Science Fiction
Dictionary
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
 |
PlantBot: Humans Provide Gift Of Greater Mobility With 'Skrodes'
Vernor Vinge wrote about a strange race in his 1992 novel A Fire Upon the Deep:
Then some unknown race had chanced upon the dreamers and decided to "help them out." Someone had put them on mobile platforms, the skrodes. With wheels they could move along the seashores, could reach and manipulate with their fronds and tendrils. With the skrode's mechanical short-term memory, they could learn fast enough that their new mobility would not kill them...
A group of gentle and advanced beings, the Play Coalition, has decided to do something quite similar for houseplants. Behold: PlantBot - solar seeking botanical augmentation.
Ravna looked across the surf. When the waves backed down the sand, she could see the Skroderiders' fronds peeping out of the spray... They sat in the surf, thinking thoughts that left no imprint on their minds...
(PlantBot by the Play Coalition: Neil, Dane and Joe)
I had the opportunity to ask Neil some questions about PlantBot:
-
Technovelgy: I enjoyed looking at PlantBot; I was wondering whether or not it had
an sort of sun-seeking robotics, or whether you've just provided legs
for easy movement.
Neil, The Play Coalition: Plantbot is fully mobile and autonomous, it's behavior is driven by basic light-seeking and IR obstacle avoidance systems. Ideally the Plantbot would be able to respond to input from a thermometer as well as atmospheric and soil-based moisture levels, but that's a bit out of our league!
Technovelgy: Where do you get inspiration for something like this?
Neil, The Play Coalition: Inspiration came from the rather lofty desire to produce objects that would innately and charmingly flirt with peoples definition/perception of life. There was also a broader motivation to play with the relationship between nature, technology and human culture.
If I had to cite specific influences the work of Eduardo Kac, Theo Jansen, Ken Rinaldo, Rodney Brooks, Richard Dawkins and jean Baudrillard would be high on the list.
Technovelgy: Any influences from science fiction?
Neil, The Play Coalition: With specific regard to science-fiction; I'd have to mention Masamune Shirow, William Gibson and how could I forget John Wyndham's apocalyptic 'The Day of the Triffids'...
(Terranaut robotic vehicle helps fish explore land)
As long as I'm thinking about it, consider the lowly cockroach given a coach; the cockroach-controlled robot created by Garnet Hertz (see also the cockroach-controlled robot video.
(From Communication in the Animal and the Machine)
From the Play Coalition; thanks to AJ for this cool find.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 10/19/2008)
Follow this kind of news @Technovelgy.| Email | RSS | Blog It | Stumble | del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit |
Would
you like to contribute a story tip?
It's easy:
Get the URL of the story, and the related sf author, and add
it here.
Comment/Join discussion ( 0 )
Related News Stories - (" Vehicle ")
Leader-Follower Autonomous Vehicle Technology
'Jason had been guiding the caravan of cars as usual...' - Gordon R. Dickson, 1954.
Inmotion Electric Unicycle In Combat
'It is about the size and shape of a kitchen stool, gyro-stabilized...' - Robert Heinlein, 1940.
Congress Considers Automatic Emergency Braking, One Hundred Years Too Late
'The greatest problem of all was the elimination of the human element of braking together with its inevitable time lag.' - Bernhard Brown, 1934.
The 'Last Mile' In China Crowded With Delivery Robots
Yes, it's a delivery robot. On wheels.
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
Science Fiction
Timeline
1600-1899
1900-1939
1940's 1950's
1960's 1970's
1980's 1990's
2000's 2010's
Current News
Why Not Move A Warehouse District?
'Did you never see a moving house before?'
Will An AI Found A New Religion?
'You must decide how you will worship Me.'
Terraformer Industries Make Methane
'Drake was the young spatial engineer he employed to terraform the little rock...'
I Need An Outdoor Spherical Display
'Usually a spherical display hovered in the centre...'
Worm Disrupts Physics Simulations Undetected For A Decade
'It diverts integers of the data, the fundamental message-units, so that they no longer agree.'
Muxcard Redditor's DIY Credit Card-Sized Computer
It's a computer, but just barely.
'Soft Assembly' Fashions That Fashion Themselves On The Wearer
'Clothes are no longer made from dead fibers of fixed color and texture that can approximate only crudely to the vagrant human figure...'
Orwell's Nightmare Of AI-Written Novels Comes To Pass
'Books were just a commodity that had to be produced, like jam or bootlaces.'
ISS Plagued By Leak - Again!
'There were perhaps a dozen bladder-like objects in the tunnel...'
Ridiculous 'Ghost Murmur' Tech Still Science Fiction
'...it rears and spreads its fan. It can pick one man out of a crowd.'
Outdoor Video Screens Can Be Arbitrarily Large
The Shape of Things To Come
Infrared Contact Lenses To See In The Dark
'I can see in the dark, Case.'
What'll You Have? Extinct Animals Returned, Or Synthetic Eggshells?
'...a new plastic with the characteristics of an avian eggshell.'
Sunbird Pulsar Fusion Like Leinster's Space Tug
'It was a pushpot, which could not possibly be called a jet plane because it could not possibly fly. Only it did.'
RentAHuman App Lets AI Agents Hire Humans
'She wouldn't stop until Antar had told her everything he knew about whatever it was that she was playing with on her screen.'
Unitree CEO Wang Xingxing Runs With His G1 Robot Army
'Does thinking you're the last sane man on the face of the Earth make you crazy?'
