Feral Bots strike again, enlist dogs in their anti-pollution schemes

We saw some early attempts of "Feral Robots" sniffing out pollution in a London park, but the project seems to have grown substantially since then, with Natalie Jeremijenko peddling her Feral wares to college students across the country. Most notably, the bots have advanced from simple RC cars to cute little refurbished dogbots, for maximum media exposure, minimal environmental impact, and a bit of fun. They're also working on getting the robots to work as "packs" for coordinated pollution patrol, and better mapping of the data they collect. Check out the video of a UCSD student's "ChemHound" after the break.

[Via Inhabitat]

[mike r @ Feb 26th 2007 1:05PM]

i'm taking bets on how long it will take until someone calls the bomb squad in on one of these guys.

[Mike @ Feb 26th 2007 4:13PM]

Dude, that thing has wires and batteries on it. Damn right any freakin' official in Boston will think it is a "Smart Bomb"

[marcoemerson @ Feb 26th 2007 2:48PM]

Great, so when I'm hiding after escaping torture at the steel claws of the fear-sensing pain bots, all they have to do is release one of the rolling NASA SuperBots complete with one of those 60kW lasers, wait for me to mess myself in terror, and let a pack of these loose to follow the stench, and tear into my body with their razor-sharp e-fangs.

Robots: Is there anything they can't kill?

[Robert Oschler @ Feb 27th 2007 2:09PM]

Here's a video of a Robopet being controlled by voice recognition with the help of a PC:

http://www.robotsrule.com/html/robopet-videos.php

[Andreas @ Feb 28th 2007 9:49AM]

I wonder if I'm the only one who thought the spiny-sounding start up of this bot was similar to PeeWee's Conky 2000..?