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SlugBot, the Slug-Powered Slug-Hunting Robot
Adam Foster writes "SlugBot is no ordinary robot. SlugBot hunts down slugs, and is powered by fermenting the slugs' corpses, producing biogas fuel. Find out more from the BBC."
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So that's what you've been doing in the wheat field.
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"L'IT c'est moi!"
Of course, there were a few problems in the past, such as always having to shake out my shoes before I go to work in the morning; being able to track them; and preventing them from uncontrolled reproducing. Controlling breeding is accomplished by keeping only one male in a tank - all the hunters in home are female(you learn to identify the gender pretty quick). Every now and then, you pop a female in the tank and see if they'll go at it (it looks more like a fight than mating). Tracking is still a problem though. I used to glue keychains to their backs, the kind that beep when you whistle, but well, um, those things fall off after the scorpion molts. I'm thinking of switching to a transmitter to relay to position of each scorpion, so when my database tells me it's time for one of them to molt, I can just find her and keep her in a tank until she's done - the transmitter can then be reglued and she can be released back into my kitchen. The database is already set up; it uses the MSDE, which is simply the engine behind MS-SQL Server. If you want to see the front end (written in VB) I'll be happy to send it to you, but I don't yet have routines to account for input from a receiver - but my current plans call for using two or more to accurately gauge the position of any specific scorpion. Source code available on request.
While on the topic of a Roachbot, you should check out this story, where a Japanese company attached electrodes to a roach's brain and take full control of its motor functions. I can just see the implications: you release your robo-roaches armed with extra electronics and assembly instructions into a new slum and within minutes, they have taken new "converts". [Insert evil smirk here]
Skevin
MCSE/MCDBA (Slashdot is also read by us Evil Empire people too)
malusdei@pacbell.net
"Twice half-assed makes an ass whole." --Solomon K. Chang
What we have here is actually pretty radical. This is more or less a fully autonomous, self-powered robot that could continue to do it's job (albeit a very simple one) indefinitely. It can't repair itself, but otherwise will keep going until you stop it. Not to mention that it has the ability to identify targets in an area with plenty of interference (plants and other critters).
This could be a harbinger of significantly more useful stuff to come. Slus are slow, and easy targets, but what about other pests? Another possibility is search and recovery missions. Imagine robots with similar logic looking for, say, the debris from the EgyptAir crash the other day.
Now, a scary thought - Imagine your AIBO hunting slugs. Brrr.....
- -Josh Turiel
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
As a final desperate attempt the Bots have sent back one of their Terminators to the year 1999 to slay that brave Slugs father/mother, one ordinary garden slug living in a suburb of .....
Cut to a parking place. Suddenly the air starts to shimmer and in a blue light a frightening machine appears (built from Lego Mindstorms (TM))
The Slugbots don't reproduce, so that's not really true.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Saltman versus the slugbots #1 ; great comic. The slugbots never had a chance.
Seriously, though. A robot that draws its power from the decomposing bodies of its victims. How cool is that?
They should just equip the end of it with a salt shaker. That'll take care of the slugs. Double it as a margarita maker and I'm sold.
Mike
Like Grandpa always said, "It's mine, I can wash it as long as I want to."
MG
Is this another one of those inventions that will lead to greater innovations in the field of robotics and miniaturization?
I guess this is much preffered to pesticide. How many of these SlugBots(tm) to you need for a huge field?
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rJames.org - illustration
First, it means a new linux port.
Secondly, it means thousands of linuxheads will anxiously be checking John Romero's .plan to find out when the new slugQ3test will be released.
Third, it means a new O'Reilly book. But what will be on the cover? A slug or a salt shaker?
Four: General Media will recognize value of slugbot, then say it is overhyped. Doc Martens launches a FUD campaign. Sadly, nobody seems to understand slugbot, except for readers of slashslug.org, and they inevitably come into conflict with readers of rival site slugdot.org.
