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Massive EU Program To Study Three-legged Dogs

Posted by samzenpus on from the all-I-really-need-to-know-I-learned-from-a-three-legged-dog dept.

DMandPenfold writes "A multi-billion dollar European Union IT research fund will help study the behavior of three-legged dogs, it has been revealed. The fund will support extensive studies into how three-legged dogs move. There is a particular focus on how the dogs balance and function, given their missing limb."

6 of 85 comments (clear)

  1. Did they hear about the three legged dog... by boristdog · · Score: 4, Funny

    Did they hear about the three legged dog that walked into a saloon?

    The barkeep asked him what he wanted.

    He said: "I'm lookin' for the man that shot my paw!"

  2. It's for locomotion research by jfoobaz · · Score: 5, Informative

    Towards the bottom of the article, it mentions that the purpose of the study is "... to develop advanced robots that can help animals and even humans cope with function after the loss of a limb."

    The headline and summary make it sound like utterly frivolous bullshit, when it's actually important research into motion and balance techniques in living creatures that can be applied to robotics.

    Typical Slashdot.

    1. Re:It's for locomotion research by Flea+of+Pain · · Score: 4, Funny

      Giving it a robotic leg is just plane silly.

      Which, for those of you not in the know, is less than car silly, but more than boat silly. Still, I think that method of comparing silly levels is plain silly.

      --
      Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.
  3. Re:I well wo... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    No, not billion dollars for 3-legged dogs. They are funded by a fund that hands out a billion dollars in research funds to thousands of projects. So dogs will only get a tiny fraction of it.

  4. actual information by mattdm · · Score: 4, Informative

    Here's the actual project site: http://locomorph.eu/

    Obviously not all of the 1.3 billion USD (not actually "multi-billion" -- the Euro/Dollar conversion isn't that bad!) is going to research on "three-legged dogs". It's about robotic locomotion in general, of which that may be one component (although the project web site doesn't particularly mention it).

    Also, it's a four-year project split between six universities. That's about $50 million per year for each site, which is still a big grant but doesn't seem so crazy for the field.

  5. Make that 2.7 million Euro by Brown · · Score: 4, Informative

    The implication that the EU is spending billions of euros on a program to study 3-legged dogs is completely misleading. The fund in question appears to be FP7 (Wikipedia article), which funds a huge variety of researchers on many differnet topics.

    If you look at what I think is the relevant EU site, the project received EUR 2.7 million from the 'Embodied intelligence' Initiative within the 'Information and communication technologies' (ICT) Thematic area of the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7).

    Which wouldn't make much of a story I guess - "multi-billion" sounds waaay more impressive.

    -Chris