Totally OT Robot Lobster

The Captain is installing some new seawater intakes for a marine lab and spent yesterday showing his CF-30 to Joe Ayers who then showed me his robots. Egad, who knew they were doing stuff like this. For the tech addicts among us its worth a little surf through this guy's stuff! They have RoboBees that actually fly. For the firearms types, the lab is in an old coastal defense bunker that used to house four 16" guns similar to those on battleships.
Prof. Joseph Ayers
CAP

 

That is really cool, I read about the robot lobsters several years ago.

 

"Larry" would be proud!

 

I've seen where they are incorporating the same technology into flying beetles. They are trying to breed receptors into the beetles to make the prosthetics easier to hookup... To see them flying around with tiny little cameras and then to see what they see is cool... And frightening at the same time.

It will make me wonder next time I step on a bug? Did the guy in the control room see that size 13 shoe?

 

YouTube - ‪B-52's Rock Lobster‬‎

mnem
What?!? You never had a guilty pleasure?

 

From you of all people! Actually, I was thinking of you when I posted this. These critturs are quite autonomous and have synthetic muscles powered by stuff I don't begin to understand. They aren't programmed in the normal sense, they have synthetic neurons operating in some sort of "chaos" mode. I strongly recommend digging into the links on his web site. Its all funded by DARPA so you know who wants this stuff
CAP

 

Actually, I'm quite aware of Ayers' work... between him and Rodney Brooks, we may actually have Rosie the MaidBot in my own lifetime. Since Brooks took his money and ran from iRobot (which uses a similar organic algorithm, only programmed into silicon to be able to mass-produce) to work on "useful robots" full-time... I see both their work converging in the near future.

Of course, if you're looking for really cool robotic stuff being used everyday, look at micromagic systems ... their iC Robot has been doing the rounds at modern art shows for 5 years now and it's nothing special technologically; all the movement is made by Hobby-style servos connected to a PIC cpu, which is then controlled by a Windows XP computer to track people's faces. iC hexapod YouTube - ‪interactive hexapod robot [ kinetic art ] by Matt Denton‬‎

The biomachine future is here; we just need to watch out for when they become self-aware.

mnem
Roboti-WHO?

 

See, I knew you would know about this stuff. He's a pretty interesting character, yesterday we saw a short video of one of the robots having an encounter with the real thing in the wild. The real lobster decided that retreat was the smart move.
CAP