Slashdot Mirror
Vehicle for Cockroaches
William Robinson wrote to mention an entertaining Wired news article about vehicle meant for cockroaches. From the article: "Hertz has constructed a three-wheeled robotic vehicle that lets a Madagascan hissing cockroach navigate a room while perched atop a ping-pong ball. The ball works like a computer mouse's track ball. Where the roach moves on the ball, the vehicle moves in the room.
Sensors on the bot can tell when it's going to hit something. It also has a semi-circle of LED lights facing the roach, so when it's about to hit an obstacle an LED will shine on the creature from the direction of the barrier, hopefully causing it to run in the other direction."
Oh wow! This is just like the one reported by G4TV/TechTV, Gizmodo, Engadget, every other blog and website and news outlet AND AND SLASHDOT (Cockroach-Controlled Robot)... SIX WEEKS AGO.
Way to stay on top of things, Wired and Slashdot!
Submitter... Editor... is it that fucking hard to punch the word "roach" into the search field before posting? I mean, the duplicate article is the FIRST FUCKING RESULT.
Instead of brains, the roaches have ganglia: clumps of nerve cells on various parts of their bodies.
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"It was kind of a no-brainer that (Hertz's bot) would be a piece we would include..."
Zing!
This reminds me a little bit of the pigeon guided missile, a project that the noted behaviorist B.F. Skinner worked on during World War II.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigeon_guided_missil
During World War 2, Project Pigeon was American behaviourist B. F. Skinner's attempt to develop a pigeon-guided missile.
The control system involved a lens at the front of the missile projecting an image of the target to a screen inside, while a pigeon trained (by operant conditioning) to recognise the target pecked at it. As long as the pecks remained in the center of the screen, the missile would fly straight, but pecks off-center would cause the screen to tilt, which would then, via a connection to the missile's flight controls, cause the missile to change course.
Although skeptical of the idea, the National Defense Research Committee nevertheless contributed $25,000 to the research. However, Skinner's plans to use pigeons in Pelican missiles was apparently too radical for the military establishment; although he had some success with the training, he could not get his idea taken seriously.