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Android-Controlled Battle Robots Go To War (Video)
Let's pretend for a moment that your name is Google. You want to have lots of developers working with your stuff. So you hold a Google Input|Output 2012 event. You have Sergey Brin showing off Google Glass, but most of your show consists of talks with titles like Integrate Web Intents into Your Web Application Today and What's New in Android?... which is all great fun, but also a tad boring. Luckily, somebody at Google piped up and said, "I know! We need Android-controlled fighting robots!" And they contacted the Stupid Fun Club, and Lo! There were Android-controlled robots fighting on the show floor, and all was right with the world.
With closed sourced robots, the adversary could capture the robot and torture it into revealing the 'source'. Using open source Android eliminates that danger.
I really like when something like that gets reported as an invention and makes a career for some nerd. LEGO made Android App Open Sourced and GPL'ed 3 already 2 years ago...that does just that and more.
I knew that there was an explanation for the increasingly unnerving convergence in style between Verizon's "Droid" advertisements and the USAF's "The Reaper is Watching" recruitment materials...
Am I supposed to be impressed or something?
No, you are supposed to be amused. Not your cup of tea? Fine. But you should see a doctor about the stick.
OH NO! That crazy lady and her weirdo kid were right! Google is Skynet! We are all doomed!!
No sig for the moment.
None of them. The video is embedded in the page. The links are all to stuff that's related to the story.
if i want talking heads i'll go to ted. some guy rabbiting on - on screen - about robot battles is about as exciting as watching paint peel.
So where do I download this Android iOS?
I've been waiting for Google to give the average person something useful that Apple doesn't.
Until Slashdot decides to embed video through HTML5 video tags, I guess you'd just have to enable Flash in your mobile browser.
Here's the transcript anyway.
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Title: Android-Controlled Lego Battle Robots Go To war
Description: Google Input|Output 2012 has Android-controlled fighting Lego robots bringing havoc to the show floor! Slashdot takes you there!
00:00 TITLE
Timothy is shown standing in a hallway with the SlashdotTV logo bar reading "Timothy Lord meets Stupid Fun Club (and Lab)'s Michael Winter & His Android-Controlled Lego Robots"
00:00 Timothy
I talked with Michael Winter of Stupid Fun Labs, who's come up with some battlebot-style destructo devices that are remote-controlled from an Android tablet.
00:08 TITLE
Michael Winter is shown at a Google I/O Android floor with people operating robots in the background.
00:08 Michael
One month ago, Google gave us a call and said "We need something fun that's powered by Android".
I think it came from Andy, the guy who invented the Android iOS.. or.. sorry, not iOS *chuckles* it came from Andy that invented the Android operating system.
So we made combat robots that people can build themselves.
They use Legos to build up weapons and defense, then go into an arena or [...]
00:36 TITLE
Several shots of Android-powered Lego battle robots are shown along with tablets set up as controllers for them.
00:36 Michael
[...] or, here in this case, it's on the convention floor and they battle each other, trying to knock the driver off the other person's robot.
00:44 Michael
My background is in combat robots.
I won the first Robot Wars and I make things, I build electronics.
We use an ARM chip inside of the robot that has an emotion-based operating system, so the robots can get mad and do things and they can kill the driver like to hard.. drive better, or to shape up in general.
01;05 TITLE
The view fades back to the shot of Michael.
01:05 Michael
They also monitor how much damage they get.
If a robot continues to get hit, the damage level goes up, and the driver of the robot gets that information displayed on their Android tablet.
We know how many times the robot gets fired, we know what distance the other robots are away from it, and all this comes back to the driver or, if you're making a TV show out of this, the TV audience could see, like, how much damage a robot got.
01:32 TITLE
A time lapse shot is shown of somebody building a Lego battle robot as a piece of techno music is played over the video.
02:00 TITLE
A short shot taken from the perspective of one of the robots is shown before fading back to Michael.
02:01 Michael
The software runs on the Android tablet, uses Bluetooth to communicate with the robot.
To steer the robot you hold down the dead man's switch and you put the tablet forward to go forward, the tablet backwards to go backwards, left, right, and so steering is super-convenient, there's no joystick or anything like that.
And the weapon, you just push a button, and the weapon fires, or you can push the macro button and have the robot just go crazy, spinning all the way around, whacking everything in sight.
02:32 Timothy
What's your vision for this?
02:33 Michael
The vision is to do a reality TV show.
While we were building it, one of the big three networks actually came up to us, and was talking about this prime time show, and we said, well, here's kind of the technology that we can use to do things in real time.
So that's one thing, we're very interested in the toy market.
We do talk with Lego R&D and Hasbro and Mattel.
Some wild ideas have been thrown out here at the convention, one is that.. wouldn't it be fun to do Lego, rather than a Lego Mindstorms, a Lego Google.. where you would buy your Lego robotics set, and it would just connect with your phone so you can use the power of your phone or your tablet to control your Legos.
exactly my thought. I think we all know how remote controls work.
I'm too lazy to go read the article, but will somebody please tell me that this story is about a play battle with a bunch of nerds with raspberry pi-on-wheels RC cars and is NOT about the Rise of the Machines?
I'm not going to touch my smartphone until I get the All Clear. I've got tongs and gloves and I will put this thing in the microwave if there's any danger . But for all I know, the microwave is in on it, too. You know, I could swear that the phone's been vibrating in a much more violent way lately. Thing goes off on the table next to my bed and it sounds like somebody's using a chain saw to cut through the floor. "Haptic feedback", my ass. This thing is trying to get up and walk!
I've been wondering how long before the Cloud becomes sentient. But then, I've also been wondering if I could juice a frozen pizza, so that doesn't really mean very much. I do more than my fair share of wondering.
Oh hell, it's going in the Microwave. Nobody's responded to this post yet, so maybe they've shot off an EMP blast or something and it's like Fallout 3 outside. If not, I'm going to go ahead and give this bitch 2 minutes on "defrost" just as a warning. To show it who's boss.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Am I supposed to be impressed or something?
Interested, perhaps.
Android has some serious tools to help with robotics and autonomous vehicles, and being open source, it's nice to learn on, and free.
Android Open Accessory Development Kit (ADK)
http://developer.android.com/tools/adk/index.html
Arduino SDK board
http://arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoBoardADK
There's been a huge surge in robotics projects as a result.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Am I the only one here to get a bad taste from this. Take a loved childtoy and a open operaring system and develp a weapon? This is somthing I expected from the bully in ToyStory. Why not develop a electric chair from lego controlled by android when you already have started?
Saw commercial, closed tab.
Yo Dawg, I heard you like androids, so I put an Android in your android...