The woman I saw roller-skating down a hallway at Yale Law School last week turned out to be Natalie Jeremijenko artist, technologist, activist. Considering her previous accomplishments, I take seriously her plan to start releasing packs of hacked robot dogs at toxic waste sites,
What if owners of Superfund sitde politicked their way out of responsibility, then sold or leased their property without removing unhealthy amounts of toxic waste? What if you could modify an ordinary robotic dog by adding an inexpensive, of-the-shelf gas sensor — the kind used in residential and commercial/ industrial alarms for detecting toxicgases, breath alcohol checkers, automatic cooking controls for microwave ovens, air quality/ventilation control sytems for both homes and automobiles? What if you could release packs of these feral robotic dogs at former superfund sites whenever a school, housing development, market opens for business on or near the site? Welcome to feral robotics.
Comments
@ 07:20
FP!!!!
@ 08:05
Superb use of cool technology for a worthy cause! The idea of putting the camera/sensor towards the rear of the dog seems a good idea since it would likely be stable and more focused on movement of the dog versus viewing vertical surroundings.
@ 10:11
well you’ll need a camera in the front so it can see where it’s going as well..might as well put one on each side for improving the ’seeing people’s reactions’ (which seems a bit shallow a focus for such an important concept) as well as improving it’s ability to move about it’s environment best. functionally it would be optimal and most cost effective to abandon making it ‘dog-like’ and just making it shaped best for it’s function (no tail no head, just four legs and a ring of sensors around the body) although giving it a familiar cute look you’ll get better exposure and thus more money so hey. this sounds wonderful. i love robots and would love to cast any help in. mine clearing aibo’s anyone?
@ 11:11
No forward camera is needed for navigation, silly. The smell-sensor and terrain-covering logic determines the path. The feral-dog is meant for use in relatively smooth urban / suburban terrain, so it really doesn’t need to “see” where it’s going.
Besides, terrian-following by interpreting video images is super-complicated, and processor intensive, and beyond the scope of a disposable massively-deployed agit-prop tool.
@ 12:29
These thing will get run over in MINUTES.
@ 18:47
what happens if the dogs that converge on the dog that found the problem…… come from multiple directions? why the rear of the dog verses the front or side for that matter? what happens(quite possable) when the pack finds a larger problematic area? you would post this pack at a piont then the pack finds an edge of a large problematic spot at almost the same time? Sounds cool, but not realistic and why a dog why not birds?
@ 09:11
Pack behavior is expected. And I suspect Natalie would hack robot birds if such things existed.
@ 23:22
Robot dogs turned activists
Earlier this summer Urban Tapestries received confirmation of an award from the Engineering & Physical Research Council of UK for a Visiting Fellowship by artist, activist and engineer, Natalia Jeremijenko. Her Federal Robotic Dogs are ordinary robotic…