Slashdot Mirror
Robot Snake Can Climb Trees
kkleiner writes "The latest in a line of 'modsnakes' from Carnegie Mellon's Biorobotics Lab, Uncle Sam can move in a variety of different ways, including rolling, wiggling, and side-winding. It can also wrap itself around a pole and climb vertically, and even scale a tree. You have to watch this thing in action. There is something incredibly life-like and eerie about the way it scales the tree outdoors and then looks around with its camera 'eye.' Projects like Uncle Sam show how life-mimicking machines could revolutionize robotics in the near future."
...robots revolutionize you!
Looks like all of the robot birds are going to have to figure out new tactics to avoid being eaten.
If we're going to have killer robots from the future, can they at least look like the Terminator women and hopefully screw us to death?
Perhaps that's coming with the next Apple upgrade.
The Invisible Hand of the Free Market is what punches workers in the nuts.
...and they may have just found lady's new best friend.
Authority questions you. Return the favor.
we're waiting on the Rule 34 action with these things!
Other than not having limbs, this has little to do with a snake. This looks like a bunch of U-Joints with servo motors, its "rolling" up the tree, after "rolling" on the ground. A snake does not move this way.. No animal that I know of moves this way.
It's also obviously being controlled.. The AI to find a tree then decide to climb it (motivation?) would be really interesting.
This is neat, but I don't see anything to do with snakes here.. Which is a shame.. Many years ago for a Comp Sci project, I had to model a snake and it's movements (virtually -- it was an OpenGL assignment). It was really interesting to do, mimicking those thousands of coordinated muscles with electronics would be pretty fantastic. Of course, different snakes move differently .. a sidewinder basically walks on two virtual "feet", whereas a python crawls and climbs with hundreds of individual "feet".
and we've got suggestions of Female Terminators, robotic dildo's, and Japanese robotic tentacle hentai. Is there anything else left to say?
-Hmm...I got a G+ invite, better remember to remove the request from my sig...-
...and they may have just found lady's new best friend.
I don't think that you gave your idea much thought. This thing is programmed to climb up from its starting position. We're talking 9, maybe 13 inches max of climbing distance in an aroused woman. From there, we're talking about a machine penetrating (word intended) internal organs.
Dare to envision a brighter apocalypse for once in your life!
If I see that shit on zazzle.com, I better get my cut!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
because they can't figure out it they should be pointing it to /dev/psaux or /dev/input/mice. Not to mention all the confusion over ps2/imps2.
(Sigh. That's the best joke I could wriggle out of this one without referring to robotic snake overlords. Ssssorry.)
For an encore the robot snake grabbed an apple and headed for a tree next to a robot female.
Carbon based humanoid in training.
Because the person who posted the video on youtube (apparently an official CMU account) opted to show ads over the top of it. Youtube's HTML5 player doesn't have that feature right now (I imagine it could be done with a transparent div and javascript), so they fell back to Flash. Why CMU thinks they should be showing advertisements on what is already an advertisement for their school is beyond me.
That's interesting. I assume that the climbing method that this robot is using is not mimicking a real-life animal. Is there a snake (or other animal) that will wrap itself into a spiral around a tree trunk and then roll along its spinal axis to climb? Is it physically possible for a snake to do this? Will a snake even roll on its spinal axis on the ground? (I'm just curious.)
Now we need a robot Samuel L. Jackson to complain about them being on a MFing plane.
"I'm not a quack, I'm a mad scientist! There's a difference." - Dr. Cockroach
Like a boa constrictor. This would be useful in a lot of large cities, as pest control. Even better, would be if they could be powered by the dead rats that they kill. It would cut down the time needed to recharge them.
I just hope they would not develop a taste for human meat.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Or do you just enjoy having less people be able to view your content?
Probably, it's a reluctance to learn a (relatively) new technology to satisfy the needs of 1% of a market, when the other 99% (those not using iPods, iPads, or mobile phones) can see the video just fine. When the market changes, and most people are viewing the sites on mobile devices, it'll make sense to change. Until then, why bother? It's not like people who have these other mobile devices don't have desktops or laptops.
It gave me the heebie-jeebies.
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
...it's all about power. Until a small, very power-dense storage medium is developed (better than current technology), this (and powered prosthetics) will remain only a curiosity. Once you can power it autonomously, there are no limits to the things this device (and those that follow) can do. But this is no easy feat! Perhaps beamed power would work. Or make one that can eat and digest rats and birds!
Chaos maximizes locally around me.
99: What's that?
86: An electric snake!
99: Really! What does it run on?
86: Tiny little feet!
The tether is powering the "snake" and very likely it's providing the control signals too. Get back to us when you can include the power source and the AI in the "snake"'s body...
It's not news until it's got frickin' lasers.
...and they may have just found lady's new best friend.
