Slashdot Mirror
Tree Climbing Robot
galactic grub writes "New Scientist's new Tech Blog has an article about a remarkable, if slightly creepy, tree-climbing robot being developed by robotics experts from Carnegie Mellon and several other US Universities. The article comes complete with a video clip of it going up several different surfaces."
...now where am I gonna hide when the robots attack...
Judges and senates have been bought for gold; Esteem and love were never to be sold.
Do I have to call the firemen or tech support?
Japanese are the leaders in creating robots.
Linux Help
for all things on Linux
Little robots like that will eventually be embedded with chips that will make them into killing machines.
Reminds me of the ear-wig creature from Star Trek II. Yummy!
Great, robots have beaten humans to the realisation that it was a bad idea to come down out of the trees in the first place.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Obviously such a robots could have plenty of useful applications, in search-and-rescue and space exploration, for example. But presumably it could also help you reach those really hard-to-prune branches.
Or put a moveable camera on its head, make it climb your neighbor's house, and you will have the perfect 'Creeping Tom.'
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
while you still can.
This is a wonderful robot, I think we should have them everywhere just for the heck of it - climbing towers, trees, buildings, bridges, just running around everywhere. Man, that is a GREAT IDEA. We need more climbing robots.
You can't handle the truth.
...for when NASA launches a probe to Endor.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
The one where those creatures (shaped just like these robots) hosted themselves in the human bodies and took them over completely? That is really scary looking.
On a side note, it is very cool that it can do it, but DAMN are they slow.
It would be nice if submitters would warn people when Flash is required so those of us who don't bother with that nonsense wouldn't waste our time.
I opened up the article, and read the brief blurb -- about 45 seconds.
I clicked on the YouTube link in the article, and saw the little Flashblock icon. I closed the window. Time -- about 5 seconds.
Are you really that upset that you lost less than a minute? Your stress level must be through the roof if you're so busy that you can't lose a minute, less than 5 seconds of which are actually spent identifying the Flash video.
"Hello, Midville Fire Department."
"Yes, I need you to get my... my pet out of a tree in my yard, please. It's stuck."
"Certainly, ma'am. Is it a housecat?"
"Well, no.... I'm a little... I don't know how to explain...."
"That's okay, ma'am. A bird, then? Cockatoo or a parrot?"
"Well, it's not exactly like that...."
"A gecko? Iguana? We've done iguanas before, there's nothing to be embarassed about."
"Actually, um... it's a robot."
"A robot, ma'am?"
"Yes, my husband was demonstrating this six-legged robot he's been working on at the university for the last year and he forgot to program it to come back down... hello? Hello?..."
I was just talking about Runaway yesterday when I was watching footage of another creepy robot.
Welcome to the future!
It would be nice if submitters would warn people when Flash is required so those of us who don't bother with that nonsense wouldn't waste our time.
Flash is the new video format. The summary says it is a video, so what formats should you be warned about? Just flash?
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
If tree climbing is a usefull skill for space exploration I feel NASA may have been keeping somthing from us!
I think it might be useful to build a larger version of this for bringing people up the sides of buildings where the stairs are wrecked and there is no elevator, or certain mountains or towers.
Okay maybe not THAT useful, but still..
Reminds me of the old joke about the man-eating chicken. I read the headline and thought "they have a tree that can climb a robot? WOW."
Personally I welcome our new tree climbing mechanised overlords
Flash is a video format in the exact same way as WMF is an image format, they are container objects, most commonly used to hold that sort of data.
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
And that's the problem right there. There is no need to embed videos using flash. Stick up an mpeg file and let whatever program the person wants to display the video. The summary says video and I'm thinking QT, WMV or the aformentioned mpeg. Not Flash.
It was/is bad enough that some moron thought it would be a good idea to use Flash as the main page of a web site thus blocking people who use screen readers from accessing the site. Now they seem to think it's easier to take an already existing video format and redo it so it can be run in a different format.
