DARPA Urban Challenge
When you have enough money to fund robotic lobsters, you might as well create a simulated city for robots to destroy. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has announced that its next Grand Challenge competition will take place in a simulated urban environment. Previous DARPA Grand Challenges required participants to create autonomous ground vehicles that would navigate difficult desert routes. This next competition, scheduled to take place on November 3, 2007, moves the challenge into a "mock urban area" where vehicles must obey strict traffic laws while "merging into moving traffic, navigating traffic circles, negotiating busy intersections and avoiding obstacles." How many simulated pedestrians must perish before greedy DARPA has its fill? Only time will tell.
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See the guy in the picture? He calls that lovedoll his wife. Don't be that guy. According to a recent study, 9% of people would be willing to have sex with a robot. And not like, to win a bunch of money if they survive the affair, they're just straight-up willing to bang a ... / Continue →
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Jerks at Carnegie Mellon University have developed a robotic snake that can wrap itself around objects when thrown at them. Cool, here -- grab a hold of this volcano. The idea is to create a robot capable of slithering into tight spaces, perhaps for scouting or search-and-r... / Continue →
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Because building our future killers is all the rage right now, this is a video of a quadrocopter fitted with a 3-D printed claw modeled after an eagle's so it can grab things in flight. You know, things like YOUR HEAD. Then drop you from really high up. Like my high school p... / Continue →
