Slashdot Mirror
Parrot Drives Robotic Buggy
grrlscientist writes "Proving that robots aren't just for people any longer, an African grey parrot, Pepper, has learned to drive a robot that was specially designed for him. Pepper, whose wings are clipped to preventing him from flying around his humans' house and destroying their things, now manipulates the joystick on his riding robot to guide it to where ever he wishes to go. This robotic 'bird buggy' was the brainchild of his human companion, Andrew Gray, a 29-year-old electrical and computer engineering graduate student at the University of Florida."
I now want a parrot.
...that the same human who had the birds wings clipped so it can't move has had to build him a fucking go kart so he's able to move around again.
Fuck you, Andrew Gray, and the horse you rode in on. IF you haven't clipped its hooves at the knee, that is!
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
want a crack up?
Seriously though, this has got to be the most understandable and easy to use interface out there.
My nephew wants one now.
last minute desperate solutions to impossible problems created by other fucking people.
I for one welcome our new buggy riding African Grey Parrot overlords...
Welcome our new Robotic Parrot Overlords!
Nobodies Prefect
Tidbits for Techs Technology Blog
Like, if someone broke his legs and build him a joystick wheelchair and posted the video, oh I am sure he would be oh so thankful.
I can see both sides. Without his wings being clipped he would never be allowed outside, and escape would be a constant worry. Caged birds are dead meat on the outside.
You know what this means right?
Cats with roller skates.
crazy dynamite monkey
Mauled by a bear? Have some fucking perspective will you?
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Do keep in mind this isn't a finch though. Greys are attached to their family.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
I tried t get my Norwegian Blue to drive a buggy but it just sits there and does nothing.
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
Exactly, this is like clipping your kitties claws so it doesn't turn your furniture into confetti. Animal experts will tell you that allowing your cat to have sharp claws will promote its self confidence (knowing it can defend itself) but also promotes damage to furniture, injury to people and the spread of a number of diseases like cat-scratch fever (yeah, I know the album, but really there is a disease too.)
If you have a large parrot, it can do a significant amount of damage, they are strong birds with big wings. Most folks will trim the flight feathers (done by a trained professional so as not to hurt the animal) so the bird can't fly and it stops trying to do anything but walk. This might seem cruel to prevent a bird from flying, but it does in no way harm the bird (the feathers fall out all by themselves and are replaced with perfect new feathers just as your hair falls out and is replaced by perfectly good new hair.) The only question really is if a person should have a highly intelligent animal caged up in a human house as a pet. That's a moral question I have mixed feelings about especially considering that a lot of these animals are now seriously endangered in the wild.
So its totally ok to limit someone's freedom of movement for their own protection?
To offset political mods, replace Flamebait with Insightful.
Don't get your panties in a knot unless you know more.
Well, I'm not GP but I am a parrot owner so I'd like to "get my panties knot".
Removing a parrot's main form of movement is comparable to keeping a dog on a leash in one corner of the house, all the time. What's cruel is removing their ability to fly and after that it's just semantics whether you clipped their wings or feathers. Removing a parrot's ability to fly and forcing them to move only where human decides they should move, when human decides they should move there, is a horrible thing to do to animals as intelligent and independent as parrots. It also tells about very twisted attitude towards the pet: Anyone who considers taking a parrot and does some research (and you really should research as they tend to live many years or even many decades) learns that they do tend to chew on stuff. If your reaction to that isn't "I'll have to come up with enough toys for him to chew that he doesn't touch much else" or "I'll have to study positive reinforcement a bit and train him" or "I'll have to come up with a way to keep some things out of his sight" or "Okay, I can't have a pet like that" but rather "Oh, I'll just clip his wings", there is something very wrong.
My parrots fly freely around the house whenever I'm awake and at home (when I'm asleep or at work, I have to keep them in cages for their own safety). They don't tend to ruin anything too valuable though they do occasionally ruin book covers, photo frames and the like... which I knew they would do when I got them six years ago.
For the record, the practice of clipping parrot wings (which means clipping the wing feathers) isn't really alive in many countries anymore (here in Finland it certainly isn't recommended by either of the large pet bird associations).
No ambiguity here. No, sir.
-Bob-
I wish my car had a toilet in the driver seat so I could crap freely while driving around.