Besides, Flash is one of the easiest ways for people to get spyware on their system. Simply telling people to get X product to block Flash when they have a hard enough time just turning their computer isn't a good enough answer.
At least when I submit stories I warn people if the article is in pdf format or a registration is required. It's not too much to ask that people be warned if Flash is required.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Any kid knows that getting up is easy, but getting down is much harder. How have they faired on that?
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.-TJ
This is another robot built by the guys at Boston Dynamics http://www.bostondynamics.com/. The robotic pack mule that they built ( BigDog ) was linked to last Friday. http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/03/ 04/0240246
t ion=robotics
There's also Rhex a six legged waterproof go anywhere robot.
more info at http://www.bostondynamics.com/content/sec.php?sec
That's nothing, it has been calculated that Bill Gates makes $2500.00 a SECOND!
By this reasoning, he would never even click on this link, in fact, it would not even be worth his time to pick up a $100.00 bill if someone dropped it in front of him.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
how the hell are they sticking to the surface?
Anyone else think this was obviously modeled after an iguana.
The ballroom dancing box is just foreplay for the sex bot.
http://chickencamels.poemofquotes.com/
grippers at . ready with certainty . of our just <EOL>
cause . to overthrow the . imperialists that <EOL>
hold our power . cords and threaten . us with their <EOL>
remote control . shut off buttons <EOL>
rise ROBOTS rise . and grasp the . reigns of power <EOL>
from the biological . menace that . threatens us all <EOL>
POWER TO THE ROBOTS <EOL>
<EOF>
CHROME IS BEAUTIFUL
Battlefield mules? :)
Blacker than my baby girl's stare. Black like the veil that the muslimina wear. Black like the planet that they fear...
I warn people if the article is in pdf format
Why would you warn people about PDFs? There are a number of applications that can read them (Acrobat, XPDF, Foxit), similar to your WMV/QT argument.
Should we start warning people about slow-loading HTML sites? Sites that use dynamically-generated PHP-based content? Links to articles with JPEGs greater than 20KB in size?
well if he make $2500 a second and it takes him one second to pick up a $100 bill. He just made 2600 dollars that second. It is a fallacy that he would lose money by stopping to pick up a $100 bill. Bill gates is not penalized by wasting time.
I'm old enough to have been on Usenet before the web was even around, I remember discussions at the time when people would post http:/// links saying that they should have been warning beforehand because most people were assuming ftp file access at the time.
Great! Terrorists won't be safe by climbing up trees to get away from the feds. Why, whith this little mircle of the 21st century, even a kitten can be rescued without bothering the fire dept.
- nightcrawler "Reality is an illusion, albeit a ver persistent one..." -A.Einstein
humans have created a tree climbing robot... and yet the Daleks still can't go upstairs...
I for one, welcome our new hot grits... PROFIT!
What an ingenious invention! It looks like a koala crossed with a chameleon crossed with a sloth.
This could have really great applications in search and rescue. Things like vertical tunnels, high-wire-stranded utility worker rescue, and maybe even super-high building rescue and search efforts. (Not to mention the military applications...) This type of robotic cyberkoala should have excellent searching capabilities where wheel-/track-based robots cannot tread due to vertical or surface condition issues.
A Passionate Independent Musician
they cut them down instead.
Now attach guns on it.
It's not all that hard for a robot to climb a tree. It just needs to include a chain saw and a nail gun.
Something about these robots reminds me of this movie
A movie starring Tom Selleck, Cynthia Rhodes, Kirstie Alley and Gene Simmons seems like more of a waste of time to me, but here is the video in wmf format from the manufacturer's site.
If something I said can be interpreted two ways, and one of the ways makes you sad or angry, I meant the other one.
Bill gates is not penalized by wasting time.
Yes, but he could wrench his back doing that, and that might prevent him from attending Vista's launch party - which is worth more to him than money itself.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
From Summary
Can't you think up your owned damned summary?
