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Smart Robot Capable of Hunting For Its Own "Food"
coondoggie writes "Ok, maybe this is getting a little too close to bringing Terminator-like robots to life. For starters, eco-friendly engine builder Cyclone Power this week inked a contract from Robotic Technologies, Inc. (RTI) to develop what it calls a beta biomass engine system that will be the heart of RTI's Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot (EATR). The purpose of EATR is to develop and demonstrate an autonomous robotic platform able to perform long-range, long-endurance missions without the need for manual or conventional re-fueling — in other words it needs to 'eat.' According to researchers, the EATR system gets its energy by foraging, or what the firms describe as 'engaging in biologically-inspired, organism-like, energy-harvesting behavior which is the equivalent of eating. It can find, ingest, and extract energy from biomass in the environment as well as use conventional and alternative fuels (such as gasoline, heavy fuel, kerosene, diesel, propane, coal, cooking oil, and solar) when suitable.'"
We can only hope they don't team up with the Multi-Robot Pursuit System project to "search for and detect a non-cooperative human."
No, too-Terminator-like would be if it said, "You are not Sarah Connor. But I am a bit peckish...."
may just have a point.
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do we have until they become self-aware? 2-3 years? Maybe this "economic downturn" is really Skynet "puberty"
Not like terminator more like The Matrix.
If the robot can't find oil based fuel it can just shoot a few humans with the turret, cut them into little chunks with the chainsaw and stuff them into the Biomass Generator.
So this thing can forage for biomass, which means it is not that picky...why can't we put this in our cars for fuel (ala Mr. Fusion - Back To the Future II)
I do not support "The Man". I also do not support your irrational stupidity
I have visions of the energizer bunny as a mutant omnivore.
It just keeps going, and going, and going.....
Please don't give these abominations the ability to make replicas of themselves!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Limit the robots to a six foot power cord.
Well, obviously, all they need to do is invent a Mr Fusion! That should give them enough jiggawatts to run their precious doomsday machines =)
We can't even safely do an autonomous robot lawn mower that won't grind up the neighbor's cat.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Great. This thing will siphon your fuel tank, and if that fails, threaten to eat your cat unless you hand over the charge card for the local service station.
What will it do when it figures out WE are biomass?
Why, without your clothes, you're naked, Miss Dudley!
Piss on Network World and their splash screen.
here's the story: http://www.robotictechnologyinc.com/index.php/EATR
1 in 4 Maine children in struggle with hunger.
...from back in 2001 was UWE's Slugbot, which was supposed to 'live off the land' by finding and digesting agricultural pests:
http://www.wired.com/gadgets/miscellaneous/news/2001/10/47156
A stone throw away from being classified as a zombie, besides the indestructible body and ability to calculate complex algorithms faster than you or I. Now, not only do I have to stock my artillery with 12-gauge shot guns, but also high powered magnets!? But it'll be a cold day in Hell when I'm taking for means of "consumption"...
Mothore OUT!
I don't want it to "...find, ingest, and extract energy" from MY biomass! I would look too much like a giant, high-energy, slow-moving fuel depot to it.
Then again, if it didn't hurt too much ...
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
While there is the possibility of this giving life to Sci-Fi plots such as Dune, Terminator, and Battlestar, I can't help but think that the eating robot can do a lot to save us. What if this "biomass" were food scraps, animal feces, or some other waste product? Cow dung lets off mass amounts of methane that can then be burned. The eating robot could help decrease a need for landfills and decrease carbon in the atmosphere.
"This is robo-bat country."
What would happen if you fed it a gallon of Olestra? Talk about rear seal leakage!
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
When can I get a Roomba that runs on nacho crumbs and spilled Mountain Dew?
Set your phasers on "funky"!
they'd be the "consumed" rather than the "consumers", so no tax break. Unless you're talking about giving the robots a tax break.
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Can they use old people's pills for fuel?
