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Cisco Develops Mobile Robots for Wireless Nets
coondoggie writes "Cisco has developed a set of small smart robots, which can act as wireless communications relays, that sense when a mobile user is moving out of service range, and can follow the user to maintain connectivity. According to Dave Buster, product marketing manager for the Cisco Global Government Solutions Group, the robots can follow a user almost anywhere to maintain connectivity. Published reports said the robots were part of Cisco's "Information on the move" initiative — a wide ranging plan to secure all things wireless. Whether or not the systems has an enterprise application, it is of interest to the military and initiatives such as the Army's Future Combat Systems which uses a variety of advanced systems to achieve battleground superiority."
So now when I stalk my ex, I need only disguise myself as a mobile coverage extender robot.
__ Someday, but not this morning, I'll finally learn to use the preview button.
When do I get my own robot?
"To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free" ~ Nineteen Eighty-Four
I don't like the idea of cellular companies tracking my movement.
Sigs are for the weak.
2)Combine with a Roomba.
3)Profit!!!
Get the darn thing to do some usefull work while you surf the web.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
This is a neat step forward, but really only experimentally viable.
k and Cisco: http://cisco.com/en/US/netsol/ns703/netbr0900aecd8 0364a60.html)
The real advacement will be when they can implement their mesh technology with a swam of airborne drones, which automatically place themselves for optimal coverage of a specified area based on throughput and interference avoidance.
I'd give it 10 year, TOPS.
(Cisco's current technologies already support this on a rudimentary level. If you don't know much about wireless mesh networking, here's a wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_mesh_networ
Hard to imagine the military going for a cheap hack like Wifi when they have the resources for a proper satellite comms system. And this roving relay thing just looks like a cheap toy to me. Maybe OK for shopping centres but not the sort of thing you want to waste your time digging out of sand dunes in Iraq.
Take out the wifi bit and you are left with an autonomous rover/UAV which is interesting but not really ciscos job. Looks like a bad fit to me.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
"the robots can follow a user almost anywhere to maintain connectivity" But can they follow you up a step? More important, will they stop if you go down a flight of steps. ... I don't even want to think about being followed into the bathroom to maintain my wireless access.
Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature.
I, for one, welcome our mobile coverage extender robot overlords.
Am I the only one who sees "Homeland Security" written all over a lot of inventions lately?
SIG: TAKE OFF EVERY 'CAPTAIN'!!
My grandfather was in WWII, and he had to run phone lines/communications out onto the battlefield and back... using a robot is way less life-threatening!
stuff |
There's a free Power Card in it for everybody that buys from Dave Buster, so even if your WiFi goes out you can have fun!
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
All I need now is a creepy robot following me and my laptop to the bathroom.
R2D2 they call him....
Where are you going Dave? Dave? You're moving out of range Dave. I'm following you Dave. Dave, I'm concerned that you continue to move out of range. Here, let me help you stop moving by BREAKING YOUR FUCKING LEGS. There, now you're in range again Dave. Good Dave.
Life needs more saving throws.
Just strap a wifi relay to Ceiling Cat.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
...it is of interest to the military and initiatives such as the Army's Future Combat Systems which uses a variety of advanced systems to achieve battleground superiority...
I fully realize that communication up the line, is just as important as coming home. But I would think that a Bad-Guy/Gal in a spider hole with an RPG would be more intriguing.
"A man with a Bow an Arrow, can hold up an entire Tank Column. If he is at the right time, and right place." - Jerry Pournelle
Sounds like great fun for hacking contests. You can capture the robots using some wireless technology or old skewl grab and run ;-)
I doubt any company or agency would invest in something like this to follow people around. Major citys already have full coverage and its easy to track almost anyone. But as a military option this is perfect as you can have a chain of UAV one connecting with the next and maintaining at all times communication on the field. Instead of a giant satelite phone - smaller, lighter options can be used on the field. Alot of options become available with tech like this.
Satellite bandwidth is scarce. Only really high priority users or missions are going to get an allocated satellite freq. More common are local-unit radio networks. Think of a tank squadron (battalion). They have separate troops (companies) maneuvering over an area of several kilometers. The adjacent unit or the Brigade command post is another several klicks distant on top of that. Most of the tanks' radios are of limited range; so a dynamically moving repeater (perhaps on an airborne drone) would be very valuable to allow a tank to communicate back to the Bde CP.
How about a cell company having a drone circle a major metro area during major sporting events or along a highway during a hurricane evacuation. As the mob of people move to or from the center or along a highway, the drone could calculate where it was needed most in order to supplement the local tower infrastructure. That way, it could help the local network from being saturated and collapsing.
The capability to sense the network connectivity is the smallest challenge of little robots that follow you everywhere you go. The computation power and algorithm complexity of robots that move on their own requires problably too much hardware to fit it in a small cube (whatever the reason is that they chose a cube to move around), not to mention that the algorithms that dictate the movement of independent UGV and UAV is still under heavy research in a very large variety of aspects. So I don't know what the article or the related links are really talking about (couldn't really find any technical detail or photo) but I really much doubt that CISCO actually engineer "small, mobile robots".
Maybe is that I got it wrong and you actually have to pull the robot with a cord...
This is another traffic-building blog spam. It's from another blog. None of these "articles" have a link to anything that looks like a real source, or a picture. No Cisco press release mentions this. But all these blogs have plenty of ads.
I think this is a garbled description of one of the academic "swarming robot" projects, many of which have WiFi gear on board. Those have been around for a while, and there was an article about them in IEEE Trans. on Automation and Robotics this month. It's not a Cisco product, and it's probably not even a Cisco research effort.
...welcome our new robot overlords.
is Dave Buster? You gotta be kidding... Must have had a terrible time in school...
if they put this in a small blimp that followed me around I think for non covert ops it might work out better.
-Ours is the wisdom of Solomon, the magic of Merlyn, the fall of Icaris.