"We shall grapple with the ineffable, and see if we may not eff it after all." - Douglas Adams
With larger birds such as African Grey's, there is a really high risk of injury to the bird if they are allowed to grow up flying inside a house. Young birds do not understand glass for instance, and will attempt to fly into it, ultimately doing harm to themselves. To offset this, the non-permanent wing clipping is employed to prevent them from taking flight. This doesn't prevent gliding, however, so they can still leap safely off ledges to the floor to get around. Once they're older, you have to take into account that the nearly or fully grown bird has never flown, so you keep clipping the wings as they don't know how to use them.
I've never owned a Parrot but I grew up with one and my parents opted to not clip his wings. The net result was a lot of snapped feathers and a bird with neurological damage from running into things full tilt. Not pretty.
- No Bounce, No Play -
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
And here you see the primary use to which print newspapers are put today. All the dog owners and other pet owners use it to collect their pets' bowel movements.
It doesn't take any special training. You just gently extend the wing, extend the flight feathers, and cut about 2/3 of the length off the four longest feathers. Just don't cut to the quick!
Clipping the flight feathers doesn't actually stop them from flying. It just makes it very difficult for them to gain altitude. Clipped birds can still make short flights or flutter safely to the ground from any height, but they also can't fly into a ceiling fan if they get spooked.
Fun with Anagarams! LADS HOST, SHALT DOS. HAS DOLTS. AD SLOTHS, HATS SOLD. ASS HO, LTD.
Forget parrots in buggies. What about dogs in real cars?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-20614593
99% sure this is not a hoax.
Man, lotta PETA supporters or something on /. today. Are you against neutering cats and dogs too?
1. It's not a "free bird". A free bird would be one that's outside in the trees. This is a domesticated bird in a house. But I assume you just threw the "free" part in as an emotional word of some sort to get people onto your side anyway.
2. Clipping the wings is exactly NOTHING like breaking the legs. Since it's only temporarily trimming the end feathers, it's more akin to clipping a cat's nails. It stops the cat from gripping the ground when running, so therefore it must be cruel. If a bird that large were allowed to fly about freely inside, it'd likely do more damage to itself than to objects.
3. Before you even think about talking about declawing, just stop with that horribly incorrect analogy already. Clipped feathers grow back, removing the top knuckle of the cat's paws doesn't. And no, my cat isn't declawed, that's cruel.
4. You're an idiot, and god help you if you ever own a pet.
I just took a cone off my cat from him having had surgery. Are advocating that I should have left the cone off and let him chew away at his stitches instead, because the cone isn't natural, and hinders him?
Not all things people do to pets are for the sake of cruelty. In fact, I would argue that the vast, VAST majority of things we do for pets is because we love them, and it's better for them.
Heaven forbid you have a giant mirror in your house. We had parakeets that would go ape shit over the other birds and try to fly to them. We ended up clipping their feathers just so they wouldn't hurt themselves on the mirror.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
If I had Mod points you would be +1 obvious :)
One is permanently breaking the legs of a creature and the other is clipping something that can grow back... If you somehow think those two events are in any way the same, I feel sorry for you.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
People limit pets' movement all the time. Dogs go on leashes or are stuck inside the house. Same with cats, often. We have 2 rabbits. They have to stay inside their pen when not accompanied by humans. Our tortoise has to stay inside its terrarium. Our fish may not swim in the ocean. I'm sure the rabbits would love to run around outside or even all over the house chewing on whatever they can, but it's not safe for them (predators, cars, electrocution), and it's not safe for our stuff. So maybe you're saying nobody should keep pets, but that's a different argument.
If I could rearrange the keyboard, I'd put U and I together.
this is COOL! And really cute too!
Do you let your dog wander around in the street? Loose dogs in my neighborhood end up dead on the freeway very quickly, and loose cats become owl and coyote food. You're damn right we limit their freedom of movement.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Thank you for confirming what I've suspected today: It is OK to limit someone's movement as long as it doesn't involve limiting their computer. :)
To offset political mods, replace Flamebait with Insightful.
...Yeah. Yeah it is. Are you fucking retarded?!? Like no, seriously... are you mentally handicapped.
Anger aside, this is actually a very valid, important thing to mention.
Case in point - a few months ago, a 17-year-old autistic boy was struck and killed by a car. it was 2 AM, and he was sitting in the middle of the street just past a low hill, which made him impossible for the driver to see until it was too late.
