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Robot dog army sniffs out toxic chemicals
Are you bored with that dog robot you bought a couple of years ago? Researchers at Yale University are interested in recruiting it into their pack of "Feral Robotic Dogs." Don't panic — it's not a ploy to conquer the world with an army of evil K-9s. The Yale crew aims to modify the dogbots so they're able to sniff out toxic chemicals in the environment. With parts that cost about $100 per robot, they can turn your old Sony Aibo into a pollutant bloodhound. The upgraded droids include sensors and software that allow them to act as a pack, so when one of them detects a spike in contaminants, the others will converge. It's great to see such an inexpensive, practical technology to come out of a toy fad, but the world wants to know: can we modify them to find misplaced keys?
Feral Robotic Dogs, via Neatorama
By raymondjram at 9:23 AM ON 08/30/06
I agree with using cheaper, off-the-shelf hardware for projects like this. A robotic dog is an ideal "symbol" for an automatron sniffer. But there are other robots that can do the job, and are less visible. I would recommend using the iRobot Roomba for such operations. They are programmable (visit iRobot's web pages) and a few have been modified to carry a video camera (Popular Science has an article on this at their web page). So a Roomba can sweep the floor and search for evidence, too, while acting as a robotic spy. Since I have no reason for being a suspect (as a terrorist or a criminal), I see no privacy issue having robotic spies near me. I rather have them that a real person or animal that can actually cause me unnecessary harm or bite me.
Raymond
By deth4uall at 11:07 AM ON 08/30/06
The technology today does bring new inventions to our front doors, some may say that we are going towards and unevitable and terrible end with our technology, thus all the movies about rebellion of AI... But I believe that we can actually prevent this... I did enjoy this article and believe that this technology could actually be very rewarding... :)
By ShinigamiDushu at 11:11 AM ON 08/30/06
At first I thought this was a blog about K-9 from Doctor Who, which would have rocked, but this is still pretty cool.
These kinds of dogs poking around would be interesting, but I think that maybe the government might take it a little further. I know it sounds slightly paranoid, but they've gone as far as illegally tapping phones and such things.
But it would be nice to afford something myself like that, that would be able to sniff out chemicals, would be great.
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ShinigamiDushu:
At first I thought this was a blog about K-9 from Doctor Who, which would have rocked, but this is still pretty coo...More »