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Joggobot Shadows Your Steps
Joggobot, the jogger's robot, is ready to encourage you to get in better shape.
(Joggobot exercise UAV)
Using a built-in camera, the autonomous drone hones in on sensors in a custom shirt and exhorts you to keep up with it.“People might feel chased if the Joggobot was behind them,” says researcher Eberhard Grather in a video. So instead your little drone friend flies in front of you.
Floyd Mueller and Grather, researchers at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Australia, tricked out the Parrot AR Drone, which is usually operated with a smartphone, to fly autonomously. You can set it for companion mode — in which the drone flies at a steady pace — or coach mode, “which sets a slightly more challenging speed,” reports WiredUK.
My first thought when I saw Joggobot was of course the mobile persocoms from the 2002 anime Chobits.
(Sumomo leads morning exercises)
However, in a more paranoid vein, I'm now thinking that this robotic drone is perfect for following people around, even if they break into a run. Like the robot tracking device from Philip K. Dick's 1960 novel Vulcan's Hammer or one of the stick-tights from Jack Vance's 1964 novel The Star King.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 6/9/2012)
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