Slashdot Mirror
Antarctic Robots Exceed Expectations.
scrondle writes "Robots deployed by the U.S. Army Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory outperformed expectations. Scientists involved in the research believe they may be poised to do the first robotic traversal of Antarctica."
There - I just exceeded my own expectations!
I heard they put the project on ice after the government froze the funding.
what will be finished first, the traversal or Windows Vista?
Have the found the Ancient's antarctic base yet?
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
Don't everyone comment all at once!
Yes, the robots are growing quickly. Perhaps too quickly...
local denizens brushing off the solar panels, otherwise they'd be long covered by dust.
Geez, how many dupes of this story do we need?
Clones are people two.
For Antarctica, I think an OS with a penguin would be the most suitable.
That's nice, but can't work about 4 months out of 12
You just got troll'd!
Just watch out for the polar bears.
If you ever travel to Antarctica and think you see a polar bear, one of three things are actually happening:
1) One of your friends have put on a costume to scare you.
2) You joined the wrong expedition, the one going to the Arctic (think North Pole) instead of the one going south.
3) You're hallucinating
Take your pick what's the most likely.
Terje
"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"
If you ever get around to recreating Hoth Battle, I'm stowing away on a Rebel cruiser. Preferably the first one, because I get to see an Imperial Star Destroyer accellerating out of position after having been completely disabled by an ion blast. Come to think of it, it might be cool to be the one that pulled the trigger on that one.
Always going forward, 'cause we can't find reverse.
"March of the Penguins II: Rise of the Machines."
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Just make sure when you write the optical scanning software you account for lifeforms protecting themselves from the cold hiding inside the gutted carcass of a seal or, say, a taun taun.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
There is more information at the project website.
My website has already been on the front page of slashdot, so I'm not really kharma whoring, but yes, we do run Linux there. I got back last months from 12 months in Antarctica, spending the winter at the new station of Concordia on the high Antarctic Plateau where we had temperatures of -78C (no, not including the windchill). I was doing atmosphere science there, in charge of 8 experiments as part of a team of 13 people. I had something like 10 PCs with me, many of whom died at one point or another, due to the high altitude, exposure to cold when the power goes out, or overheating due to thin dry air (not good for cooling).
And to answer your question, yes we run Linux for some of the acquisition systems. I hate XP for the 'call home' reason. If you need to reinstall a PC there, it sucks as there's no Internet connection and getting a satellite comm up is expensive and very unreliable. On the other hand you cannot do 'emerge world' either...Non-Linux Penguins ?
Satellite photography shows a truly impressive mountain range at approximately 76 degrees 15 minutes Latitude by 113 degrees 10 minutes East Longitude. My team wishes to secure deep-level specimens of Antarctic rock and soil using our new drilling apparatus, and we feel that these mountains are of particular interest, as a previous expedition had found some singular pre-Cambrian formations, seemingly of a fossil, vegetal nature, perhaps worthy of further study.
Miskatonic University, however, has a rather small budget for this sort of affair. One of these robotic devices could be an ideal conveyance for our drilling apparatus, well within the University's budget, and could greatly aid -- could, in fact, be -- our expedition, save only that these mountains are maddeningly high.
How, then, shall our robot ascend to these heights? If only there were some sort of underground passage or tunnel affording access to the mountainous plateau...but natural processes could not carve out such a thing. Still, photographs have revealed what look to be tunnel entrances out among the foothills. But it must be a mere phantasm, an illusion created by strange geometries, for as I said, nature cannot have created any such thing.
i'd hit it so hard, if you pulled me out you'd be the king of britain [bash.org]