When asked why their autistic son was sitting in the middle of a public street at 2 o' clock in the morning, the parents responded, "we always let him do what he wants."
Incidentally, the parents are attempting to sue the driver for - brace yourselves - negligence.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
It has sensors to detect when it has bumped into something and automatically retreats. It senses when it is approaching a wall and prevents forward movement. When the parrot was removed it used its camera to locate the "docking station" and navigate its own way there.
Sure, it can be controlled, but it does its own thing too.
That is nothing at all like my experience with greys. What kind of parrot did your parents have?
As far as young birds getting their first flight feathers it is a good idea to be extra cautious with windows and doors at that time. Curtains/blinds or just making sure that the glass is very dirty will help a lot at that time. It won't take long before they realize the glass is solid. Letting them explore the windows and doors on foot with their beaks before they learn to fly is also probably a good idea. Of course if you live in some uber-contemporary house with mostly glass walls I would advice keeping that glass as dirty as possible.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
To be fair, the vast majority of pet parrots, not just in the US, but in the world are raised by humans not by their parents. And usually their parents weren't raised in the wild either. So that ship has already sailed. If the parents decide to breed (and it's not like you can force them) those babies cannot be shipped back to Africa or South America and set free in the wild. Only a small percentage of them would survive at all without instruction from wild parents. I think that would be more cruel. It is already illegal to collect these birds from the wild.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
The issue is that some animals are smarter than others, just as you might get bored and actually feel mental anxiety if you were locked in a colourless room for 24hrs of the day different treatment can have different effects on different animals.
Fish wont care if they're in a tank, or the sea (assuming the tank is of adequate size, cleanliness, etc.) because they don't have the mental capacity to know any different.
Dogs are often fine stuck inside a house for a few hours, as they naturally sleep a lot during the day anyway, though outside those hours you should walk them so they can enjoy the scents and so forth.
I used to have a pair of rabbits (and a guinea pig too) and I very clearly remember how if he was in his cage for more than just the night because we'd forgotten to let him out, he'd have his teeth around the wire mesh on his cage and would violently shake it like a prisoner desperate to get out of his cell.
I don't honestly know enough about parrots to say, but they are smart animals so it would make sense that they'd want to exercise their brains a lot and that being stuck in a single place would cause them a lot of issues if they're not otherwise somehow kept busy.
It's not a fair argument therefore to say that because you keep rabbits in cages, because you keep fish in a tank, that parrots must inherently be okay with being stuck in a corner. If you make that argument and ignore the differences in needs and intelligence then you must surely extend your argument to humans as we are just animals too - would you really be happy if you were stuck in a single corner of a room all your life?
It really warms my heart to see so many slashdotters looking at this from the parrots perspective. African greys are awesome birds. It nice to see one appreciated. We learn from Pepper to treat each other better. Thanks for putting me in the holiday spirit.
He didn't say a single corner of a room. He said his house. That's probably big enough to not be too bored, even for a relatively intelligent bird.
If I could rearrange the keyboard, I'd put U and I together.
I have a 22 y.o. YNA (big green thing, 50% evil) who is very lazy. He would love to go motoring around the house in one of these things.
... and if you had watched the video, you would have seen the dual mode device actually park itself using computer vision... autonomously... like a robot.
It's driving ME buggy, TOO!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
It's just one step toward him being able to pilot a helicopter.
I'm not too sure about that. I mean, he could control the cyclic with his beak, and the anti-torque with his feet, but how would he control the collective and the throttle without hands?
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
I was not expecting the autonomous parking. It was extremely cool. And extremely creepy, too.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
I'll chime in because the GP/AC just displayed a great deal of stupidity and didn't understand the OP's question.
The AC's analogies are not limiting innate freedom of movement, but rather are improving or facilitating. His/her analogy of child-rearing is so far off-topic that it's irrational.
The AC should take a moment to actually read and consider than being another angry, stupid person on /.
You've evidently never been to South Florida, where there are enough escaped parrots flying around to fill a Hitchcock movie.
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
I appreciate the sentiment, but unfortunately I can only post as an AC due to being unable to log in while at work. Username Kabuthunk for what it's worth.
Thanks for explaining this. I'm obviously a little slow as I've often wondered at the number of well-written and insightful +5 posts made by ACs.
..Mullah or Pope, Preacher or Poet, who was it wrote: "Give any one species too much rope and they'll fuck it up"?
