UF electrical and computer engineering master's student Andrew Gray and his pet parrot, Pepper, have been getting plenty of attention worldwide with their beak-driven "Bird Buggy". Gray created the robot for the College of Engineering's Intelligent Machines Design Laboratory course, in which students work all semester to create autonomous robots. When it's time to put the bird away, Bird Buggy is able to dock itself to a base station utilizing a web camera. The students are required to develop their own ideas and find the appropriate parts.
I like referencing Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep, specifically his skrode, a machine designed to help a species attain its potential.
Sometimes, aliens need help in alien environments. See the martian perambulator from Between Planets by Robert Heinlein.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 4/13/2021)
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'What strange sensitivity! What an amazing development of science was manifested in every move and act and word of this Robot!' - Ray Cummings, 1931.
DIY Robot Scorpion Crushes It
'...it raised its front end off the ground and waved its antennae at them, then raised one armoured claw as if to snip them out of the sky.' - Neal Asher, 2008.
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Tactile Skin Supplier Map
'What strange sensitivity! What an amazing development of science was manifested in every move and act and word of this Robot!'
Orb Nomad Zero-Emission Electric Aircraft
'That explains how it was so easy for me to remain motionless in midair or to perch on a flagpole in imitation of a giant bird, even in the windy city of Chicago.'
DIY Robot Scorpion Crushes It
'...it raised its front end off the ground and waved its antennae at them, then raised one armoured claw as if to snip them out of the sky.'