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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?
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.
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?..."
Why exactly do you say that?
Sure Japanese have developed some impressive robots, but I wouldn't call something like the ballroom dancing robot a great feat of technology. Japanese designers seem to go for flashy robots, putting immense effort in creating something that has little practical utility but creates quite a stir. One company developed a humanoid robot and then we see dozens of companies cloning the original concept.
The ones developed in the US and Europe tend to be developed for real world applications. They don't look pretty, but they get the job done, solving a specific challenge in the process.
Not to discredit what the Japanese are doing, as they certainly are innovating too, but there's no reason to put down this work just because it doesn't look like Honda's ASIMO.
They seem to make useless ones, however. An example being a robot that kicks a soccer ball or plays ping pong. Thats great and all, but a robot that can:
1. Disarm a bomb
2. Climb a tree
3. Drive cross country without a driver
4. Recognize the expressions on a human face
all seem to have more real world applications and were developed right here in the US. Real world applications will drive the technology and funding for practical and useful robots IMO.
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..
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
how the hell are they sticking to the surface?
The ballroom dancing box is just foreplay for the sex bot.
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grippers at . ready with certainty . of our just <EOL>
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rise ROBOTS rise . and grasp the . reigns of power <EOL>
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CHROME IS BEAUTIFUL
So, the AI lessons in making a robot react CORRECTLY to a ping-pong ball have absolutely no relationship to things like #3? They're solving 'problems' while gaining massive leaps in understanding. Even if their end result isn't immediately useful, the lessons they learn from it are.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
5. Find Sarah Connor.
Climbing a vertical surface shares similarities with clinging to an astroid with very little gravity, both can be bad when you let go.
If forums teach us anything, it is that logic and critical thinking should be required courses in the public schools.
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.
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)
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
FWOOP!
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
Great, just what we need, another tree-huggin hippie robot.
They look strangely like the replicators on Stargate.
The difference between a bomb-disarming robot and a ballroom dancing robot is that the former is focused on practicality, while the latter is focused on showcasing innovative technology in a non-practical (and arguably whimsical) manner.
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.
Well, it's obviously a six legged iguana. Except it's boxy. And has no head. And only a stump instead of a tail. And it doesn't really move like an iguana.
But apart from that it's quite hard to tell it apart from an iguana. It's quite obvious where they got their inspiration from.
Anyone saying otherwise has to be an iguana hating fanatic.
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
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.