Man's best friend too! Or didn't you watch the video?
This technology could fill a niche (literally) in the mechanical sex toy market.
Why would a woman want a snake robot as a sex toy? I'm pretty sure it's already possible to buy a dildo that throbs for much cheaper.
They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. - Terry Pratchett
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8j0jNxMeSQ
This Japanese snake robot has been around for some time, and unlike the Carnegie Melon's robot, it is not tethered.
Money? Sponsoring?
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Yea, I heard tell that R2D2 was powered off of a 100KW internal nucular reactor.
For this reason, it was never safe to shoot at a droid.
Droids will mess you up!
There are factories full of robots that do a million different things more interesting and useful then this.
Make something that isnt plugged in and runs by itself and get back to us. We have all been waiting here bored for years now...
ooh its a snake at the end of a hundred feet of a lawn mower orange electric cord, glad i made it to 2010
I for one ... am scared! This shit is nightmare inducing! Kill it with fire!
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
... and an apple or it didn't happen.
Why CMU thinks they should be showing advertisements on what is already an advertisement for their school is beyond me.
The ads I get aren't for or from CMU and the .wmv download from the official website is disabled. Those are just the normal ads for vids hosted on youtube. At some point they had to look at the following options. 1) They can either pay for their own costs for a bunch of geek rubberneckers or 2) have youtube foot the bill, manage bandwidth issues and send them a check for served ads. Why wouldn't they with option #2?
"Common sense will be the death of us all"
This would be useful in a lot of large cities, as pest control. Even better, would be if they could be powered by the dead rats that they kill.
So why use robots? Just import some snakes. Wild biotech has been optimized for this job for years.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Evolution never even "discovered" the wheel.
Apparently you have not encountered the insidious Hoop Snake! ;-)
From the wiki:
Oh, and watch out for the drop bears too. ;-)
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
There's bad ass robots out there in the world..these would be the prison punks of the robot world
I'm a drone plane I drop bombs on enemy countries
I weld the sides onto aircraft carriers
I KNOW HOW MUCH KUMQUATS COST
*punch*
Robotic Stingrays!
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
the idea of constructing robots from modular parts is really cool. On the other hand, I've never found myself in a situation that called for a tree-climbing robot-snake.
It's amazing how many people laud mother nature as a design consultancy who think that ten years for Perl 6 was too long.
Personally, I regard pretty much everything after the ribosome as derivative and second rate. Like most other great scientists, after a major breakthrough early in her career, it's been nothing but permutations ever since.
Look at her recent work. Her answer to large cranium/small orifice was more powerful contractions. The snake was the original rubber mallet. Instead of finessing the problem, mother nature reverts to brute force. If you ask me, she lost the thread a long time ago. Speaking of which, the umbilicus strangles more infants than plastic bags. I can't believe the umbilicus is still legal in Sweden. They tend to have strict laws against this kind of design malpractice.
A "robot that climbs trees (until it reaches the first branch)" is probably better described as "a robot that climbs short poles". Somehow this description seems less newsworthy..
This is great news for the coconut pickers who climb to great heights in unsafe conditions, often putting their lives in grave danger! http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/agriculture/article406266.ece
nfm
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
This has pretty much been done already, the only real difference - one is climbing a pole, this one seems to be able to do a tree. http://singularityhub.com/2010/04/19/dennis-hong-presents-his-8-award-winning-robots-video/
I have had it with these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking tree!
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Why would a woman want a snake robot as a sex toy?
Perhaps it has something to do with gerbils?
When the market changes, and most people are viewing the sites on mobile devices, it'll make sense to change.
Speak for yourself, that video plays just fine on my HTC 4G Evo.
Works on my Pre, too. I'm just saying it won't work with all mobiles.
Let loose sterilized cats, starting out with the ones that get caught by animal control. Once the sterilized ones die out you import more from neighboring areas, which helps depopulate those areas as well. Snakes have no common sense defense against accidental death by humans, plus they'd be actively killed as well.
Now we have a robotic snake, but where is robotic Adam and Eve? Is it possible for machines to take on and suffer from the original sin? Does the Lord deem them worthy of redemption?
On step closer to realizing Bladerunner as our reality.
"I have had it with these mother-f'ing robot snakes on this mother-f'ing tree!"
Once you can power it autonomously, there are no limits to the things this device (and those that follow) can do.
No. It's all about intelligence. This thing can do nothing autonomously. That's why I declare IT IS NOT A ROBOT!
If this is a robot, explain to me why my car is not a robot. It rolls on mechanical 'wheels' and has all kinds of 'activators.' I just have to be on hand to control it.
I think this definition of robot comes from researchers who would rather say "I work with robots!" instead of "I work with a bunch of servos that I turn on and off with switches that I hold in my hand--pretty futuristic, eh?"