Five: the subject for the first /. action movie:
They were ordinary slug-hunting robots. He was a mild-mannered garden hamster. But when they killed his partner, they made him mad. This Christmas, are you the slugbot? Or are you the slugbotbot? 'Hemos Thunder'."
Jack Valenti and the MPAA are to technology as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone
Unfortunately almost every type of animal finds the brown slugs inedible due to their (supposedly) foul taste. Result: the slug population is rampant in urban backyards. People are resorting to methods such as the aforementioned beer, or pouring salt / cutting in half individual slugs. This is really considered a large problem, with sometimes up to a thousand slugs in just a single backyard!
There is one animal that will eat the slugs : an obscure type of duck. Enterprising farmers are renting these ducks to people on a daily basis. It will be interesting to see what the introduction of slugbots will do to this market.
Sure, the slugbot can catch slugs, it can see them, it can catch them, but can it get to them? Does it have a GPS to help get over a rock? Isn't this the same problem we had with the Mars Pathfinder mission. Just wait till these things start get caught on dandelions. But what if these we're made bigger and were designed for humans? Scary thought. Well, it would be nice to talk about while Hemos, Rob and I are sitting in a collection chamber slowly decomposing into gas. --Never do it. Unless its tomorrow.--
It's a great solution. Unfortunately my dog LOVES beer, so the glass would always be empty :)
Matt.
Matt. Want XML + Apache + Stylesheets? Get AxKit.
I immediately sent the link to my mother, who has
for long times trapped slugs with glasses of beer embedded in the ground. Unfortunately these traps attracted loads of slugs from neighbours. Of course, for 1,5kQ you can buy quite a couple of crates of beer instead.
Let's give this some thought: A robot that feeds and recharges itself from it.
Very quickly we can make the connection that this is a possibility for a very frightening future.. or a really bad B-rated sci-fi flick.
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rJames.org - illustration
If you deploy something like this on a large scale, you are adding an evolutionary pressure to the slug's environment. Speculating idly on how the slug's genome may respond:
Lower their metabolic rate so they show up less well on IR, or change shape so they don't look like slugs to the robot (stealth slugs).
Become too large for the thing to pick up (yuck)
Develop a mechanism so their exothermic decomposition becomes *much* faster. Exploding slugs (ultra-yuck)
There is at least one species of slug (huge brownish ones - too lazy to look up classification) that feeds primarily on other slugs. It would be interesting to do a trial to see if these could be used effectively for slug control. I'm not doing it though. Watching one slug eat another is easily the grossest thing I have ever seen.
The slugbot should be able to make more slugbots as long as it has a wealth of prey. In times of prey shortages, some slugbots should power down and die... or find other prey. Like those little mexican rat dogs... or poodles...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
How about the old boxing term, "Slugnutty"?
If they ever made a powered snotbot.
This is truly Unique..
A slug terminator! And the thing comes with a GPS and costs less than one! ha, this is one gadget to have.
On slug temrinations, I've found that if you mix some salt in water and pour over them, a really weird thing happesn to their bodies (ahem. they dissolve.. this has something to do with Osmosis.. very neat experiment).. Try it.. but be ready to watch solid ooze into slime real quick..
Slug Feast!
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(PrezRelease)
.. affactionaly called BFG31337. Quake for Slugbot is also modular and users could make their own modules to compliment all that which was included in QFS.
IDOT softarware, annoucned today that they have ported their higly acclaimed game to the Slugbot hardware. This port was done with the help of the Linux kernel and AC's including AC. Quake for Slugbot features among other things (to help censors) gore levels, ability to switch weapons to salt sprinker and the mega salt water spourt
In other news, Microsoft decided to enter the Slugbot OS market and would unveil a new OS entitled Slugggin-dos. With the slogan, "The only Microsoft Product that Lives up to it's name".
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Hum, I guess this will mean farmers also gotta buy huge electric-hazard fences to put along their property. :-)
It would be highly profitable and easy for theives just to steel such devices found on the fields.
I wonder what's next.... robotic dogs feeding emselfs with theives?