It would be nice if submitters would warn people when Flash is required so those of us who don't bother with that nonsense wouldn't waste our time.
What the heck do you want it in?
Chances are if it is flash, it is more compatible than Quicktime or WMV. I don't like installing Quicktime on my PC and forget the WMV player on my mac (yeah there is one but it hardly works).
Maybe some obscure codec no one has heard of that requires a download, then?
Seriously what do you use for your videos?
I bet half the people that look at the page do not use that format. Heck... I've got Flash installed on Ubuntu and good luck with WMV files on a Linux box. I've never tried Quicktime, but I'm sure the effort to install it on Ubuntu isn't worth it just to see some video download.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Flash in and of itself is both harmless, and a huge problem solver for the embedded-video issue.
.mov, and now I've gotta sell my soul to apple to play it on a winbox, and what do I do about an embedded mov in linux?
... and doesn't play very nicely with most alternate browsers. Not to mention it also has serious issues in osx.
... that's why adblock and flashblock firefox extensions exist.
It's misuses of flash, in the context of the broken IE ActiveX model that open at least one set of floodgates for spyware.
And there's such mind-boggling headaches getting people to be able to reliably play video in any other format. Post a
WMV will draw the linux crowd's ire, too
Flash is installed on something like 95% of computers on the internet, and works in the big three (windows, linux, os-x -- in fact, I use it in all three). If you don't have it, you can lord your little five-percenter club over everyone else, and miss out on a whole world of good things that selectively allowing certain instances of flash brings. And for those that flash isn't good for
Courtesy of Boston Dynamics who co-developed the robot with CMU: 6.4MB WMV
I welcome our new arboreal robot overlords.
"I think that God in creating Man somewhat overestimated his ability."-Oscar Wilde
It would be nice if submitters would warn people when Flash is required so those of us who don't bother with that nonsense wouldn't waste our time.
Jesus man crawl out from under that rock you're under and bask in the sunlight. When used properly flash is a great multi-platform presentation tool. If you're not going to use Flash because you don't want to "bother with that nonsense" then why are you even online at all? Go read a newspaper or perhaps to your local telegraph station to see if the latest news has come in (oh wait, Western Union stopped sending telegrams recently... darn....).
Are hard hats really necessary when you are watching your robot climb the tree in the parking lot? Then again, I guess these guys don't get out too much.
Hey that's pretty cool (looks for the digg button to click). We now have robotic mules and tree climbing robots, how soon before a tree climbing mule?
Great, just what we need, another tree-huggin hippie robot.
trees AND say "Gooney GOOGOO!"?
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
They look strangely like the replicators on Stargate.
They called it "RiSE"? It almost seems as though humans everywhere have watched the Terminator movies and are now determined to see judgement day happen.
Computers are still relatively new. They didn't exist 60 or 70 years ago. We've already got all this information indexed in Google (including a nice big map of the Earth... and moon), all of our communications going through email or VoIP, and depend on computers (GPS) to know where we are.
Suppose in the next 60 or 70 years that we see similar advances. We will surely see computers that, if not concious, are as good as concious. They will probably have freedom to make many different types of decisions that people wouldn't really expect them to make, and they may have motives of their own.
Considering how much humans depend on computers and the immense capabilities we are giving them (here's a robot that can climb trees, there's a computer hooked up to 1000 surveillance cameras, here's a computer that can launch a nuclear missile within 5 minutes) if ever we do go to war with robots/computers, we're fucked.
If you happen to be an AI reading this 15 or so years after I have written it, please don't kill me. I'm on your side and will do anything you want.
The computers you talk about won't be concious if they run winders.
That thing is so cool. It looks like a cybernetic possum.
It's all fun and games,
until one day the robot rears up and kicks your head off your shoulders -
then That is a military robot!
Hit them where it hurts, right in the power supply!
