "automatons".
... Fifty-foot-high robot controlled by flowers, you say?
Sounds almost like something a certain Bob the Angry Flower would be behind. And if he's behind it, it'll definitely try to enslave humanity. Until he gets bored, of course...
Hooray!
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Will Smith (after destoying rebel NS-5 robot):
- Somehow "I told you so" just doesn't quite say it.
It goes out the door, it goes 'round the block
we pay hundreds of bucks to put up with this crock
It goes up, it goes down, it goes all around town
it's a long line after allllllll.
It's a long line after all, it's a long line after all, it's a long, long line!
Our crowning moment was getting escorted out of line for singing that little ditty by the Disney cops. I'd like to tell you they rousted us but in reality they were extremely polite and good natured, armed only with walkie talkies and little mouse ear badges. We walked out with our hands on our heads and they were like, "That's not really necessary." Unfortunately before the days camcorders were conveniently portable, because that was a classic. Back when even corporations had a sense of humor.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Why not two feet like normal robots?
-- Mace only makes me hornier.
Unless there's a 50-foot robot made of antihystamines following right behind it...
You must think in Russian.
Where is The Tick when we need him?
Spoon!
Bite my shiny daffodil ass!
It finally works.
They can't even get the food supply to the ISS under control, let alone build a new launch vehicle. But they put resources into PR stunts like this. There's way too much "outreach" (read PR) at NASA. They need to close about half their centers, cut 80% of the PR operation, and focus on their core activity - putting stuff in space.
If Disney or Speilberg or Burger King wanted to pay for this, that's fine. But it's a misuse of Government funds for NASA to be doing it. I want to find out what line item in NASA's budget request covers this.
Did anyone else think of One Must Fall 2097/Battlegrounds when they read that headline? Although I think the OMF robots were 90ft :)
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Caltech and JPL Build 50ft Robot
unfortunately it will be made entirely of flowers and will not attempt to enslave the crowd
Damnit, Slashdot! Stop toying with my emotions!
If your theory is different from practice, then your theory is wrong.
whatever.
Yes, but the flash photography set them awry to begin with...
Caltech is providing all of the funds for this. Caltech's parade funds are probably coming from things like student tuition and alumni donations.
Honestly, the only connection NASA has to this is that NASA funds the JPL, and some JPL employees probably decided to spend some of their spare time on the float.
Alan Boyle's Cosmic Log has a picture grabbed from the video stream, showing the robot before the flowers have been put on.
I work at JPL. I'm happy that JPL/Caltech is entering the parade, but I'm not thrilled about the design of the float. I would have preferred it look more like a NASA robot (e.g. Mars Exploration Rover) rather than a transformer toy from the 80's. But the floatcam is an excellent idea!
'Oh Yoshimi, they don't believe me, but you won't let those robots eat me...' /The Flaming Lips.
Move along. (Never got the video here, been trying since 8AM...)
The sad thing is they probably put 10x as much effort into this as into the international space station...