RTFA, the thing has a freakin' chainsaw ! An eating robot with a chainsaw. Who would win the apocalypse war, the zombies or the robots ? We have the answer now, the robots obviously, they would saw through the zombies and eat them.
\u262D = \u5350
if the robot in question:
1) Constantly attempts to procure and imbibe alcoholic beverages.
2) Possesses a sarcastic demeanor, coupled with a devil-may-care attitude and disregard for life.
3) Comes equipped with a shiny metal ass.
When you find holes punched in the gas tanks of your SUVs and the filling station has a hole drilled into the ground you can thank this project for all it's amazing innovations.
However when you start missing shotgun shells and 9mm ammo from your gun locker... we're all in trouble.
"Cyclone brings to this project one of the most advanced external combustion engine technologies we have seen," stated Dr. Robert Finkelstein, President of RTI"
Maybe it's just me but I find it a little worrying that this monster of a robot was created by Dr. Finkelstein
It's alive Igor, It's Alive!!
If they run on old people's medications, I'm starting a robot insurance company right now.
Fortunately my tinfoil hat will cause the robots to think I am not made of organic material.
Although I've never seen anything exactly like this, I've personally built a BEAM robot that foraged for its own "food". Instead of seeking biomass, or hydrocarbons, my little BEAM robot just looked for a light source to charge its capacitors through photovoltaic cells.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Are monkeys open source ?
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
... soylent green is people?!
Until we blot out the sun fighting with them, and become the power sources...
Used to be, flesh-eating robots could eat only slugs.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
After all, the human body generates more bioelectricity than a 120V battery, and more than 25000 BTU's of body heat. Let's never block out the light...
Once the technology to ID & convert biomass to fuel is better, I'd bet that the military refits it to their vehicles. Be a good way to shorten their supply chain. (Use the biomass-derived fuel first, then the fuel delivered by the supply corps.)
And then there's always the possibility that an auto maker will put a similar system in a car.
Once they self-replicate we are screwed! These robots will become hosts for nanobots and will spread 'round the world ingesting all the biomass (including fluffy kittens).
Soylent Green is people!
If a bird eats my tomatoes, or a deer the grass on my lawn, that's part of nature.
If a robot eats my tomatoes, somebody is going to pay.
Did anyone else immediately think of this when they read this headline? I see a sudden rise in Q-tip sales.
long-endurance missions such as search and rescue in the mountains and caves of Afghanistan and Pakistan
Greetings person in Afghan cave.
I am a robot.
I am here to rescue you.
*chainsaw*
Stand still so I can rescue you.
So technically does this robot burp or fart?
they've been with us since our beginning!
I think a good use for one of these things would be to make one powered by dog shit. We could let them loose in parks and other places dog owners "walk" their turd machines. I know the lawn at the apartments I live at would benifit from something like this.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Quote from article, emphasis added:
...the EATR robot's inherent advantage is its ability to engage in long-endurance, tedious, and hazardous tasks, such as reconnaissance, surveillance, and target acquisition under difficult conditions, without fatigue or stress...
So we've got omnivorous assassin bots that consume their "target" after "acquisition" to remove evidence of the mission. That's just great.
Wouldn't solar power be easier? Where there are enough things to eat to survive there is enough sun to survive. Though i suppose its neat.
* Batteries not included
Oh, just because the digestive system of the average animal is so inefficient, it doesn't mean that the robot needs to adhere to such ineffectivity.
The entire amount of carbon contained in the food can be burned into CO2. No poop.
What's left is some spurious stuff and water, so eventually the robot may have to pee, yes, or sweat, assuming that the water will be also used within its cooling system.
So I think I see a solution to the homeless problem coming up...
