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Skiing Robot May Not Be Useful, But Fun To Watch

Posted by timothy on from the rescue-me-in-the-alps dept.

kkleiner writes "Bojan Nemec from the Jozef Stefan Institute in Slovenia recently presented his skiing robot at the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS). The robot won't be winning skiing records anytime soon and its usefulness as a ski instructor or in any other capacity seems quite a ways off. Nonetheless, the videos of this robot taking a ride down the ski slopes are well worth watching. In case you are wondering, this is a completely different robot than the one Slashdot covered earlier."

9 of 64 comments (clear)

  1. Wallace and Gromit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Can it ski on cheese?

  2. Get Off My Mountain Lawn by dmomo · · Score: 4, Funny

    This is nothing new. I've strapped many an unsuspecting robot to a pair of skis and shoved it down a hill. They get down just fine without any of your fancy whirring gizmo's.

    Turns out it works for other things too. Campers, bears, trick-or-treaters and the Law.

    1. Re:Get Off My Mountain Lawn by boristdog · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Just be sure to give them Charles De Mar's instuctions:

      "Go that way, really fast. If something gets in your way, turn".

  3. future plans by naeone · · Score: 3, Funny

    are all down hill from here

  4. Original story at IEEE by zerosomething · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://spectrum.ieee.org/blog/robotics/robotics-software/automaton/skiing-robot-races-down-slope

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    It all starts at 0
  5. 2nd Comment on TFA by kevinNCSU · · Score: 3, Funny
    The second comment on the article page itself reads:

    how do you get funding? Is your daddy influential? I want some (for something more useful, and along the same lines as your skiier) CONTACT ME, I dare you. gpscOSPAMruise@gmail.com

    That guy is seriously going to regret that now that this page is on slashdot, lol.

    1. Re:2nd Comment on TFA by swanzilla · · Score: 3, Funny

      how do you get funding? Is your daddy influential? I want some (for something more useful, and along the same lines as your skiier) CONTACT ME, I dare you. gpscOSPAMruise@gmail.com

      My father would never fund anybody who does not have his/her own email server

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      0 = 1 + e^(Alt something)
  6. Pull this guy's funding! by eln · · Score: 5, Funny

    This sort of nonsense is taking time and effort away from truly valuable sexbot research. This is a totally irresponsible use of scarce money and talent.

    1. Re:Pull this guy's funding! by interkin3tic · · Score: 3, Funny

      What are you talking about? The sex part of the sexbot is easy, they've even combined it with a flashlight (was going to put a link, but I'm at work, and besides, ew.)

      It's the -talking- to the sexbot after the sex that needs work. What are you going to talk about while you're smoking? The battery charge left? Polynomials? Sure they could program the sexbot to tell you you were the best he/she's ever had, but you'd want more variety after a little while: they need a hobby. One hobby? Skiing. If you're a skiier you probably like to talk about skiing after sex, and it will be really obvious he/she is lying if the sexbot can't actually ski. Plus maybe you like to have sex on the lift. If the sexbot can't go down the hill, it's not going to be able to go down on you on the way up.

      Disclaimer: the above really wrote itself. It might sound like I spend a lot of time thinking about this stuff, but I don't. I don't know if that's to or against my credit that I'm not actually trying to advance the sex toy industry, but it's not the case, I was just making a joke and then it started sounding a little too believable...