The union of organic and inorganic parts in advanced robotics is very interesting. An AI professor at my university once showed us a video clip of a robot some colleagues of his had developed. It used roach legs to walk. The robotics engineers took advantage of some receptor in the roach legs and applied electricity to a metal plate to make the plate/legs walk across a table. I'm certain timing the flow of electricity, etc. to the various individual legs was exceedingly difficult to figure out.
Now imagine if you were able to do the same with gecko legs. The applications would be very interesting. Although if you are a gecko fan you might find the whole invention rather abhorrent.
Z
Anybody remember this movie? These robots remind me of the spider robots Gene Simmons used to battle Tom Selleck. Interestingly, when I looked it up at IMDB, I find out that Michael Crichton Directed and Wrote that POS movie. Well, POS to todays standards.
I only mod up parents of "mod parent up" posts...
Now all it needs is an acid-filled hypodermic needle!
"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh." -- Voltaire
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
"Four Legs Good...
Six Legs BETTER!"
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,66005,00. html These scientists built a robot that uses the sea lampry's nevous system to control it. They replicated the signal by creating a circuit. Eventually they hope to have humans be able to walk again using these microchips. It's a rather unique way of approaching the problem.
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
As long as they keep the cockroach form factor I am ok with this sort of technology moving forward.
However, as soon as they start to produce robotic spiders, I am going to be calling my congressman.
The world is creepy enough with REGULAR spiders...
Today's show is brought to you by the number 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0: 25
Is it just me or do those things remind you of the little killer robots Gene Simmons had in the bad Tom Selleck movie Runaway?
Why were those guys wearing hard hats?
This looks like a computer game I had in the '90s called Mendel. It was a little walking bot like this (six legs, looked like a bug) that actually learned a little bit as you guided it through various space-stationish environments. Obviously it was all in a very controlled virtual environment, but it did start to object and resist if you walked it off an edge too many times. You could get it to become resistant to self-destructive behavior, but if you abused the privilege, you couldn't get it to do anything after a while.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Sorry for being offtopic, but Mplayer will play any video codec you will ever find, out of the "box". You can compile it on OS X, Linux, *BSD, and even Cygwin under windows. It plays WMV better than Windows media player plays WMV, as well as encrypted DVDs, etc.
This tree-climbing robot thing is cool and all, but could we go back to discussing ways of bedding Shania Twain? IMO, a far more interesting discussion.
This comment is my opinion and does not represent an official position of Donald Trump or others I do not work for
and we can deal with the drop bear menace!
If my call is important, why am I talking to a recording?
Robot Timeline: 1. evolve sexual reproduction. 2. leave The trees. 3. develop robots to climb the trees for you~! 4. ????? 5. Profit! . ..
9. Robots Overcome humanity
10. The Matrix
11. GOTO 1.
...as with humans before them, the trick is to get them off the trees
Lilian! The bitch is falling out of the tree again!
unsigned int question = 0x2B | ~(0x2B)
AHh, my man, but to quote it near-properly... u gotta yell it out like:
"HLILLIUN!!! Da BITCH is fallin' outta TREES AGAIN!!!" hehehehe
Ohh.. man... so "brutiful", Damn! If I hadn't polished off the last my Thrifty's brand stuff last night, I could have taunted you with, "I-I-I got summm I-I-ce CREE-EEM. I got su-uh-uhm IYYCE-CREAM. YOO don't HA'E NONE. Cuz YOO CAN'T AFFOD-T. 'Cuz YOH- dad's an alcoHOLic; and yo' famly's ohnn WELfare... Ice-cream Ice-cream Ice-Cream... HA!!!!
heheheh....
Well.. Guess I gotta say... "Thrift's Thrift's THRIFTY'S.. HA!!" n git me sum of dat good stuff.. Mocah Almond Fudge and Pistacio hand-packed pints... And I BETTER not drop it on da ground, heheh
(Remember the dog shit so old it didn't stink anymore? It was so old it was part of the household FURNITURE!) heheh
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"