EATR on test sorte
EATR: if(fuelLevel < 5){ initializeScanMode(identifyBioMass());}
EATR spots child playing in yard with ball
EATR: if(scanMode()== biomass)
EATR: if(acquisitionBiomass == difficult) {intializeHinterKillerMode();}
EATR: if(fuelLevel > 10) initializeSearchMode();
"Suppose you were an idiot...and suppose you were a member of Congress...but I repeat myself." Mark Twain
The RSS showed this much: --------- Smart Robot Capable of Hunting For Its Own "F --------- So, I just had to click on it to see if it was "fsck" at the end of that sentence. Gotta stop watching pr0n. Or (at least) robot pr0n.
Okay, that means - if some day i will see a robot digging in a garbage can, I know what it's searching for.
"engaging in biologically-inspired, organism-like"
aka ""
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
So I don't have to tell the CRV to mine Vespene gas any more?
If the judge can't tell the difference between being eaten by the machine or a real predator, the machine passes the test?
01100010 01110010 01100001 01101001 01101110 01110011
I know it is too much to ask for Slasdot not to repeat old ideas as news, but doesn't anyone else remember the best invention of 2001? http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=slug+eating+robot&aq=f&oq=
your gravity fails and negativity don't pull you through
The robot has one priority;
The need to feed.
Best if the umbrella corporation doesn't hear about this or they will start cranking out zomby robots as well.
welcome our new chainsaw-wielding man-eating autonomous robot overlords.
So this thing wanders around gathering its own firewood. How Neal-Stephensonian, a stream-powered terminator robot!
But, really, any high school robot team should be able to make a robot that wanders around the mall, or wherever electrical outlets are pletiful, and plugs itself in to recharge. For extra credit you could make one that shoplifts batteries at Radio Shack.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
140 comments so far, and not one reference to Old Glory Robot Insurance? I bet a link to the video will make it in the first few posts on Fark.
Hang your collective head in shame.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
Ignoring the obvious RUR ending to the EATR Robot Project; I think we may have the beginings of the "Mr. Energy" house hold applience. Take the wheeles off, install an outlet, and plug it into your home Energy Input Socket. Then say goodbye to PG&E, Edison, and SDG&E! Another side benefit is that the neighborhood will start to look cleaner as the folks start looking at trash as an energy source. It sounds goofy, but hook one of these things to a school, and start getting phone calls from school administrators on the school's next trash collection, errrrrrrrr fund raising project. Waste Management might want to start looking at land fills with the idea literally taking the Trash Out...
Which biomass is easier to sniff out: live prey or corpses? Not to mention the catching part.
It's probably too late to work the idea into the coming movie.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
...as to whether the robots will be programmed to make the "nom nom nom" sound as they are busy ripping off your children's limbs for fuel.
Who the Hell wrote this summary? Don't they know 95% of /. users think it should read "it's own food"? You're going to confuse them using proper English!
The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money
We first heard about this here on these very pages, about a decade ago: Read about a slug-hunting, self-sufficient, automatically-fermenting robot here.
Kid-proof tablet..
1) Enter the dwelling of the Biomass.
2) Hide somewhere and wait while producing carbon monoxide.
3) Each morning check for new Biomass and if (BioMass temp == room temp) then consume evidence.
4) Take photographs of non-Biomass, upload to eBay
5) Scan for Identities and Biomass markers, up-load to the bot-net
6) infect all devices.
7) Profit!
Now we live in the Nethack world!
You see here a political opponent corpse.
>e
what do you want to eat?
>.
This political opponent corpse tastes terrible!
Bender needs beer to function.
While this may seem now a stuff for children toys or robot vacuum cleaners, let us remember that 52 years ago a French hacker names Albert Ducrocq presented a mobile robot on wheels called "the fox" that was able to go and plug itself on an outlet whenever its battery needed to be recharged.
Probably an expensive thing, as there were no microprocessors at the time.
This whole entire concept is creepy! We should NEVER make a robot not dependent on direct human intervention at periodic intervals to refuel. That way, if something goes horribly wrong, it can only go horribly wrong until the robot runs out of gas/electricity.
welcome our new anthropophagic robotic overlords!