Those are the survivors. Likely a small percentage. Also, I used to live in Central Florida (space coast area), which is nearly as warm, and I never once saw an escaped parrot flying around. So what about the parrots that are kept outside of South Florida?
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
My parrot Bud has handled the steering wheel a few times and caused no crashes.... yet.
First off, I never realized that so many people here weren't familiar with the practice of clipping a pet birds flight feathers to prevent them from flying. Get a grip--it isn't painful and isn't even permanent, as the wing feathers do occasionally shed & regrow. If you really want to get worked up over something, go look up why the judges at dog shows always fondle the male dogs' testicles.
Second, Andrew must not have heard the old saying about show business--"never work with kids or animals". . . .
Sorry Andrew.
While the 'autonomous docking mode' is technically impressive, it's much more intriguing to watch the bird drive the thing around. Maybe using tank treads would improve the car a bit--for the bird driver, that is. Make it more stable over rough spots at least.
I agree with you points except for... I don't think you have to be a PETA supporter to be against neutering cats and dogs too or at least sensibly understanding the cruelty of it.
Really, if you can't understand the cruelty of it, than *you* shouldn't be a pet owner.
Almost every great writer has written our non-intentional cruelty towards animals.
Bullshit. Ever seen a dog in the city and how unhappy it is? Ever been to San Francisco? How almost every single person who owns a dog in the city is mentally, emotionally unstable and are tyrannical as a human being? I grew up in the country with dogs and I can tell you the VAST difference. Some people are just too emotionally stunted to actually love another creature. Other times, these dogs (especially thoroughbreds) are just a piece of property and disposable.
The vast majority of times people are simply satisfying their selfish need for "love" (possession) with no regard towards the animal's well-being.
You mean, if you stole another person's child and debilitated them and locked them up in your house for the rest of their life? That's the equivalent and not the analogy you smugly suggested.
I am a pet owner and the fucking best at training animals; a whisperer of sorts. You must do things for your animals that are momentarily discomforting for them, but this an irrational comparison towards child-rearing and clipping a bird's wings is just that... irrational.
You are however both being sensational yet raise some deep philosophical issues albeit unintentionally.
I would love to integrate a Kinect sensor into this design and change the control scheme a bunch....
Brian Fundakowski Feldman
It autonomously drives itself home to charge.
Brian Fundakowski Feldman
Those are the survivors. Likely a small percentage.
Maybe, but then, citation needed.
Also, I used to live in Central Florida (space coast area), which is nearly as warm, and I never once saw an escaped parrot flying around.
I've lived in both Indialantic and Fort Lauderdale. The latter was noticeably warmer.
So what about the parrots that are kept outside of South Florida?
They migrate to South Florida? (But then, to be fair, citaton needed.)
(Honestly? I'm not really arguing with you, I'm just sort of being obstreporous.)
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
...props for using Linux to power the autonomous vehicle docking.
"Cockroach Controlled Mobile Robot" is an experimental robotic system that translates the bodily movements of a living, organic insect into the physical locomotion of a three-wheeled robot. Distance sensors at the front of the robot also provide navigation feedback to the cockroach, striving to create a pseudo-intelligent system with the cockroach as the CPU.
Interesting, I had parakeets (one smart, one quite stupid) that would fly up to the floor-to-ceiling mirror and hover there for a few seconds before turning away. Not once did they run into the mirror. Unlike a window, flying toward a mirror will produce the appearance of an imminent collision.
We'd also confuse the cats with the same kind of mirrors (different room). Use a laser pointer, at some distance from the mirror. The cat will lock on to the dot and not notice that there is also a dot in the mirrored reflection. Then you work the dot toward the mirror, with the cat in pursuit. It will still fail to notice the approaching reflection of the dot. Then you move the dot ONTO the mirror where it suddenly appears to split in two, causing the cat much consternation about which one to chase.
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
Training wheels on bikes make them more dangerous to the rider and more difficult to learn proper bicycling. They are a complete failure and fraud.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
I agree that cats don't natively belong to my local ecosystem. It's also unsensible to keep them indoors. After what I've observed I'll never have a pet. Cats have historically had a real job in the human ecosystems, but those days are gone now in the modern societies. Besides if they lived in the city or in the suburbs one needs to be careful because neighbors might be dangerously allergic to them, as was in our case before moving to a rural house.